Is Donald Trump Okay?
That's not a rhetorical question.
Former President Donald Trump held a press conference in Florida today. It’s the first time he’s taken questions since his unique performance at the National Association of Black Journalists on July 31st. I suspect the rationale for doing this was to pressure his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, to conduct a press conference.* For the record, I wish both candidates did more interviews and took more questions. But that’s a subject for another post. What I’m asking today is literally, is Donald Trump okay?
As Steven noted, at the NABJ conference, Donald Trump made a shocking racial allegation about Harris:
“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” the former president said.
“I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went – she became a Black person,” he said at the National Association of Black Journalists convention. “I think somebody should look into that too.”
source: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/31/politics/donald-trump-kamala-harris-black-nabj/index.html
The former President and his surrogates would double down on this position at a campaign event later that day. This led to a question that was asked of Trump today:
Again, his response to “Kamala Harris father is Jamaican American, and she went to a Historically Black College. How is she only recently deciding to be Black?” was:
“You’ll have to ask her that question, because she’s the one who said it, ah… I didn’t say it, so you’ll have to ask her.”
I understand the theory that any press is good press, but this seems disconcerting, especially since there is footage of him saying that a week ago (just scroll back up this page). His supporters will likely chalk this up to playing with the press. Looking at the broader context of the last few weeks, this answer starts to fit into a concerning pattern.
Trump went into a long story about how he and San Fransico Mayor Willie Brown almost died during a helicopter emergency. He told the story to insinuate that Brown insulted Harris (“he told me terrible things about her”).
This entire story is a complete fabrication. Trump has, to no one’s knowledge ever been in a helicopter with Brown. People believe Trump may have been thinking about a flight he took with California Governor Jerry Brown. While the two men have the same last names, there are several differences between them, starting with one being White and one being Black. But perhaps this is a case where he’s trying to prove he “doesn’t see color.” There also was no emergency landing on that flight. Trump might have crossed wires and tied it to the story of a number of Trump executives dying in a helicopter crash (that he was also not on).
This wasn’t the only case during the press conference where Trump seemed confused. For example, he clearly mistook “barrels of gasoline” for “gallons” when talking about high fuel prices. He also claimed no one was killed on January 6th, after making the death of Ashley Barrett a regular feature of his rally speeches. He also appeared to have no idea what Mifepristone is.
Trump also confused Tim Walz with Ralph Northam during another answer. In fact, it appeared that he had real issues remembering Walz’s name, falling back on phrases like “the gentleman from Minnesota” or “Kamala’s new friend” who he accused of being “heavy into the transgender world, heavy into lots of different worlds having to do with safety”–whatever that means.
There were also the usual Trump “greatest hits” dialed up to 11 including claiming that his January 6th speech (which kicked off the Capitol Riot) had a larger turnout than the Martin Luther King Jr.-led March on Washington (which featured the famed “I Have a Dream” speech). The estimated attendence of the January 6th rally was 53,000 people. The estimated attendance of the March on Washington: 250,000 people. Just a little 5x difference. Trump also claimed, despite never getting more than ~46% of the popular vote that the MAGA base makes up 75% of the country. He also claimed that his campaign is ahead in the polls and Kamala Harris’s numbers are falling rapidly.
If anyone can point to any polls showing this, please share them, and I’ll update the post. From what I have seen Harris has been closing the gap, if not pulling ahead of Trump, in most key states.
Admittedly, some of this can be chalked up to Trump’s usual puffery. However, as people did with Biden this year, compare Trump today to the person who ran in 2020, and you see a person struggling to coherently answer questions and increasingly getting his words and facts confused. At best, you could argue he intentionally lies, but that isn’t a particularly good look, either.
We also have to look at this through the lens of other recent behavior. For example, six days ago Trump pulled out of an already agreed upon debate on ABC and then annouced his own debate on Fox news. Yesterday, at the press conference, Trump reversed course and agreed to do the ABC debate. He claims the Fox debate is still happening and announced another debate on NBC. To date, the Harris campaign has yet to commit to the Fox or NBC debates. From a purely political standpoint, trying to work in more debates and sooner is not necessarily a sign of a strong campaign. In fact, Trump seems to be taking a page from the Biden campaign from earlier this year.
