What does Trump's gaffe-filled speech tell us about him? Is it psychology or physiology, or both?

 

Adapted from Hypnotic seance,

 by Richard Bergh, 1887

By Hal Brown, MSW, Retired psychotherapist

Trump's gaffe-filled speech yesterday where he said he beat Obama before and will beat him again and will prevent World War II was  covered, and mocked, on "Morning Joe" as examples of declining cognitive ability tied in with his age, that is, his physiology.

Click above to watch Morning Joe segment

There's another way of looking at this which Mika did allude to, his psychology. What we may be seeing is that this off-the-wall speech was an indication that his anxiety over his legal jeopardy is manifesting itself and he isn't thinking clearly due to this. 

Later on Morning Joe Al Sharpton spoke directly to this:

Click to view

This is what former federal prosecutor Harry Litman said on Sunday on "Meet the Press" 

 He's not afraid of prison and doesn't even think about it.

Here's the thing about this notion. It is true that if someone doesn't think about having something horrible happen to them, prison in Trump's case, they may not experience fear. Prison for Trump, after all, isn't inevitable like death. Thoughtful self-aware people think about their own mortality from time to time, and as death from disease or merely old age gets closer they think about it more often.

They key term above is thoughtful self-aware people.  I defy anyone to give indesputable examples of Trump having this characteristic. 

Depth psychology tells us that the unconscious mind exists. Harry Litman opined the following about what Trump thinks:

Instead, it's nothing more than a political witch hunt he assumes will disappear under the law.

I suspect that this indeed is what is in Trump's conscious mind. 

He has had minor setbacks with the law but for him these were nothing more than what for a normal person would be a $25 parking ticket that wouldn't raise our auto insurance costs or add driving infraction points. It costs as much as a meal at Applebee's but won't break the bank.

Trump has believed he's so far above the law he'd need a powerful telescope to see it, and that's even if he cared enough to look. He doesn't look because at some level in his unconscious there's an awareness that he'd see it if he looked hard enough. It may seem far away and impotent to him but he should learn about trying to fight the law from the song “I Fought the Law”.

 The song was written by Sonny Curtis of the Crickets which became popularized by the Bobby Fuller Four, who had a top-ten hit with it in 1966.  Below is the 1979 version from The Clash:

Click for video

Trump seems to be playing a version of the song which goes "I fought the law and I won" in his mind.

This is the belief system of a grandiose narcissist who has his belief in his invulnerability from the consequences of bad acts baked in.

Addendum:  

I nominate "I Fought the Law" as the official theme song for Trump. It's has been ranked No. 175 on the Rolling Stone list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004, and the same year was named one of the 500 "Songs that Shaped Rock" by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It can only help its standing as a rock classic if it is played at Trump on loudspeakers outside of his rallies. 

Perhaps someone can record a version that goes "he fought the law, and the law won" sometime soon.

Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe, Would God go with GOP or Joe?

 

By Hal Brown

Here's a personal note about my own religious background and beliefs.

This blog is really meant to be an addenudum to what I wrote yesterday, here:

I initially thought of the title of today's blog after reading this article about Evangelicals supposedly losing their grip on the GOP on Raw Story.

Click to read in Raw Story

I tried to make an illustration with this image:

It was taking too long to position the pointing finger properly on something like a stone tablet so I went with the easier to make image you see on the top of the page.

Click to enlarge

The hypocritical irony of beliving that  God gave the 10 Commandments to Moses as the basic rules for mankind to abide by  and how Republicans flout as many as half of them is beyond the scope of what I want to write about today.  Suffice to share the new 10  GOP Commandments (Slate 2021) by Liz Cheney and take note of the failed efforts in Texas to require that public schools to display them. Texas, of course, is the state where its governor, Greg Abbott, is putting barbed wire on floats acrtoss the Rio Grand to stop deperate immigrants from crossing.  

