Monday, November 19, 2018

Not Talking About the Elephant, either


And really, spending copious amounts of time pointing out how wrong Trump is about forest fires and Finland is just wasting time (the e-mail is interesting, though, if you're interested in the ecology of Finland).  Trump doesn't lie for clever or devious or strategic purposes.  He lies because he is stupid, and because he can't handle any part of reality impinging on what vestigial moral sense he still has.  He didn't stand among the ruins of Paradise, California (which he kept calling "Pleasure," again not a strategic choice, just more ignorance) to praise the Finns for their forest management skills; he just didn't know how to accept the devastation all around him, and so he blamed someone for getting on his last moral nerve (the few he has left).  It was, for Trump, an expression of compassion, even sympathy.  Rather than bash Californians to their face (he's too much of a coward for that), he offers them what he thinks is a solution to their problem.  Because he's truly incapable of anything more than blaming the victim.  True expressions of sympathy are simply beyond his ken.

He's not a strategic genius or a depraved despot; he's a sociopath.  He is not calculating and clever, hiding his true aims behind a cloud of media squid ink and a torrent of distractions.  He is precisely what he appears to be:  an emotionally stunted xenophobic racist misogynist no more fit for public office than the average 9 year old.

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