Time for a Trump Derangement report Comment of the Day. This admirable job by AM Golden fills the bill nicely, especially since I had almost the exact same conversation with my own “not unintelligent” relative who has been a raging, drooling, Trump Derangement victim getting progressively (double meaning, there) worse (Stage 1, 2, 3, 4, now 5, and I suspect Stage 6 is terminal) for almost a decade. There is a viral social media tale with video about a woman who interrupted a conversation between two black Trump supporters to start screaming about how he was a criminal who wants Liz Cheney to be put in front of a 9-person “firing squad.” This lunatic also claimed to be well-informed, though she must only frequent MSNBC and other propaganda outlets that haven’t thoroughly debunked this most recent desperate lie. (All you have to do is read what Trump said.) There may be a new one by now; I haven’t checked.
I am going to depart from the usual format with COTDs here and follow AM’s post with some supplemental analysis of my own.
In the meantime, here is AM Golden’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Just So There Is Accountability and We Don’t Forget, Here’s a List of The Lying Media Propagandists Who Claimed Trump Said He Wanted Liz Cheney Shot…,” which is a follow-up to this earlier post regarding the unforgivable “Trump threatened Cheney” AXIS hit.
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Trying to convince people that what Trump said is being misrepresented, and deliberately so, by the Democrats and their media advocates is like pulling teeth.
My sister is not an unintelligent person. She is a professor in her specialized field at a good university. Yesterday, she posted that she would be imprisoned if she said what Trump did about Liz Cheney.
I posted the quote as posted on EA and pointed out that it was not any different than what Democrats have been arguing since Vietnam whenever troops are committed to overseas conflicts, only said in Trump’s usually sloppy way. She countered that Trump has never served, that he is a coward and that sloppiness is an excuse. I maintained that whether Trump did or didn’t serve is irrelevant to this issue. I asked her if she didn’t see that the quote demonstrated that Trump didn’t threaten Cheney at all and that it was being misrepresented deliberately as if he did.
Again, all I got in response were Trump-deranged accusations, followed by an admission that she and I will not agree and that she loves me. I told her that I love her, too, and that we will not agree on this, but that my point was that hate and misinformation is not just coming from one side.
It’s almost as if they can’t see it as opposed to won’t see it.
_____________
I’m back. First, just a quibble: it’s not like pulling teeth, really, because eventually a bad tooth gets pulled. As AM Golden admirably demonstrates, this metaphorical tooth is unpullable. Remember when Trump said that he could shoot someone in broad daylight in Times Square and his supporters would still be loyal? For TDS sufferers like AM’s sister, Trump could rescue a baby, a nun and Taylor Swift from a pack of rabid dogs, announce a cure for cancer and broker peace in both Ukraine and Gaza and it wouldn’t matter. They would say that it’s all part of his diabolical plan to be dictator for life. I’m not exaggerating. Literally nothing can change their minds, or what left of them now. The damage is done.
A lot of the problem is confirmation bias at a sonic boom level. Last week I wrote about a Times’ columnist’s assertion that Joe Biden was a “good man” despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary. With Trump Derangement it’s the opposite: every statement, act, gesture and joke is immediately seen through a jaundiced lens and interpreted in the most damning way possible, because Trump is just evil, that’s all, with no redeeming features or accomplishments. I resent having to defend him so often: I dislike the guy and don’t trust him. I agree that individuals like Trump (we have never had anyone like Trump as President, the closest being Andrew Jackson, who was a judge, a lawyer, and a general, so the comparison is quite a stretch) should not be President of the United States. But he has been abused, mistreated and sabotaged to such an extent that it has damaged our democracy and perhaps ruined our political system beyond repair. I am sick of only getting rationalizations, rants, false claims and historical ignorance seasoned with blind hate back when I attempt to reason with people like AM’s sister. My relative had no substantive rebuttals and after embarrassing herself by claiming that Harris had made her positions clear (of course she hasn’t), defending the Democrats’ anti-democratic manner of selecting Kamala as its candidate, Soviet-style (It’s all Joe Biden’s fault and they had no options! ), and arguing that despite the evidence of Trump’s first term, this time she is sure that he would rule as Hitler-redux. Then she defaulted to accusing me of not supporting Harris because she is black and a woman.
I hung up on her. She knows damn well how spectacularly false and unfair that is. It’s also the default position of Harris and MSNBC. You know that will be the chorus when Harris loses.