So much has been written about the abject hypocrisy of Evangelicals who support Trump and the other GOP candidates for president who either not only don't have any semblance of so-called the Christian values like those described on this Christian website (and like Trump probably don't believe in God). Then there's the most devout candidate, Pence, who managed to worship the false god Trump as he again and again did things that proved he was as cruel as the Devil. (More about Pence here: CNN's Tapper corners Mike Pence over accusations he used his faith to run cover for Trump)

The question I pose for Evangelicals is who would God choose to be president? 

A great deal has been written about Einstein's quote about quantum mechanics, God does not play dice with the universe, and what he meant by it (here for example). 

I doubt too many Evangelicals consider how quantum mechanics fits into God's plan, but I think they'd endorse the idea that God has a plan and everything He does is for a reason.

In other words, this goes back to my title, God does not play Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe when making decisions that effect life on Earth.

Which presidential candidate actually walks the walk? While Biden doen't talk the talk of the Evangelicals can anyone who thinks clearly about what he believes and what he has done and is trying to do for people is walking the walk that a kind, loving, and compassionate God would approve of?

You don't need to read these 100 quotes from the Bible about the poor, for example, to ask the question.

Click images to enlarge them

There's nothing more I can add to this.

"Listen up GOP candidates and your pious flock, according to me and my son, woke is good." God*

By Hal Brown

* Disclaimer: I do not profess to know God actually said "listen up GOP candidates and your pious flock, according to me and my son, woke is good." I think that the Bible's deity probably would say this. There's more about my faith history on bottom of the page.

I read the following in Raw Story:

Click above for article

This was my comment in Raw Story in response:

 If there was a capital G god, the most real tradtional all powerful diety decision maker ruling over Earth and all points in every direction to the end of the Universe and perhaps beyond, you know, the capital G god who looks like one of the images below, why would capital H he have had a son he sent to Earth who preached a message to mankind that in its essence was what the GOP is calling woke. Read (Newsweek) "Evangelicals Are Now Rejecting 'Liberal' Teachings of Jesus" here.

____________________________________________

The Newsweek article has as its central premise that Trump, other GOP presidential candidates, as well as many members of the party who are pandering to Evangelicals  have "transformed the political landscape in the U.S. to the point where some Christian conservatives are openly denouncing a central doctrine of their religion as being too weak and liberal for their liking."

I didn't read the Daily Beast article cited in Raw Story since I don't have a subscription but I did look at the other article. It was from The Christian Post (below) describing the speech Ron DeSantis gave which concluded with this sentence: He told the audience, “As president, we are going to leave the woke mind virus in the dustbin of history, where it belongs, once and for all.” 

Click above 

Here are two other Raw Story comments with illustrations (click to enlarge):

A commenter who goes by SailorRet posted many more images here.

Below are a few of the other comments in Raw Story which I think make excellent points:

BowlingGreenMassacreSurvivor an hour ago edited

“I don't know how you could be a leader without having faith in God," DeSantis said. 

The only member of the Founding Fathers who had beliefs similar to Evangelicals was John Adams, and get this, he was also the only member of that group who was an abolitionist.

(Yeah, maybe that was a big reason he and Thomas Jefferson hated each other. But the point is clear.)

METAL_TREK an hour ago

Yeah. Woke is why young people are putting off getting married and having kids. Not because they can't fucking AFFORD to have kids thanks to 40 years of union busting and trickle down pushed by their own party. 🙄

Too bad for them, the young people aren't buying their line of bullshit the way boomers and a chunk of my generation (X) did.

No lie. My 20 year old asked me what they could do to avoid struggling with bills and stuff the way I sometimes do. I looked them straight in the face and said "Don't have kids unless you have a great job and you're living with someone who also has a great job. I love you and your sister, but kids are expensive and you need two solid incomes to raise them" (my ex, their mother, was stay at home and ran off with her affair partner just as she was supposed to go back to work, but that's a different story). My 20 year old is LGBT and doesn't want kids anyway. My 20 year old also votes. And NOT for RepubliQans.

So thank 40 years of GQP union busting and trickle down. Not woke (whatever the fuck that is).

