I can understand why the Washington Post’s Michael Gerston refers to Trump’s erratic behavior as part of his “unique genius“.
It would be oddly comforting to all of us if we thought that Trump’s incompetency was part of some sort of long con. In this movie that the normal among us want to be in, Donald Trump is Keyser Söze, duping all of us rubes, playing a character while secretly being a deviously evil mastermind behind the scenes. Because at least then we would be able to cope with how far our country has fallen to elect this buffoon, this cretin, this piece of shit human being that currently occupies the White House and occupies increasingly large places in our mind palaces. Only a genius could pull this con, right?
Only it’s not true. It’s a fallacy. Trump is not “unique”, nor is he a “genius”. America elected this complete dumbass, incapable of empathy or deeper thought about literally anything. Trump is not a genius. He’s dumber than a box of rocks. And at least a box of rocks can occasionally be useful.
Trump has gotten through most of his first (and hopefully, please baby Jesus, I’m begging, last) term coasting by on the idea that every move he makes, every morning tweetstorm, every misspoken aside and every jab at his perceived enemies is the calculated approach of a savvy businessman, who knows how to work folks into a shoot as to distract from whatever latest political landmine the asshole in chief has stumbled toupee first into.
The lie detector determined that this is a lie.
Trump can not even muster the base amount of thought required to be somewhat moved by anything that might potentially be bad. As the death toll from COVID-19 rapidly speeds towards 100,000 deaths (which is first and foremost probably an under count and secondly Trump has repeatedly said is supposed to be the cap for this thing and oh buddy, it’s not even close to being the cap on this shit), Trump can’t even bring himself to seem a little annoyed by it.
I mean, let’s just take a moment and really, truly, and honestly think about this; if Trump really is a next level genius, working all of us and getting the outcome he wants, wouldn’t it only help for him to try and pretend that 100,000 people dying, was, ya know, a big deal? The bar, quite frankly, can not get lower for Trump. Our media culture is desperate to give this man praise for even displaying the tiniest smidge of presidential-ness. It would only boost Trump’s chances of winning more to look affected by this thing.
Instead, Trump has mostly put the coronavirus behind him. He’s already declared victory on it. He’s on to “Obamagate” now, which isn’t a thing. And his attempts to turn the page aren’t the mark of a genius either. They are simply the moves of a man who is deeply bored of talking about a thing he doesn’t understand, and a thing he doesn’t care to understand.
His barrage of tweets are no better than anybody else’s garbage tweets. Yeah, he’s threatening to pull funding from states that fund mail-in voting, but that’s only because on a base level, he doesn’t understand that he can’t do that. I’m sure if anyone tried to explain it to him, he’d get bored and move on to something he finds interesting, like reality TV and the prospects of sleeping with his own daughter.
Trump not wearing a mask isn’t a product of his brilliant mind turning yet another thing into something we can duke it out over in the never ending culture wars. Trump doesn’t wear a mask because he’s too ignorant to realize it might help him. I doubt he’s even concerned about looking weak. I just think he doesn’t want to do it, and no one can explain why he should do it in a way to convince him it might be important to.
He loves hydroxycloroquine and is (allegedly) taking it not as a plan to discredit scientists and researchers. He’s taking it because he read (or, let’s be honest, someone told him about it) and he latched onto it as being the one thing that could cure and prevent it, and he doesn’t see why anyone would tell him something different than the thing he already believes.
Trump’s not a genius; he’s too stupid to know how stupid he is.
To know you’re dumb requires a level of self-awareness that Trump, a billionaire who can’t be bothered to get suits properly tailored or have a halfway decent haircut, doesn’t possess. Trump lashes out at his critics not purely out of political motivation and pettiness, but because he simply does not understand why everyone can’t see that he is the absolute best. He’s incapable of finding faults with himself. Or, if he is, his insecurity has somehow gone 360 degrees around and he now overcompensates by thinking he’s the best while also being a self-loathing loser.
You have to be able to have a level of introspection to truly being a genius, even if you’re a narcissist or a sociopath. I don’t think Trump has a single bit of introspection. I don’t think he knows what introspection is, and if you tried to explain to him he’d just cross his arms and look bored at you.
America elected a dumbass. It’s not the first time in Presidential history that a dumbass has been elected (and I’m not even talking about the ones you’re probably thinking of), and it won’t be the last. He certainly could be one of the most destructive, but again, I don’t think even that is the mark of genius. For example, I don’t think he’s trying to dismantle Obama’s legacy as a part of a larger conservative effort to undermine the legacy of the first black president and scare people into never doing it again, as much as he’s trying to dismantle Obama’s legacy because Obama said something mean about him the one time.
Trump’s response to this crisis shows you how truly stupid he is. It can be comforting to think that his moves are being carried out by Moriarity, but really they’re being carried out by your stupid neighbors’ even dumber dog.
He doesn’t know why he has to piss all over America. He just knows his instinct is to mark his territory.
apparently my critical mass too muchly pissed off sensor kicked in
ill be going this way
seriously…. how do you deal with idiots you cant punch?
i mean…its one of the main perks of my job….i have a fuck off wrench..
(probably helps im bigly and grumpy too)
This is of a piece with something I’ve always believed about people who buy into conspiracy theories, impossibly powerful secret societies and all-knowing governments: They’d ultimately rather believe there’s a plan, even if it’s an evil one, than face the possibility that nothing happens for a reason and that life is chaos.