A bit earlier I told her that one reason I want Trump to win and if possible win big is to watch crazies like my relative weep, scream and huddle in terror (she has claimed that she will seriously consider moving to New Zealand) and then four years later, for me to be able to metaphorically hold their insane prognostications of doom in front of their noses and say, “Do you feel foolish yet? If not, why the hell not? Say it: you were wrong, and the people you believed lied. Say it!”
But, of course, they won’t say it, I fear. One of the most productive and analytical commenters abandoned Ethics Alarms years ago because he claimed I had “drunk the Kool-Aid” and didn’t accept that Trump had colluded with the Russians. This guy is a consultant, a scholar, and lives by his wits and the quality of his analysis. Yet despite the eventual evidence that the Russian collusion hoax was a Deep State, FBI, Obama White House, Clinton campaign, mainstream media, Democratic Party coordinated effort to destroy the administration of a duly elected President, he hasn’t done the ethical thing, which would be to return to the wars here after admitting, “OK: you were right.” That makes me as sad as the fact that my close relative has had her mind and values scrambled in the same horrible way.
Ethics Alarms 
Too often, I keep asking myself, “What’s wrong with these people?” My current belief is they’ve been this way our entire lives. Baby Boomers have been in search of single party rule ever since Watergate. The Restoration of the Clinton regime was supposed to cement Democrat hegemony that had been established during the Obama era. Then this outsider strolled onto the scene, single handedly won the biggest political prize and dashed the Baby Boomers’ dream of a liberal utopia unencumbered by those insufferable Republicans. They’ve literally lost their minds. They may be on the verge of vanquishing the Republican party. Certainly, going forward, every Republican candidate will be given the same scorched earth treatment they’ve applied to Trump. Sadly, they’ve been this way all along. It’s just now their true colors are on full display.
“Baby Boomers have been in search of single party rule ever since Watergate.”
Man, we get blamed for everything. 😊
I was just thinking the same thing!
Well, do you think there’s a reason for that? One thing our generation has not done is gracefully hand over the reins to our kids. Of course, Congress has certainly not been a role model in this case.
It takes one to know one, a Baby Boomer, that is. “Ich bin eine Baby Boomer!”
I’ve concluded the reason Left/Democrats act and think the way they do is they come from the premise that they are intellectually and morally superior to anyone who’s not fully in on every article of Left/Democrat faith. In other words, anyone who’s not completely on board is simply beneath contempt. And of course, Trump is not completely on board as are people who don’t consider him beneath contempt. In short, there’s a lot of contempt.
And Baby Boomers hatched all this in the ‘sixties. And we’re still around promulgating this sort of thing.
“she has claimed that she will seriously consider moving to New Zealand”
Sorry, but I for one don’t want her coming here to New Zealand voting for people like Adern.
I also pointed out that moving to New Zealand is not that easy, as Kiwis are much more careful about immigration than we are here.
So funny how all these enlightened countries, you know, anywhere that’s not the United States, have stringent immigration policies.
How about Amundsen-Scott Station? That’s not only year round, but I believe it is a U.S. base. No problems with immigration authorities.
“This guy is a consultant, a scholar, and lives by his wit and the quality of his analysis.”
Assuming you’re referencing Charles Green, I miss the guy; sharp, knowledgeable, no B.S., for the most part (above incident exempted) fair-minded, and regular provider of an…um…alternative perspective.
PWS
I wonder whether Sparty checks in on a regular basis, without commenting.
Wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
PWS
Yup. Nice guy, too.
For the most part I enjoyed rattling sabers with Charles Green, heck we even agreed once in a while. I wish he was back.
It’s really too bad that he left in the mindset he did saying that his exiting comment that “This “Spygate” nonsense has crossed over from being idiotic to being positively dangerous.”. I wonder if he’s changed his mind about “Spygate” after all the related facts came out. What those within the Obama administration, the Justice Department and the media did to Trump actually is DANGEROUS and I hope that Charles has finally seen the light.
President Trump has been treated as a Hitler-esque pariah since he stood in front of the microphone at 2:30am – the morning after “2016 Election Day” – told those assembled that he had taken a concession call from Secretary Clinton, and said, “It’s been a long night.”