AdvocacyShouts an hour ago

"And it’s the faith in God that gives you the strength to stand firm against the lies, against the deceit, against the opposition."

Um...actually...Ron...it's having a strong moral compass and a desire to do the right thing (for others as well as yourself) that keeps people unwavering.

It's very weak, and irresponsible, to act as if some invisible being is directing and supporting you, because it's a lie and you know it. You do what you want, giving into your hate and fear, because then you can take it out on others - and blame the outcome on your deity.

As for "COVID-ism", Vivek? We all know every single one of you candidates is vaccinated. So you can fk off with that bs.

And you'll never eradicate "wokism", because that's just respect for others and not trying to control who people are. Us telling y'all to stop banning books is not the same as you telling us which gender we are. You're just so convinced you're right, when you're very, very wrong!

n Goth We Trust-91 counts PAB23 minutes ago edited

Ex-Vice President Mike Pence told the audience, "The facts speak for themselves. Today more young people are delaying having a family altogether. The share of never-married adults has tripled since 1980. People are getting married later, having children later in life; declining U.S. birth rates" — all the "hallmarks of decline."
—
Phvck YOU Q-Tip! That's called freedom to decide when or what to do in ones life. What is declining is American's showing up on Sunday mornings for sermons, which now a days at many churches are white Christian nationalist propaganda.

Linda Beaver8 minutes ago

These. Christofascists. Are. Insane. I've posted this quite a few times over the past several years on quite a few threads, but it bears repeating: When you mix religious fanaticism with political fervor, you have big trouble. Wasn't it Barry Goldwater who said, "when fascism comes to the United States, it'll be wrapped in a flag and carrying a Bible"?

Aldewacsa minute ago

...""protect children from 'indoctrination' in public schools.""...
Now THERE is projection on steroids... Religious schools of ANY religion are breeding grounds for extremism and bastions of indoctrination. Manipulation at its finest.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" ... OOPS forgot about that, did you? If we all followed the dictate of keeping government out of religion and vise-versa, and ENFORCE that, we'd be much better off.
But NOOO, they claim to be pure and god-fearing, but then reality bites ... right, Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski? Donald Trump and (..MANY..)? Ken Paxton and his side piece?

As it is, there are millions running around proclaiming that they "live by" the demands in their religious texts, but they fail to even provide a modicum of proof that their god exists.
Should that not be STEP #1 before committing to your chosen cult? ... I.E. Prove there is a basis for your beliefs in magic? Asking too much, I know...

A personal note:

I was raised a secular Jew.

I suppose I am so un-Jewish that I just had to be reminded what today was, so I am adding this to the blog:

My town of Mt. Vernon, NY at the time I lived there had a very large Jewish population and I barely knew any Christians. There was one Christian family on my block. 

As a adult I was amazed to learn that three of the major players in the failed illegal attempt in 1947 (when I was three) to buy the soon to become a sovereign country of Israel a surplus aircraft carrier named the Attu for $125,000 (described in article here) were my neighbors. They lived literally next to my house or one house away. I discovered that the men I knew, the fathers of my best toddler friends, were being investigated by the FBI and there were agents prowling the treelined streets of my  tranquil neighborhood.  I am still in frequent touch with two of these friends.

My great-grandfather was one of the founders of a major synagogue tthere.

Click above to enlarge

Most of my male friends and all of my boy relatives went to Hebrew school and went through the •  bar mitzvah ceremony with the attendent big party afterwards. My parents couldn't afford this and didn't believe it was important anyway. 

They taught me that God was simply a force for good.  I used to say the "now I lay me down to sleep, I pray to God my soul to keep, God bless Mommy and Daddy etc." prayer every night when I went to bed. I stopped believing in God when I pretty young after one experience. I had terrible stomach cramps and was sitting on the toilet. I was already doubting that there could be an actual God but was in such pain I said out loud "God I promise that if you stop the pain I will believe in you." The pain persisted for a long time. I figured nobody with the power to stop it existed because after all I knew I was a good kid and didn't do anything which I needed to be punished for.