MemeWeaver posted this yesterday — it’s a good, nonjudgmental examination of conspiracy theorists:
https://www.vox.com/first-person/2020/5/15/21258855/coronavirus-covid-19-conspiracy-theories-cancer
As you point out, humans don’t like things that are random and unpredictable. They scare us. So we try to find deeper meaning behind them as a way to cope with that fear of chaos. We look for patterns to give meaning to random events, like identifying constellations from a sea of stars. That’s the origin of conspiracy theories — it’s primitive humans huddled around a fire thinking that the god of thunder is creating those lightning bolts, because at least then there’s a reason that Sven got barbecued — he pissed Thor off.
The problem is that the Internet amplifies the nonsense. Years ago my wife knew a schizophrenic man, Charles, who believed he was the grandson of Anastasia, the Russian princess. The Internet was in its infancy, so when he was off his medication he wrote all this stuff down on paper. He’d try to get people to read his scribblings — and that shit was DETAILED, stretching down to the Kennedy assassination (of course). He had hundreds of pages.
Now he’d have a blog on 4chan and 200,000 followers. And every one of those followers, most of whom would be equally disturbed, would add and embellish details and locate “facts” and fabricate justifications. Charles could post his magnum opus to mental illness for all to see, and some would buy in, and even a fraction of a percent is a LOT of people. The Internet lets crazy people screen out the rational and focus only on the OTHER crazy people. Poor Charles had to persuade people to read his ramblings one at a time, and the vast majority knew that shit was NUTS, and would slowly back away. But the Internet lets the other crazies find YOU.
Yeah, there are tons of conspiracy theories about Trump’s supposed “intellect.” Because the alternative is to admit that we are being led by a ignorant halfwit, who can’t read and can’t even speak in complete sentences. And that’s much more terrifying that lightning bolts.
“That’s the origin of conspiracy theories.”
That’s also the likely origin of religion.
For the philosophical/sociological exposition of this hypothesis, read almost anything by Ernest Becker.
I’ve made the argument before that God is the original conspiracy theory!
I asked the psych nurse practicioner at work how many people had to share a delusion before you could call it a religion. He looked at me like he didn’t understand the question.
Yes. But I was trying to steer clear of that so as not to offend any devout people. Most rational people are highly skeptical of religion, but there are/have been some in my life whose opinions I held in high regard.
When I say that, it’s not anti-religion. There’s nothing inherently wrong with having faith in him/her/it/them, the community aspect can be a really good thing and many people find clarity in it. Plus, God as a concept makes all the sense in the world when there aren’t explanations for why things happen the way they do. Our minds are hard-wired to find patterns; there is no purer pattern than “It’s God’s will.”
Similarly, believing in some conspiracy theories is harmless, maybe even healthy, as they occasionally prove to be correct — COINTELPRO happened, and hell, even the Benghazi truthers (wrong and dumb as they are) are right to point out that the first reason given was not the actual reason.
The problem is when that’s your only way to explain the world, and no other evidence will shake you. That makes you an easy target for people who want to exploit you, and leaves the rest of us having to keep endlessly fighting the same battles over progress, such as “Vaccines are good for you.”
I can only speak for my own faith, but I do think there’s a God, and I do think he’s done positive things in my life. I also think that there’s a lot of religious people who pervert religion to justify being shitty assholes, which is probably what you’re getting at.
The Bible is, if nothing else, an instruction guide on how not to be a dick, and how God rewards people for not being dicks.
That logic cuts both ways, though. One of the arguments that there couldn’t have been a conspiracy against JFK is that “someone would have talked by now,” Oh yeah? Where’s Jimmy Hoffa then?
Yes and no. A massive conspiracy that requires hundreds or thousands of people to stay silent won’t work.
However, murdering a single person without any witnesses? People get away with that every. single. day. as long as they keep their mouths shut and nobody sees them do it. It’s one of the things that most people don’t realize, because we’re used to TV detectives that always solve every case. But in the real world? Approximately 50% of murders in the US go unsolved. Yes, that’s HALF. It’s probably even more because we have so many missing persons cases. And sometimes they get solved but can’t be proved in a court, so the person walks anyway (anybody remember Casey Anthony?).
Mario Puzo created a hitman character for his novel The Godfather named, if memory serves, Luca Brasi. Luca was very successful and sought after because he made his hits all by himself, without anyone else involved. It made it impossible to prove anything, because there were no accomplices to flip. And the person who hired Luca was strongly incentivized to stay silent, because that person was just as guilty as Luca.
Was Hoffa murdered? Probably, but it was almost certainly by a person or a very small group of people who had very strong reasons (like fear of conviction) to keep their mouths shut.
Obligatory disclaimer: DO NOT MURDER PEOPLE. IT’S VERY, VERY BAD AND YOU MAY NOT BE SMART OR LUCKY ENOUGH TO GET AWAY WITH IT.
Shoot, there go my weekend plans!
Sorry, forgot to bring the evidence. I hate for people to take my unsupported word for anything:
https://www.freethink.com/articles/why-don-t-we-solve-murder-anymore
https://www.governing.com/topics/public-justice-safety/gov-murder-clearance-rates-misleading.html
Trump and Ford would definitely see eye to eye on das Juden.
Henry Ford was such a bad businessman that the company came out of WW2 on the verge of bankruptcy despite getting billions in government contracts. They did accounting by throwing piles of invoices on a scale and guesstimating how much money they had coming in by the weight. Of course Trump admires him.
I was hoping you had misinterpreted it, and it was one of those backhanded “bless your heart” kind of compliments, but oof.
I don’t know how to explain Trump, because he does everything seemingly at random with no system and no underlying philosophy other than “me first.” And as Clever up there noted, most people can’t handle that kind of randomness and the thought that the actual POTUS is a certified imbecile, so they assign a deeper meaning to his actions. Hence the “3D chess” horseshit.
Maybe that should be his campaign slogan, “aMErica FIRST.”