Those who get their news from pretty much any non-Fox News outlet have been treated to negative, purposely biased, and completely inflammatory reports…twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year…for eight years. So they believe he is a colluder with the Russians, the stealer of an election, a despot who wants to abolish the Constitution, a supporter of white supremacists, an advocate of school shooters, a serial rapist, a racist, a common criminal and convicted felon, a loud-mouthed boor, a property-tax cheat, an insurrectionist, and a mentally-deficient sociopath worthy of the 25th Amendment.
All day, every day, eight years.
The Trump-Deranged have been assimilated, and there’s no changing it. They’re terminal.
I find it helps to take Trump (or any other politician) out of the equation and help people focus on talking about policy preferences. Once someone is grounded by reflecting on what sort of outcomes they actually want to see, then it’s easier for them to reconsider the extent to which they might be able to trust a politician to work towards those outcomes. It gets them to think like an active problem-solver rather than getting caught in a loop about how people are incorrigibly foolish and need to be out-voted or we’re all doomed. (DOOMED!)
The offer stands for anyone who wants to try out the workshop. I want to hear about more people applying the concepts successfully.
EC, the Trump deranged to do not respond to attempts at getting them to reason.
Once again, I am honored.
I truly do not understand why they can’t see what we see. It reminds me of the part in “1984” when only Winston Smith realizes that Oceania’s enemy has been changed just like that and everyone around him accepts it without question.
I actually had a co-worker on Facebook whose friend tried to state that there was no Pandemic in March 2020. When I pointed out that there most certainly was a Pandemic at that time, he tried to argue that he meant there was no stock market drop. I pulled three articles from non-conservative sources to show that the stock market absolutely took a hit in 2020. We all lived through the Pandemic. How is it that someone could argue with all seriousness that there was no Pandemic in March 2020 and that there was no affect on the stock market?
My sister insisted that Trump’s “base” will forgive anything. I countered that Harris’ base accepts her word salads as if they were written by Cicero. She claimed that Trump incited hate; I posted the picture of Biden in his “Battle of the Soul of the Nation” speech and pointed out that his party had been waging a near decade-long war against Trump and his followers by calling them every name in the book (after all, what decent person wouldn’t want to kill Hitler?) and that Biden called half the country a “clear and present danger” in a setting that could have been designed by Albert Speer and filmed by Leni Riefenstahl.
They are incapable of recognizing the double standard. It’s as if they are drugged, hypnotized or otherwise under such a strong delusion that they cannot acknowledge what’s right in front of them.
Well said, and a well-deserved COTD, as per usual.
I’m noticing the reference to “strong delusion.”
It instantly brought to mind that same phrase used in the Bible, so I looked it up. The second chapter of the second letter to the Thessalonians has it, and wow, is it appropriate!!
“The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.”
I’m not suggesting that those words apply to your sister or even to this exact period of time – because they obviously don’t – but the similarities between that text, what we see now, and the period of time to which those verses WILL apply are more than a bit spooky.
In fact, I did have that verse in mind when I wrote about the “strong delusion”. Obviously, a verse intended to apply to spiritual death isn’t meant as an allegory for mindless political partisanship, but I feel that the behavior is somewhat similar. They won’t see it because they’ve been so intractably blind for such a long time that they can’t see it.
People are being conditioned for the strong delusion that’s coming.
“People are being conditioned for the strong delusion that’s coming.”
Reminds me of one of the funniest things I’ve ever read, from counterpunch.org (no Righties, they!):
The Year Of The Headless Liberal Chicken
PWS
Considering yourself relentlessly morally and intellectually superior to the unwashed can lead to some pretty crazy behavior.
Yup. Just like when Simon Cowell…um…informed talentless waifs that they suck.
Being led to believe otherwise throughout their lives doesn’t prepare them for a head-on with a fact-based Reality.
PWS
What a spectacular piece, Paulie. A great refresher on what will be re-enacted later this week if Trump is not vanquished. The piece could have been written in 2024 rather than 2017.
Thought you’d like it; that highfreakin’larious Hopkins can flat out write!
“The piece could have been written in 2024 rather than 2017.”
It’s déjà vu all over again…
PWS
That was pretty funny. I didn’t realize the “grab them by the pussy” lie/misquote has been around that long.
From ‘Clingers’ to ‘Garbage’—Why the 16 years of Vilification? › American Greatness
A terrifically insightful and thunderingly eloquent diagnosis by Victor Davis Hanson.