Trump had endorsed multiple candidates running for the same job in numerous primary races in Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and Washington.
Trump-endorsed candidate Lieutenant Governor Mike Kehoe won the Missouri governor’s race on Tuesday, defeating two other conservative candidates endorsed by the former president. They included Missouri’s secretary of state, Jay Ashcroft, the son of the former Missouri governor and U.S. senator and attorney general John Ashcroft.
He also claimed the Stock Market drop on Monday would start a recession/depression, only to have the market essentially recover on Tuesday.
And speaking of Biden, the former President and his top aids, have been posting what best can be called “fan fiction” on Truth Social and other social networks about President Biden reentering the race:
This is all happening as Trump has been doing far fewer campaign rallys than in past election cycles. And in recent weeks he has been out-hustled by the Harris campaign in terms of live appearances.
Election Day is still three months away, but Trump’s pace of traveling for roughly one rally per week is significantly slower than in 2016, when he held nine rallies during thefirst week of August. The 2020 campaign was impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, but Trump was typically holding at least three rallies a week by September.
“I think Trump is continuing the pace of his campaign that he established six months ago,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who has worked on presidential campaigns. “And look, it worked for him until a few weeks ago. The pace of one or two events per week worked when he was making this campaign a referendum on Biden.”
It’s unfamiliar territory for Trump, who is used to dominating the headlines and appeared on track to win back the White House in November in a race against Biden.
Given the recent assassination attempt, it’s understandable if the Former President is reluctant to appear in public. Frankly, that would be a completely normal trauma response to what happened and I hope that he’s getting the necessary mental and emotional treatment to help with that. However, that gets back to the overall question I opened with: Is Donald Trump Okay?
This isn’t an attempt to diagnose him. It is just to point out that, at this moment, this is a very different Donald Trump than in 2016 or 2020—which is probably tied to his being the oldest person** ever to stand for election for President.
* – Yesterday Harris did take press questions on the tarmac and announced that they were working on an interview schedule.
** – Yes Joe Biden was older, but as noted above, he has since left the race.
Has he ever been ok?
Trump has always shown the signs of a malignant narcissist. Now we’ve got signs of senility on top of that.
And we’re still legitimately worried that this candidate for POTUS will be re-elected.
Americans are idiots.
All easy jokes aside, I have to wonder, are we seeing early signs of Alzheimers?
I suspect it is just that he is nearing 80 and now that folks are not focused on Biden’s mental hiccups it is being noticed that he is very, very, old and now the spotlight is on his mental hiccups which will worry even some in the GOP who want to achieve power at all costs, but their candidate showing a noticeable decline in memory is going to make that some sailing in rough seas for them.
My mom refuses to see a doctor, and probably does have some neurological issues, but truthfully, she is near 80 and at that point in her life where it is somewhat normal for her to forget stuff. I was talking to her yesterday afternoon and she was thanking me for a brief but wonderful visit this past Friday, when it was actually a Sat afternoon visit, but understandable, she will be 80 in less than 2 years herself and is not expected to have super fantastic memory.
Of course, she is also not running for public office.
Kamala Harris is in nice spot now, and even with all the pearl clutching over Tim Walz and his NG record, her VP is also is a nice spot.
I now feel this is Kamala’s election to lose so while she will get a lot of pressure from both sides to get out more (including very much the Progressive side of the Democratic party) I say if she wants to be very careful in how many interviews, debates, and public rallies she attends, more power to her.
Less chances for someone in the GOP to turn what Democrats thinks is a positive from her appearances into a liability (the GOP is uncannily great at doing this to opponents).
Trump has never run against anyone younger than him. He’s surrounded by old people and younger people who have the same concerns as older people. Clinton, Biden, and Pelosi have been around forever and he gets why people disliked them. He does not get Kamala Harris, even as a person to give a dumb nickname to.
Also, I have a sinking suspicion that the GOP is going to start claiming that Harris is not a legitimate candidate. They’re going to be dragging out famed legal scholar John Eastman to put some bogus argument out there. And if he loses, they’re going to be pushing this claim.
No, he’s not. His mental deterioration was on full display at his speech this week – disjointed phrases, wrong words, imaginary events. I wonder if he’s talking to Americans in front of him or reporting into his home planet.
