There are a couple of things I would like to mention before I get to the point.
I’m not American but I’ve spent a lot of time following this train wreck of an election intensively the last few days or weeks (aside of keeping myself moderately informed). Been reading the Elections forum for hours and following the new sites etc.
Incidentally, I’ve read Fest’s Hitler biography this summer and been spending some time contemplating the future of Western… if not civilization, then democracy quite a bit – and I don’t feel very optimistic. It is in bad shape in Europe and I begin to fear the good old democracy as we know it is a parenthesis. But hopefully the downfall is a couple of decades in the future.
So anyways intrigued by the Trump situation I watch a “full video” of Trump – “Donald Trum rallied supporters in Maine” – to get a feel of the movement, just like I’ve spending time to understand the movement of NSDAP this summer. (Please, if you think I’m equating the Trump candidacy with NSDAP please stop reading and send me an angry PM; do not respond to this post.) – And he is an idiot. Donald Trump is an idiot. I do not understand what the hell he is talking about. As an audience, if you will, I do not understand the man. What’s with the fucking suitcases? What are you blathering about? Why should I care?
And that’s when I thought about Adolf Hitler, whom we all love and admire. Sure, we make fun of him speaking in that silly way, etc., being a foreigner, but the guy in the context, in that particular historical situation, he was brilliant. He picked up the feelings of a nation and screamed it out for the world. “Yes, yes, this is what I feel, this is what I want.”
Imagine Trump wasn’t an idiot. Imagine he had that gift, that even you and I…
With all them nukes and shit. Thank God he is an idiot.
In another thread I make the point that Donald Trump may have done America a great public service.
If a man this stupid, with no real political agenda and no real desire to become President — I still think he may be sabotaging his campaign deliberately — came this close to becoming “Leader of the Free World,” imagine what a smart megalomaniac with a real agenda and real political skill could have done.
Just like the measles vaccine is a tiny dose of the real disease that prevents the real disease from occurring, so Trump may have vaccinated us. The political parties and, maybe, the media and punditry wil change their policies and behavior to make a recurrence less likely.
I agree with the sentiment, but I disagree that he’s an idiot. I think he’s of average intelligence but has such a bad case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder that his success in winning the primary has tipped him over into a form of mania. Take a look at his speeches back in Jan and now, there’s a marked progression, he could at least finish complete sentences some of the time back in Jan. Now he changes topic three times in a single sentence and never actually finishes a coherent thought.
This form of narcissistic mania will get worse over the next few months until theres either a flame out public melt down or a private crash into severe depression and its very unlikely to last more than two or three months. He’s already a month into it, I predict its all going to come to an end in late Sep / Early october. He will never manage to last until the Election.
From the evidence of the author of Art of the Deal, Trump finds it difficult to focus long enough on anything to learn it, and is sure that his opinions based on the snippets he does learn from TV are correct. That is different from being an idiot, though the results are similar.
I think that maybe Trump, late at night, knows that he has no clue about how to do the things he claims to be able to do. If he actually became President it would be a nightmare - so he is doing everything in his power to prevent it. This may be subconscious. If so, no one is happier than Trump at his low poll numbers these days.
Like you were just saying, Trump hired a guy to write The Art Of The Deal.
Like other examples I could mention, Trump has been involved in projects where he supplies the publicity and then has nothing to do with the day-to-day operations.
Like the New York Times reported, Trump apparently offered Kasich the VP slot with the explanation that, in this administration, the vice-president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.
So if he thinks he’d be a poor fit as president, then I figure he’d do what he often does: find a Mike Pence type – has a law degree, spent over a decade in Congress, currently serving as a Governor – and ask him to play CEO or COO or whatever while Trump basks in the spotlight as like unto a celebrity Chairman of the Board.
One of the things that makes me question the intelligence of people is when they say a businessman would be a good president because of the experience making things financially successful. It fails the slightest bit of logical scrutiny. A business has an entirely different motive. It doesn’t have to supply products for “free.” Police, for instance, will aid anyone, even a foreigner or poor person who pays no taxes. A business would say that if you can’t pay for their service, GTFO.
