A lying sociopath who promises to use nuclear scale death versus someone who conservatives blame but with no findings of fault or complicity?
Gosh, I can’t imagine a more ideological choice that you’re making right now.
I also don’t understand how “speaks his mind” is considered a plus, but that’s how we got Dubya.
[quote=“nimelennar, post:53, topic:82818”]
Most of the time, I am proud to be a member of this community. When threads like this come along and I see these kinds of comments posted, not so much.[/quote]
Perhaps Trump and the GOP’s collective delusion and intransigence are creating a social, political, and economic reality that in turn is making us all prone to feeling or being mentally unwell. Do you feel the fear? I fear for our collective future.
In any event, it should be a quiet private medical issue, not a political or electoral one that I have to confront. I don’t think that running a candidate with apparent mental health problems is an affirmation for other people with mental health problems. It’s not like running a female candidate or an African American candidate; it’s not an affirmative step for the population represented by the unwell candidate.
Is he the victim? Would you be happier if the boingboing community were pro-Trump? Would you feel that ignoring the warning signs and demagoguery would be more fair to people in tough situations or whose mental health care has been denied, neglected, or stigmatized by social, criminal justice, and health care systems here in the US? Do you believe a Trump administration will be a boon to US mental health care?
I don’t think or believe anyone insults Trump when they point out what’s wrong with him; they’re just observing that he’s an insult to himself, his political base, progress, and the integrity of US politics. He’s far too dangerous to lower one’s guard around, and he will return your kindness by stepping upon you, those you love, and those most in need that you profess to care about.
I guess that I am saying to you: get real.
I would point out that Williams led life of love, Trump leads a life of avarice and sociopathic hatred. I don’t think you could point to two more different individuals if you tried.
I am a clinical psychologist. My field discourages diagnosing individuals from a distance, so I will not attempt to diagnose Donald Trump. I will simply state that for nearly all of the criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, his extensive public record contains numerous instances of behavior appearing to robustly meet them. BTW, his behavior suggests certain histrionic aspects as well.
Could all of Trump’s public behavior as chronicled over the past 40+ years, beginning long before he expressed any political aspirations, merely be one massive performance? You must draw you own conclusions. It would seem highly improbable to me. Trump’s current brand appears to highly leverage his claims of authenticity, so it would seem that for his supporters, there’s a dilemma- either support a chronic liar, or someone who otherwise appears to be broad and severely disturbed in his conduct, not the least of which are the repeatedly adverse effects of his business dealings upon many others in a number of contexts, plus his repeated assurances that he knows more about politics, macroeconomics, the military, foreign policy, etc. than just about anyone in those professions, regardless of multiple instances of clear ignorance about the basics of these domains. The latter statements about his ‘expertise,’ if taken at face value, offer a stunning public display of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Now I seriously dislike Clinton, even though you’d probably regard me as that “50% who adore her”. She is seriously a liar. (I don’t think she’s a pathological liar, because I think she knows she’s lying, which is arguably worse.)
But how can you not see that Trump is an even bigger liar than Clinton?
Aren’t most politicians mentally ill?
Sure, Trump’s off his meds and he’s obvious about it, but there’s very few politicians I’ve seen or run into that didn’t at the very least have some sort of pathological personality disorder.
It’s kind of a requirement, it takes a sane person a TON of extra work to survive in that world.
I think you’re misinterpreting what I wrote.
I’m not concerned about “Mentally ill people are bad!” + “Donald Trump is (according to rumour and innuendo) mentally ill!” = “Donald Trump is bad!”
I’m concerned about “Donald Trump is bad!” + “Donald Trump is (according to rumour and innuendo) mentally ill!” = “Mentally ill people are bad!”
And yes, if he’s mentally ill, then he is a victim of his illness. Acknowledging that, and having some sympathy for his condition, does not mean that he is fit for the job of President of the United States. I wouldn’t want, say, a quadriplegic bodyguard. That doesn’t mean that I would use pejoratives insensitive to the physically disabled if someone with that condition applied for such a position.
As I said, if he’s just an asshole, then I’m not going to stand in the way of people insulting him. If he is mentally ill, though, there are two paths: you can encourage him to quit the race and get help, or you can start using words such as “batshit insane,” “loon,” “literal madness,” and further stigmatize the mentally ill, who are already marginalized. The former path only affects him, and is constructive; the latter affects a massive number of people, and not in a positive way.