P.S. people with personality disorders quite often have a tendency towards earlier mental declines when aging. And that’s not taking into account the Trump family history. Didn’t Trump’s father suffer from Alzheimer’s?
@Modulo Myself:
Hillary is younger than Trump.
@Grumpy realist:
Yes, he did. Fred Trump was diagnosed with it in 1991 at age ~85.
https://wamu.org/story/24/03/28/donald-trumps-family-history-with-alzheimers-disease/
@Modulo Myself:
I expect an attempt at this and I doubt it will go anywhere.
As my parents and others of that generation aged around me, I learned that people can successfully keep the full extent of their cognitive decline from even their loved ones for a surprisingly long time with just a few simple techniques.
– Take a specific question and make it bigger: “Who do you like in the up coming election?” “Well, I’ve about had it with all of them! These phony politicians never keep their promises, so there’s no point in picking one over the other.” Now, if the conversation continues, it will be about broad generalities, avoiding the traps of having to remembering the specific election coming up and who the candidates are.
– Reverse the question: “I’m not sure. Who are you going with?”
– Refer to relationships, skipping the names: “That loud mouth”, “The old guy” (For family members, “Your cousin”, “your oldest”, etc)
– Speak in generalities while answering a slightly different question: “Well, I usually vote Democratic but here’s some things that would make me vote Republican”
– Get angry: “I’ve got no time for these phonies! Remember when so-and-so said he was bringing the auto industry back and within a year your brother had lost his job?! He nearly lost his house!”
Trump exhibits this kind of behavior all the time. It was obvious he had gotten confused about who Harris’s VP pick was, and most certainly had forgotten his name, so he referred to him as the “gentleman from Minnesota” and a half dozen other dodges. The weird helicopter ride thing was something that had happened only in his head, no doubt cobbled together from a half dozen random memories, but he bizarrely seemed to think he could put it out there and no one would notice. (It will be interesting to see if anyone follows up on this and challenges him.)
Just repeating for emphasis because it’s such a great, psychedelic phrase.
I mean, I definitely support the focus on safety here. When you’re like, expanding your consciousness and exploring heavy worlds or whatever is happening here. Good stuff!
@Kylopod:
Yeah, but she’s older now than he was then!
/sorry, you caught me with the sillies on a Friday
Not Alzheimers, more likely some type of frontotemporal dementia.
Bear in mind Trump has no motivation to release his medical records, so not foreseeable having any such diagnosis made public, all we can do is observe and draw inferences.
Here are some excerpts from a Salon piece from back in March:
(And note especially what I have emphasized with bold font, important points).
https://www.salon.com/2024/03/25/forensic-psychiatrist-on-physical-signs-of-mental-decline-changes-in-movement-and-gait/
@Kylopod:
Let me rephrase that–he’s never run against anyone from a younger generation who isn’t a Republican. He seems at a loss to hit upon something that sticks. To be a good troll, you have to some insight. Otherwise, you sound like Jack when he shows up here. When you have no interests other than yourself, you are going to trouble insulting people outside your orbit. Vance is the same–the cat lady was pathetic. Whereas the couch joke—which probably be killed now–managed to get under his skin.
@Matt Bernius:
I will take this time to remind you that the last time a decision came from the Supreme Court in a presidential matter, they did not hesitate to come up with a one-time only, this is not a precedent ruling that installed GWB.
Are you oka0? LMAO you can’t even write an article without making spelling errors. No one believes you. Bye.
God chose Trump. Also, this is propaganda. This is on par with the worst leaders of human history, the other side that is. By the other side I mean everyone who is against Trump.
It would make sense that a society that is pushing God and good things away is also persecuting God’s choice in leadership.
@charontwo: The mental gymnastics you did to make Trump seem that he is mentally unwell makes you look like you are mentally unwell. This is enough evidence for me to make the claim that you yourself have Alzheimer’s and everything you say should be taken with a grain of salt. See, I can do it too. Do you see how absurd this all is yet? I will pray for you and those who are lost just like you.