Now if I had to describe my position on matters of faith I would call myself an ethical atheist.

Kevin McCarthy is no Tony Soprano. (He's also not Hadleyville Marshall Will Kane.)

 

By Hal Brown

Update: These two images also illustrate my point.

As a Sopranos fan I had a reaction to the Raw Story article below:

House GOP near 'the Godfather II stage' where 'the whole family kills each other': Republican lawmaker

Excerpt (my bold added):

Infighting among House Republicans has gotten so intense that some members are drawing analogies from classic mobster movies to describe it.

One unnamed congressional Republican told Semafor this week that relations among his colleagues may have reached "the Godfather II stage” where “the whole family kills each other.”

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), meanwhile, explicitly compared House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to TV mob boss Tony Soprano, in that "everybody thinks they’re going to kill him and he comes out alive."

Somehow I don't see McCarthy as a Tony Soprano taking care of family business, but who knows, maybe everything will turn out ducky for him. If you watched the Sopranos you know about Tony and the ducks in his swimming pool, and his killing member of his Mafia crew Fabian Petrulio.

You can watch a four minute video of Tony taking delight in the mama duck and ducklings which took up residents in his pool and his wife and children reacting to this here.

You can also watch Tony dispatching gang member Fabian Petrulo in the "good morning rat" scene here:

Click above to watch final High Noon scene

I just don't see McCarthy coming out the victor, even if he puts on his best "don't piss me off" Mafioso face, can throttle the life force out of those who dare cross him, or shoots it out with his enemies at high noon

He's not Tony Soprano and he's not Marshall Kane. He can't even be sure he'll be Marshall of the House next week.

As far as I know McCarthy doesn't smoke cigars, but now that the GOP has allowed smoking in the House maybe if he wants to instill fear in his caucus he should take it up in Tony Soprano style.

Update from NY Post:

Just because he can talk like a gangsta doesn't make him a gangsta.

The Republicans profess to be bluebirds. The Democrats need to be buzzards.

The bluebird  is reputed to bring happiness and cotnribute in a salubrious way to the human emotional ecosytem . Buzzards are smaller than vultures and they prefer to hunt, attack, and eat their prey while the creatures are somewhat alive, though they will also eat dead or the unfortuate human and thus have a useful role in the biological ecosystem.

Here are some of the Republican bluebirds of happiness:

This one keeps flying against the window, knocking himself out, and doing it again and again:

The only one with an ethical compass that acutally functions is this senator and he's not going to run for a second term.

You can listen to an eastern blue bird's song here.

I admit to bias when I look at the faces of the GOP MAGA monarchy and don't see anything comporably to the bluebird above.

I'm not saying that one can look at the faces of people and decide whether they are what in the "olden times" was called good character.  I will say that when I look at the Republicans pictured above most of them remind me of the most evil of the three white supremacist kidnappers in the show about MI-5 rejects called Slow Horses (97%/93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes on Apple TV).

If the actor who played him, Brian Vernel, got on an elevator with me I'd try to get off on the next floor no matter where I was headed.

I don't have time to put together a photo array of Democrats but when I see everyone from President Biden, espcially juxtaposed with Donald Trump,  and every other Democrat making the news, I don't see psychopaths.

Of course the GOP wants everyone to see the members of "The Squad" as evil incarnate...

and this guy as vying with the president for being the Devil himself:

The GOP bluebird feathered flock flies bringing happiness to the Trump minions because their stchick plays to the gullibility of so many brainwashed people who only hear what they want to hear (confirmation bias is the technical term). 

The Democrats, objectively trying their damnest to be bluebirds of happiness are loathe to be buzzards, to be birds of prey. They need to do to the Republicans what the Republicans are doing to them. A buzzard may not be as pretty as a bluebird, or as majestic as an eagle, or as cunning as hawks and ravens (also top avian predators) but they are damn efficient predators. I could have cited them in my blog but I want an aliteration so buzzards won out.