Trump and Co.’s capacity to endure shame is truly something to behold. Its members appear to have found a method or a series of methods by which they make themselves immune to outside criticism. Well, we know some of the methods, don’t we? Label criticism from the media fake news; dismiss criticism from individuals as the work of deranged domestic terrorists, or left wing lunatics, or RINOs; disregard criticism from other world leaders by accusing them of leading their nations to ruin. Members of the Administration hear the criticism, but they’re so committed to their self-conservation, or self-aggrandizement, that they continue to stumble along from conference to conference as if feedback critical of their performance is as relevant as their expertise.
The faces of the Administration are all trying on Trump’s trick of being so deluded you believe that through sheer will alone, you’ll impose your version of reality on everyone else—a version of reality that puts you in the highest seat of power, completely in spite of the presumed-to-be career ending scandals. We can see how Trump could believe it, since he is the one in the literal seat of power for the second time now. But we get a sense of their collective delusion because this type of projection can only work for one person at a time, for the few instances that it works at all. They can’t all impose their delusion at the same time. Whether they’re willing to admit it, or even realize it, where Trump’s delusion can only be popped by Trump (and he has no interest in doing that), their respective delusions can also be popped by him. And because they lack exclusive control over their respective delusions, they can never believe in them the way Trump does and can.
Trump is keen to remind the Republican Party that they win when he runs, and not otherwise. He states the negative just to make sure there’s no confusion that it’s his presence that is the determining factor in an election. Rubio, Noem, Leavitt, all of them, they’re there because Trump put them there. They can mimic his reality-warping delusion, but a facsimile is all it could be, which I think is why they’re so bad at their jobs. They don’t hold fast to his rules, which we’re able to gather by simply listening to the way he speaks.
Rule 1: Come out on top. Say you won even if you didn’t. He sounds insane when he says that you should stop counting the vote when you’re ahead. How else can we explain even the utterance of something so obviously idiotic, if not by acknowledging that this man is deeply protective of his psyche. The walls he has raised in defense are likely fortified and permanent. He didn’t lose 2020, he tells us this every time. The idea of losing to someone he must have considered a competitor through sheer opposition alone must have been difficult for him in at least two ways: (1) Sometimes a needle pokes through his reality and reminds him, however briefly, that some things are outside of his control; and (2) the occurrence of this event, of something that cuts his illusion apart, is so destructive that not only will he deny it, but he’ll work to reverse the outcome so we can all see he was right all along. It’s not for his benefit, you see, but for ours and maybe we’ll thank him. But, he doesn’t need thanks, he is also keen to remind us.
I should state this is all arm-chair psychology. I merely am trying to understand Trump’s obsessions. I’m trying to understand how idiocy can be weaponized.
Rule 2: Buy yourself time. Anytime he is asked a question about a plan, something that should have a due date, he’ll reply that whatever the subject of the conversation is, it will be produced in a couple of weeks. The media seems to have accepted this warping of reality, such that now we are all subject to Trump’s endless extensions. Why don’t they ask him at every opportunity where his various plans are? Why don’t they ask him why we should him consider him credible, given the list of plans he’s yet to produce, let alone implement? And that’s the most benign reason not to consider him credible! We already know he lies, and to such an extent that it’s a recognized part of his personality. He’s a liar. He will lie to you. Maybe not every time, sure, but with such frequency there’ll be no differentiating one false instance from a truthful one. Anyone who has met a serial liar knows that they’re idiots. While they take advantage of people’s trust, it doesn’t take very much to catch on to the idiot’s abuse. And the idiot remains so because they continue to employ the tactic of lying. Taken to the extreme that Trump has, lying becomes another one of his instruments by which we are all sucked into his version of reality, the kind where what he says isn’t meaningfully challenged and where, while everything he says may not be taken as true, his statements are allowed to exist unrefuted. He believes it, and so must we.
His lackeys don’t have Trump’s talent. The angry performances they put on leave them constantly agitated, because that seems to me to be their genuine self in unconscious rebellion. Anytime they answer a question, it’s with the tone of something like, “I just don’t see what’s so hard to understand about that?” I should add, I don’t mean to excuse their incompetence and arrogance, but rather to dissect their charade so as to try to discern when we should be really concerned about something.
But, of course, the hallmark of the idiot is that he, or she, doesn’t have a full understanding that what follows an action is a reaction. The idiot cannot think beyond reactions that best suit their action, and their inability to think beyond themselves does not insulate them from unintended, but by no means, impossible-to-anticipate reactions.
Note, dear Reader, that I started this piece weeks ago. The metadata may be able to better tell me exactly when, but I’m leaving Noem’s name in as a sort of time capsule so we might all have a guess. But, as we know, Noem is gone. So is Bondi. Bongino might have already been gone, but he’s gone nonetheless. Trump began a war with Iran in the interim, where the latest development is the following: to try to re-open the Strait of Hormuz that is only closed because of his idiotic war, he has decided to blockade the Strait so that it may be re-opened! Oh, and the Pope, recognizing all this, has had the only reasonable response to Trump, which is simply not to engage with him. Pope Leo has the good sense to turn his back on Trump. Even right-wing podcasters and politicians have had the good sense to turn their backs on Trump. When will the rest of the world’s leaders do the same?