The helicopter tall tale seems less like a memory failure than it is the sort of story one tells when one is used to not being challenged. Often family members won’t challenge this sort of thing, especially if it seems like a memory lapse. And well, if you’re super rich, and everyone in the room depends on you for their income, and you throw tantrums when corrected, they aren’t going to challenge you, either.
Other things pointed at seem more like, yeah, he couldn’t remember Tim Wallz’ name, and he didn’t know what mifeprestone was. This would be fine for Grandad or Uncle Harold, but not so great for a guy who wants to be president.
@Wayne A William Allen Williams:
God handpicks sexual assaulters? Why? Any particular Biblical basis for that? Please explain.
@Wayne A William Allen Williams:
Hey, thanks for catching that. I had seen it but forgot to go back to correct it. It’s fixed now.
Bye…
@Wayne A William Allen Williams:
Oh hey, you’re back already!
Oh wow, that’s news to me. I’m a ELCA Lutheran, so we believe that God chose Tim Walz. Admittedly that isn’t the view of all Lutherans.
Also, can you help me out, if God chose Trump, does that also mean that God chose for Trump to lose the 2020 election? Or let me guess, that was stolen. If that’s the case, does that mean the Democrats are greater than God for overthrowing his will?
How exactly is this propaganda? It’s definitely opinion, mixed with facts (like the fact that Donald Trump made up a story yesterday about being on a crashing helicopter with Willy Brown).
Ok, so that apparently includes a lot of past Republican presidents, who won’t endorse or commit to voting for Trump. BTW, that also includes Vice President Pence, who just today reiterated his position that he didn’t have the power to overthrow the election and wouldn’t commit to voting for Trump (https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1821940533507268856). That’s before we get to all the leaders in Trump’s first administration that don’t support him.
Huh, so former Vice President Pence is against God. That might be news to him.
Anyway, it’s great to have you hear (see what I did there with the spelling error?) at OTB. I look forward to lots of future comments like this one that deeply engage with the content of our posts.
@Wayne A William Allen Williams:
Phenomenal work. Usually those who come here with a fake RW personna either swing too far into the role, becoming way too believable, or make a ham-fisted attempt at parody. Your impression of mouth-breathing, slack-jawed, eastern-European knock off Mr. Potato Head-looking MAGAt is SPOT ON. Hope you stick around here.
Me, pointlessly shouting into the wind:
There’s a small chance this new guy is simply mentally ill. There’s a larger chance that he is a traditional troll, I.e. someone who is just spouting whatever words will get a rise out of commenters. In either case there is no point in engaging. As long as he sees his name in a response he will continue. And if he does not see his name in a response he will most likely not even read it.
I have a relative, a retired pastor, who might well say something like, “God chose Trump”. It makes me sad.
See, I don’t think God likes it when people make a deal with the Devil with the idea that they are furthering His will. I personally think it demonstrates a lack of faith in God, and a lack of humility. You may not understand why the world is going the way it is going, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the work of the Devil.
I’m not a Calvinist. I think people have free wills. I think God likes that, and can work with it. I think God might well look at us and think, fondly, “Oh, you silly creatures.” Much like we might do with our cats.
I don’t want to drive you away from God, I think y’all have done that for yourselves, because of your fears of changes happening in the culture. I think there’s a different path, a better path. Better for you, and everyone else. I hope you find it.
@Jay L Gischer: I was repeatably assured that God chose Bush Jr by random people in and around my home town while I was working. I also fairly often had to ring up an extra random piece of gum or candy because having a bill of $6.66 was evil…
@MarkedMan: It might be as you say. I’m no mind reader. Especially over the internet.
I do know that sometimes people don’t really know how to start an engagement or a discussion. I had a tai-chi practitioner/teacher tell a story about a dude who the teacher felt wanted a lesson, but engaged more as if he wanted a fight.
When people have spent their lives being dismissed and ignored, and have little skill in engaging other people, they do things like this.
@Wayne A William Allen Williams:
He’s Ojeo
OJ run but they bring the mon home
The beginning of a song parody I heard 30 years ago.
@Jay L Gischer:
Host- “And now, the great seer, soothsayer, and proctologist to the stars, Carnac the Magnificent.”
Carnac- “The envelope please”
Carnac takes envelope holds it for a few moments.
Carnac- “The bobsled, figure skating, the downhill run.”