A government run like a business would have the motive to raise taxes as much as possible while cutting costs as much as possible.
I don’t think Trump’s an idiot, rather, he’s the product of privilege (his father allegedly loaned him “only” $1 million) and a mafia-myth inspired persona. This is a guess, but the way he talks, by hinting that something is wrong, but never really saying it, sounds to me like, “You got a nice store here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.”
I’m not saying (at least not without evidence) that Trump is mob-connected. I just think he’s watched The Godfather, read mafia-themed books, or otherwise absorbed what mob guys are supposed to be like, and emulates that.
Now, I’d love to be a fly on the wall between Trump and the Republican establishment. What exactly transpired to turn Trump around and (sort of) endorse Ryan?
He’s done that before, “forced” to read from TelePrompters (the Ryan endorsement was from a script, not a TelePrompter, but who’s counting?), but then again, goes off script and wildly improvises.
No, he’s not an idiot, at least not in the classic sense. But he’s dangerous, and the GOP got what they wanted: someone to go “rogue,” and a “maverick.”
Yes. When I first moved to Thailand, I felt that U.S. politics were much superior to Thai’s. Now I feel we’re following Thailand down the rabbit-hole.
Thailand often elects criminals or business fraudsters to the highest offices. (In fact the 1992 political crisis was provoked because Parliament insisted on selecting a Prime Minister who’d been denied a U.S. visa as a suspected heroin trafficker). And the people voting for the crooks are well aware that they’re crooks. but apparently hope they will use their criminal acumen for the good of the public.
That isn’t the point. Guys like him always hire ghost writers, pretty much. There is nothing idiotic about that. But the ghostwriter tried to interview Trump to get material, as is also usual, and Trump couldn’t stay focused long enough to do it. So the writer followed him around.
Plus there are certain things, like nuclear weapons, which the president can’t delegate. And I don’t think Trump would really let Pence do stuff Trump is opposed to.
But I freely admit that I might be attributing too much self reflection to the Donald.
So Trump is going to all this trouble, spending all this money, traveling all over, delivering all these speeches, expending so much energy, to…what? Deliberately lose an election futilely? He’d have to be very motivated.
As I understand it Trump is not “spending all this money” exactly, that is, not his money. He doesn’t seem to have any money. And what he’s doing is being the center of attention, his favorite thing. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is exactly right.
But the “Trump wants to intentionally lose” theory just doesn’t hold water. You have an egomaniac who mocks losers, who is thin-skinned, can’t abide any perceived slights, is a bully, wants to be known as a winner whom everyone flocks to, likes this “Nobody thought we could do it but we’re beating all the odds and we did it OUR way” narrative…who secretly *wants *to lose and be known as a loser and be mocked as a loser? Doesn’t add up.
Now if he wins the presidency and resigns, OK. He could brag that he left on his own terms. But I don’t think he wants to actually lose the *election *itself.
Running for POTUS is absolutely grueling and exhausting. I doubt someone could keep up the energy if deep down they didn’t even *want *to win.
I’m don’t endorse the hypothesis, but I think I can address your concerns.
Trump has insomnia and is high energy. He may be on uppers in the form of diet pills.
I understand he flies back to his apartment every day.
Trump loves the attention. He’s an attention seeker. I figured that out once I learned about the story of him calling gossip columnists to tell them about his romantic exploits when he was going out with Marla Maples. She came close to dumping him, and the discussion didn’t help his brand. But Trump loves the attention.
I think he’s enjoying the campaign. Remember that he’s not doing any of the boring stuff like GOTV. He just makes speeches and TV appearances. He is in his element.
People self-sabotage all the time. They accomplish their own destruction quite handily all the while claiming they are acting for the best. This is human nature… and it’s amplified to a YUUUGE extent in The Donald.
Hell, even Hillary does it – we ALL do it!-- for example, when she “lied” by misquoting the FBI Director in her own favor. She is sabotaging herself, although to a much lesser degree than Trump.