That sure seems to be a LOT of folks’ plans, judging by all the defeatism we see posted here and elsewhere online, constantly.
It’s like they think even if evil does win, things probably wont be all that bad for them.
18 Likes
1 Like
That’s not how the pushback is framed though.
There’s no one saying, “Republicans keep saying Biden is senile,” and “but look at Tromp messing up even worse!”
The pushback is just about Tromp.
11 Likes
Boy, I really want to think so, but I honestly can’t tell a difference between Trump now and any other point since 2016. The existence of “Trump is losing it” data points seem entirely dependent on Trump making public appearances, someone recording them, someone watching the resulting videos, and clipping out the appropriate segments and then publicizing them. Trump’s a gibbering idiot who will lose it with regularity whenever he speaks in public, if anyone’s paying attention. Though that said, and maybe it’s wishful thinking, but he does seem a bit more worn-down and tired in recent videos.
10 Likes
To me this looks like Republicans are already controlling the narrative.
Everyone talks about which candidate is most senile and drowns out anything of substance.
The media did this with Trump in the first place, and likely helped get him elected by making every idiotic tweet he made headline news. Trump did this constantly in office while stuffing the courts with a bunch of backwards goons. Republicans do this in congress to the extent we can barely pass a budget anymore.
2 Likes
Look harder, comrade; IMO, he’s getting noticeably worse.
That we have nothing to go by other than public appearances matters, because those are the times when they are supposed to be able to control the optics… and it still looks this bad.
Before, the addled talk was interspersed with bits of what could at least pass for coherent speech.
Nowadays, it’s becoming ever more unintelligible and incomprehensible.
19 Likes
Did he use up all his orange makeup? Maybe it’s the lighting, but he’s looking much browner than usual. He’s definitely getting worse at slathering it on.
3 Likes
I want to believe that the entire Republican party will cease to exist but I guess I’m not trying hard enough!
You could start by not trying to demoralize others with your willful defeatism, just sayin’.
12 Likes
Especially when it is demonstratably false.
Brought to you by the same people who touted hydroxychloroquine and ivermectine as cures for COVID…
We can’t help if idiots without medical training bully someone who has overcome and still struggles with stuttering while still being poised, logical, compassionate, and even occasionally eloquent.
What we can do is point out when someone else shows everyone, every day, that he’s incompetent to serve the public in any capacity.
Those are not the same thing, and it’s disingenuous to frame it as such.
22 Likes
This is what it is really about. And this is why it doesn’t matter what is true. This has long since stopped being about reality. This is about narratives and counternarratives.
4 Likes
I feel like I’m missing something when people get outraged at Trump for mocking disabilities at his rallies, while suddenly it’s appropriate political strategy to say “hah, got him!” when dementia don starts trending. I’m quite demoralized by this myself.
While I’d like to believe it, I think he just doesn’t do well reading from a teleprompter. He tends to garble his words like this when he misreads (and then tries to cover it up by pretending he meant to say the thing he clearly didn’t mean to say) or when he reads the words correctly but doesn’t understand them. He also squints a lot. I bet he needs glasses but refuses to get them because it would injure the fake macho image he’s created for himself.
7 Likes
I guess I’m having a hard time parsing out how much is selection bias (the videos I’m seeing are short, so I can’t tell if anything else he said was coherent) and recency bias. Something I notice about Trump, given his non-stop stream of outrages and incoherencies, is that I quickly forget things he did in the past that at the time were alarming indicators of extreme cognitive impairment. Every time I watch old Trump videos, they’re so much worse than I remembered.
But I’ve been expecting - and impatiently waiting for - his cognitive decline to get worse since he was elected (and showed obvious signs of it). Only recently I’ve begun to wonder how I’d even know when it happened, unless it was so severe he couldn’t talk at all. (fingers crossed for that, soon)
That’s been my feeling the entirety of Trump’s political career. From day one, the prepared statements, pre-written speeches, coached talking points - the things they had the most control over - always included some real howlers and gaffs that took me aback. Perhaps that’s the problem - I’m so jaded at this point, it’ll take a really stark worsening of his condition for me to notice.
4 Likes
Reminds me of Dutch Schultz.
Sure:
- The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
12 Likes
Again, Trump’s likely cognitive impairment is substantive. It is on display in the public and can’t be ignored.
This is not what got Trump get elected. It was misogyny and misinformation (and racism and people wholeheartedly voting for a fascist). There may have been some folks in 2016 who were complacent because they found it impossible to believe that enough people would vote for Trump to allow him to take the election. But that is on them, not on the press doing it’s job and pointing out what a wretched person Trump is (and honestly, they didn’t do it hard enough in 2016).
Ignoring a problem does not make it go away. There is a whole sunlight is the best disinfectant thread here devoted to this.
And that is where there is a danger of repeating 2016. Not pointing out Trump’s failings.
I hear you, and feel the same frustration for sure. But I still think it’s important to stick to what is actually happening and push back on disinformation wherever we see it, even if it is meant to help the narrative we agree with.
That’s fair, but a lot of people feel frustrated at how little pushback there has been against Trump’s reprehensible behavior, and how people have stood up for or ignored his bullying. The trending hashtag is a bit of “turnabout is fair play” but you don’t have to agree with it or celebrate it by any means.
6 Likes
In this case, since Biden is NOT in fact suffering from the kind of mental decline he’s been accused of, but it seems rather likely that Trump is, then yes. Because it’s telling the truth. 
The GOP and the right wing news ecosystem is the problem here, not people pointing out what seems to be factual about Trump…
That’s not what they say… they say that they’re “good” and the Democrats are the ones who are bad faith liars. It’s projection on their part. And it doesn’t matter what the facts are - they’ll push a particular narrative that their base will lap up, because they are hateful, bigoted assholes.
We don’t know if either does, but one certainly seems to be having real cognitive problems and it’s not Biden.
19 Likes
He was addressing a crowd in Laconia. You can’t use too many words.
4 Likes
Sure, that could be part of it; it’s even probable.
Here’s the thing:
Mortal bodies break down with age, period.
There is no amount of wealth, ego, cult of personality or ceaseless bullshit that will change that.
Then add to that fact a lifetime of overindulgence and insulation from actual reality and real world negative consequences, on top of all the ceaseless pressure coming from multiple sources.
Y’all can accuse me of ‘wishful thinking’ all you like, the reality is TFG is not superhuman.
He’s not teflon.
He’s not immortal nor impervious to the inevitable (and I hope greatly accelerated) breakdown of his aging physical form.
Clearly.
14 Likes
Same ol’ word salad but now with nifty sound effects! B-TANG!
6 Likes