Carnac opens the envelope
After opening the envelope, Carnac reads what it says on a slip of paper inside
“Two Winter Olympic events and where RFK Jr’s presidential campaign is going.”
@MarkedMan: I will also yell “slack jawed, mouth breathing, cave dweller who was conceived in the back of 72 ford pinto during a demolition derby”* into the wind, but directing it at someone is much more fun.
*I deleted a gear shift joke and an “exploding gas tank” joke because I’m classy.
@MarkedMan:
I love beating on a MAGAt but I agree that this guy may have real medical issues. The kind thing to do is probably just to ignore. He’s not even spreading the usual lies that arguably need refutation.
@Matt Bernius: Comrade Williams aside, I had decided to accept “okao” as a deliberate nod to “lose” from yesterday.
Why does NBC feel compelled to try to make some sense out of Trump’s statements? Why go to maybe he was thinking of a different flight? No. It’s gibberish. The Republican candidate for prez is gibbering. Why the compulsion to avoid saying so?
@charontwo:
My rule ois that if people hide the relevant information, one should make the obvious inferences, and there is no obligation to be charitable to them. And I say that fully expecting a BS medical statement from “Dr.” Ronnie Johnson or Jackson, or whatever his name is, attesting to Trump’s mental condition. Or maybe the 2016 doctor who looked like Brent Spiner in Independence Day”. Should such a report surface, it should be treated with all the respect it deserves.
I don’t think anything he said is all that different from things he said in the past — lies, mixing up names, more lies, embellishing stories, even more lies, and conflating things, with a few more lies like a rhetorical dessert.
The fixation on crowd sizes, and circling back on it over and over was a bit more than his usual amount, but he’s been stuck like that a few times in the past.
He’s not going more senile, he’s just a shitty person.
He is really old, and slowing down, but if you watch his press conference at 1.5x, he sounds like the Donald Trump of 4 years ago.
People forget how bad he always has been. He’s taking a leisurely stroll in the thicket next to truth and logic, but that’s what he’s always done.
(Also, watching the Walz/Northam clip, I thought it was an attempt to compare Walz with the former governor of Virginia, when he couldn’t remember that guy’s name. He wasn’t confusing them. Certainly not like when he was confusing Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi at a substantive level where he thought the person running against him in the primary was responsible for security on Jan 6th,)
@gVOR10: No edit. “ois” is not a reference to “okao” and I typed ” instead of closing my italics. (And “”” would be correct and consistent, but looks silly.) Proofread. In particular, when you make a change while proofing, proofread it again.
@Jay L Gischer: Okay, you could be right. But how is arguing with him and insulting him going to make things better?
Trump’s inability to construct complete sentences has been a rather obvious marker for years. It’s really astonishing to compare his speech fluidity from the 80s and 90s with today. The word salad is more and more garbled.
How much of this is typical age-related decline versus an illness, I don’t know. He’s definitely angry that Biden–who clearly is showing his age–is now out of the picture, thus resetting the baseline for comparison. Trump made Biden’s age show; Kamala makes Trump’s age show.
@Gustopher: Agree. Trump is rambling incoherently, has trouble reading a teleprompter, is hugely ignorant, inserts nonsense words, and lies about everything. Same as 2016. But maybe four years of GOPs screaming “Biden is Old” have legitimized paying more attention to Trump’s failings. Never forget Trump’s immortal words from 2019 about the Revolutionary War Continental Army that,”took over the airports” and “rammed the ramparts”.
@Matt Bernius:
I think you’ve gone out of your way to give Trump massive benefit of doubt throughout your post and I don’t think the situation warrants it. You don’t need a psychiatric assessment to recognize Trump is degrading cognitively any more than anyone needed a doctor’s report to recognize Biden was getting older before our eyes.
To me, that’s not what is interesting. What’s interesting is there is no equivalent panic on the Republican side that their nominee is no longer up to the job he is running for. What’s interesting is that there is no indication of senior figures of the GOP sitting Trump down for a hard talk about preserving his legacy or putting the country before himself. What’s interesting is the press isn’t pointing out how weird it is that one of the two major parties in this country has accepted that it is a cult and that they have no choice but to drink the koolaid once he tells them to.
/@Grumpy realist:
Oh, hell no. Not all Americans! The idiots don’t have the votes without those politicians who are leveraging them and enabling them. Let’s not confuse idiocy with cowardice, fecklessness, and power mongering.
@Gustopher:
Not always. But this has been gradually developing, gradually progressing, for a very long time. He was already beginning to show frontotemporal dementia symptoms back in 2015 when he was coming down the golden escalator.
So, in a way, this really is just “Trump being Trump,” except is now getting to a point of being really obvious.
And a correction: when I bolded this:
it is not strictly true. Once FTD is advanced enough, memory goes too along with everything else – it is just is that memory is the first symptom like it is with Alzheimers.
Its notable how the GOP built the cognitive decline scaffold and now its 45 getting the view from up there. My main reason for optimism is that the msm narrative is changing. 45 is old, weird, and boring. Stories and headlines are no longer SHOCKING! and DANGEROUS! and TEARING DOWN THE NORMS! but is he ok? he’s being weird and he sure is old. That is going to make a difference.
@Gustopher: I think if you take a look at a clip from the 80’s (here he is on Letterman before the bankruptcies, starting around 5:20) you will see a much different trump. Not in substance, as it’s pretty obvious he’s just as shallow and vapid as he is today, but just in the way he is able to engage in a conversation. He listens to Letterman’s questions and answers them. If he goes off on a tangent there is usually a reason behind it and he returns to what he was saying. Contrast that to now. He doesn’t really seem to understand what he is being asked except on the most basic level (“Kamala Harris, crowd sizes”). He is unable to stay on topic or even complete a thought or a sentence. Increasingly he seems unable to differentiate between reality and the world inside his head. A good example of the downward trend there is to think about the time from the 80’s when he was asked about what books he read and was caught in an obvious lie. He knows it, the interviewer knows it and he plows through it. But now he just makes up ridiculous and outrageous things and gives every appearance of believing them himself. Honestly, with today’s Trump, I question whether “believe” even enters into it, since he can no longer distinguish reality from the things his inner voices are telling him to say.
@gVOR10:
This is separate from the dementia, Trump has a reading disability that shows up when he reads from a teleprompter. He has had that forever.
@charontwo:
About that reading disability, this:
https://yastreblyansky.blogspot.com/2019/07/its-literacy.html
@Scott F.: I would argue that from a historical point of view, politicians who are greedily pandering to the idiots and telling them only what they want to hear…are idiots themselves. But then, I’m still pissed off with St.Augustine and his intellectual pyrotechniques to unfreeze his fellow Christian intellectuals from their funk after the fall of Rome.
@charontwo: Trump also needs reading glasses but is too vain to wear them, thus the weird squinting thing he does. I’m convinced that some of the mistakes in wording he uses are a result of the reading disability + inability to see clearly = makes something up. He used to get away with it because when the mind is more agile, a person can speak extemporaneously with much greater ease.
I’ve often said that Trump was originally just a NYC kind of creature and there he was viewed as a joke, and it occurs to me that the interview about the Trump’s reading habits that I link to above is the perfect proof of that. Think about it. Trump goes onto a talking head show and the host sets him and up and makes a complete fool of him. Not to get some major scoop but just to poke holes in this big bag of hot air. Interviewers just don’t normally do this type of thing, no matter what they think of the person, because the guest won’t come back and worse, other guests will start to avoid their show, fearing the same treatment. But by this time Trump was widely considered a blowhard and a clown at this point and so probably feels that no other guest would see themselves as being in Trump’s shoes. People made fun of Trump all the time for exactly these types of things – and Trump kept coming back for more and more of it, unable to manifest enough dignity to resent being humiliated. He never got past the, “Hey, I’m on TV!” stage of awareness. Heck, Vanity Fair of that era all but had a section devoted to humiliating Trump and yet he would pick up the phone and give them quotes to be used to humiliate him again for the next issue. Hell, he called them!
@MarkedMan: I think he’s a guy who posted here back when I first started lurking here from Daegu. That guy went by R. A. Phillips, if I recall correctly. He used two different avatars in posting. One was a Colonial-looking Alfred E. Newman character and the other was…
…wait for it…
a troll.
Why he’s decided to return is anyone’s guess, and I may be wrong about his identity, but his new nym and his comment struck me as a “blast from the past.”
As to identifying people as disturbed, I don’t do it to Trump and I’m not going to make assumptions about anyone else either. I’m still not clear on why this is a issue for MarkedMan, but I wish him well in his crusades (yes, I think there’s more than one).
@MarkedMan:
I will note that I have seen engagement with people who seem a problem work out well. Not in an “all problems are solved now” way, but in a “this is better” way. I think you have, too, though you might not realize it.
@Jay L Gischer: Grew up with Calvinists (and a few Hobbesians, too, 😉 ), lots of us believe people have free will; we’re just better at embracing cognitive dissonance than the ones who don’t.
But to clarify, I don’t believe that God called out Trump, or even actively selects the people who run governments. When the Bible talks about God “ordaining” government, it is a statement saying only that God prefers all/any government to anarchy. Naturally enough, this proposal doesn’t sell well among my “brothers and sisters in THE LORD” and those who are “outside the faith” have free will to evaluate it as they choose.
@Matt: At least they were buying additional instead of wondering what they had purchased that was contrary to God’s will.
@gVOR10: I didn’t even notice “okao” but am also not reading to look for mistakes. The only ones I routinely find are ones that make disconnects.
@gVOR10: I thought “took over the airports” was a Palinism, but I’m old and can’t remember things as well as I used to.*
* Or should that be “use to.” My grad school grammar teacher made arguments advocating creating “useta” to address that question. He may have been on to something.
One of the reasons Trump blathers is that his audience loves his gibberish. They can interpret it any way they like.
@Wayne A William Allen Williams:..I will pray for you…
So you think that you can tell God what to do!
@gVOR10:
Thanks for the grace and thinking I am more intentional that I was being. Totally typo (in part due to a major rework of this article earlier today).
@just nutha:
FWIW, I did fix it after he reminded my about it. Having a very ADHD day.
@MarkedMan: I took Gustopher to be referring to Trump’s long-term general communication style. Then again, I also don’t feel compelled to argue his mental state. He was always unfit for office, is now, and will still be in the future. Some things don’t change will the onset of whatever form of dementia takes hold. The fact of it and what variety it is seems immaterial.
And I say this as a person who will likely be screened annually in the wake of Parkinson’s diagnosis a year and a half ago.
In this day and age, if anyone gets chosen by Jehova to lead, I expect a full length video of the anointment.
As I’ve said before, “Trump is a lying liar” is true, but yawn-provoking and ineffectual as a counter to his lies. The man only tells the truth by accident, and nobody cares.
“Trump is clearly losing it, as anyone who has dealt with aging parents knows too well” is also true, but much more potentially efficacious.
(“Trump was chosen by God” begs the immediate rejoinder “…like Obama was?”)
No.
@Wayne A William Allen Williams:
You may want to cast an eye over the history of the political position of the divine right of the established authority from St Augustine onward; or the problems with that post the Great Schisms.
Or the Sinic doctrine of the “Mandate of Heaven”
Or the Islamic ones of the rights of the ruler.
And consider that none of them are compatible with the philosophical foundations of a republic, or a democracy, or any combination of such.
The Divine Right of Kings was pernicious.
The divine right of Trump is just silly.
@JohnSF: also, the divine right of kings is a very much later development. Not medieval, and definitely an offshoot of quarrelsome kings not wanting to have to listen to anyone. Also, much more political than religious.
@Grumpy realist:
This is true.
Medieval Europe was actually rather more politically sophisticated, perhaps due to the competing claims of Empire, kings, papacy, city-states etc.
Augustinian theory was obviated by the end of the Old Empire
Divine right theory, amusingly enough, was resurrected in Europe by the claims of the absolute monarchs after the chaos of the Reformation wars.
And was often violently against the claims of religion: see the suppression of the generally anti-absolutist Jesuits in Catholic countries, and the radical Presbyterians in Protestant states.
Claims to foundational legitimacy, and related political concepts of rightful authority, and their relation to sectional interest, is one of the most interesting aspects of western history.
And also, despite all the obvious arguments to the contrary, the idea of legitimate dynastic inheritance looks like it may have been a genuine benefit to political and social stability, and thus economic development. in Medieval Europe, as compared to the Roman Empire, or the Islamic states.
@JohnSF: Looking up “Mandate of Heaven,” I found the following:
How convenient is THAT? But the explanation continues,
It seems that God ordaining the ruler is more complicated than we understand in our modern electoral system. For my money, It’s probably wiser to NOT assume I know what God is thinking, but I’m just an ignint cracker.
@JohnSF: there’s been an argument that what held the Islamic countries back was their lack of allowing interest, this cutting back on the push towards investment. I’m not quite so sure about that, since there were all those medieval laws against usury.
My own theory is that what really charged up the fire in Europe was the fact that the Medicis were a banking family and the whole “charging interest is usury!” got to be too inconvenient to carry out by the kings, popes, etc., who were running around trying to raise money for their crusades and wars.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
The “Mandate of Heaven” was an amusingly flexible concept.
Seems to have boiled down to, if the “mandarinate” can get along with you, and you can put down the peasant revolts, you’re fine.
If not, not.
I suspect the whole concept developed from the bureaucrat/ landlord response to first the Mongol conquest, then the Manchurian.
Similar to the later Roman attitude: if you can attain imperium, obviously you are the rightful emperor, according to the will of the gods/God (adjust for date).
@Grumpy realist:
It’s an interesting aspect of state development in Europe.
But one key point is that the Church was one of the largest money lending actors, until the Flemish, German, and Italian bankers became dominant .
Which is perhaps why anti-usury laws were more honoured on the breach.
Once the monarchies became powerful enough to suborn the clerisy, whatever the papacy wanted became rather irrelevant.
The Medici were just a symptom of the whole tendency, which was evident both in loans to monarchs, and even more in loans to “merchant ventures”.
(The early Crusades, at least, were done on the cheap.)
@JohnSF:
Religious precepts tend to be lenient for followers and strictly enforced against opponents.
Order is key to prosperity. A lot of people are shocked that anyone would support autocracy but they assume order in the lack of them. Not everybody makes that assumption. Across history autocracy has sadly been our default form of government.
But it seldom ends well for Messiahs…
@Michael Reynolds:
🙂
True.
But the mandate concept was less religious doctrine than pragmatic political philosophy after the event.
Chinese “religious” doctrine was both less religious and less doctrinal than in other cultures.
Tended to reduce to “whatever the mandarin/landlord class can put up with”.
The same was true, of course of brahminate, ulema, and clerisy.
But they had different modes of accommodation:
– brahmins cultic graft in social stasis,
– ulema legal regulation under an absolute but disconnected ruler,
– Christian clerisy the “rule of souls”, but usually subordinate to temporal powers
@dazedandconfused:
Autocracy is the default.
But autocracy is also rather fragile.
The general tendency, historically, is that when state systems clash, the less autocratic prevails.
@JohnSF:
Most of the autocracies that failed were replaced with another autocracy.
Republics have been even more fragile, and typically replaced by autocracy.
I discount a lot of that now though as the industrial age changed everything.
@Grumpy realist: the argument is without good econometric history foundation (or good Islamic historical foundation), confusing modern Islamist positions with medieval realities or early Islamic classical period either. “Islamic” finance and its modern (as in from 19th century on) interpretation of the Quranic phrases (which in the Arabic are not actually clearly reference to interest vs usury in the original Arabic) is very modern phenomena in reaction and contradistinction to the Christian dominated banking systems that emerged.
Proper argument can be made around (as Timur Kuran has ably done in his well-informed [non Islamist] economic history) (1) unintended long-term consequences of Islamic law elaboration around Habous/Waqf that locked up wealth in inflexible entities that accientally locked out the evolution into corporations that the same or similar institutions developed in the Christian world, (2) combined with also long-term unintented consequences of applied inheritance laws in combation with the lack the emergence of corporations from native law (although there is nothing per se in Islamic legal principal that forbid such things, the problem Path Dependency is a serious one).
Kuran is very good to read as both an economist and a political historian.
I would agree with you if journalists asked intelligent questions when they got the chance. But most don’t, and there is no opportunity for the handful that do to press for answers when they get the usual bullshit non-responses.