I don’t give a rat’s ass about Trump, or, at least, no more than the absolute basic level of compassion that one human being should have for another (which seems to be more than a lot of people have for him). He could disappear off the planet, and I’d just feel slightly sad that he didn’t realize the pain he had caused and become a decent person before he died. That doesn’t mean that using derogatory terms about his alleged mental illness isn’t hurting the people who actually are mentally ill, and who now might not seek help for fear of being tarred with the same brush.
Indeed. The former is a sterling example of what a mentally ill person can be. The latter is, to say the least, an asshole. The mentally ill largely fall closer to the Williams data point than the Trump data point.
Do you see why I don’t want people tarring all mentally ill people with the same brush as Trump?
It seems to me that all politicians are complicit in the deaths of many people, if you are going to stretch it like that-- Trump just hasn’t gotten his chance yet.
Think of it like this. If you or I were going to get an operation done on some vital part of our body, the heart, the brain, the liver, and we meet the doctor beforehand and he starts talking about stuff that makes no sense from a medical standing ("we’ll just remove one of your livers, it’ll be fine! you should trust me on this, I’m very smart, besides it seems reasonable right?! ") do you want him to operate on you?
I don’t think you care whether Trump lies or not, or even whether Hillary lies or not, you just hate her and like him, and evidence that he is unfit to run the country, and she at least has some experience in the White House, means nothing to you.
Actually, youre right. “Iran, bla bla [500 words] warble warble [500 words] blup blup, Iran!”
But how well does he crease his pants?
I’m wondering if he’s referring to the infamous “Clinton Death List”-- debunked a long time ago, where anyone the Clintons even remotely knew, who also died, was described as dying “under mysterious circumstances”. . . like a heart attack or car crash. Mysterious!
I’ve noticed this list is appearing again now that Hillary is close to the Presidency.
Yeah, the one for this article screams “nice dreams!” With a distorted dissonant chorus of the damned.
You forgoot BENGHAZIIIIIIII
(It’s really weird to constantly hear conservatives pull this when Sean Smith was someone I communicated with on a regular basis.)
@beschizza, If we start the start the Trump Shoop coffee table book kickstarter now, can it be out by November?
“Poor people are crazy, Jack. I’m eccentric!”
The most insightful thing I can try to say about the OP cited article and its premise is that the marginal appropriateness of Trump’s behavior is a function of context. Trump as a celebrity personality or an entertainment figure may bring up questions of his taste, demeanor, reputation-- whatever such in that ilk. But something that’s funny in an entertainment context is shocking or may even seem ‘unwell’ in a serious political context such as candidacy for POTUS.
Trump simply doesn’t belong here in this present role, and to the extent that the system has allowed it, the system has itself failed. I can’t exactly place the blame solely on the man, because I don’t believe he took it seriously when he set out. Wasn’t it a reality TV gag in poor taste? He couldn’t have come this far without some form of credible help.
By June 2015, I was concerned because his political campaign received a sizable positive reaction from popular political news media and polling. It’s as if they took all the sort of right-leaning ‘memes’ about the infallibility of raw capitalism, ‘the country’s in ruin because of political-correctness’ thing, general spite of intellectualism, and then they ground them and others all up together into an ideological witch’s brew. Finally, they had Trump method act that as his campaign while doing his thing. He was the perfect mascot for their snarling cynicism.
Their candidate soared to the lead in the Republican nominee playing field just two weeks into his formal bid for the office, and a full year before the primary convention would actually be held. He did this by breaking the ‘politically-correct’ ‘rule’ of criticizing a veteran in general and a POW in particular, and it was John McCain himself. Did Trump rise to the top based on widespread GOP activist animus for McCain not prevailing against Obama in 2008? Was it some deeper spirit of resentment that his service represents an unpopular and failed national war? It at first seemed like it was some clever in joke for the “conservative” political world, something to pump interest and participation in preparation for the ‘real’ primary in advance, but the joke never ended, and it isn’t funny.
It’s been a long strange twelve months, and here Trump stands against all odds. The prevailing majority in his party decided that he best represented them, their values, their credibility, and their future. Trump is still up there, doing Trump, and making his own mockery of politics.
And so, like Reagan, GW Bush, is Trump then to be a mascot figurehead surrounded by a team that directs him how to act and what to say while in the public light? It’s not his job to think or speak credibly as a functioning statesman. It’s instead to be the puppet into which they insert their hands and operate the levers of US Federal executive authority… Should we pity Trump for finding himself so suitable for their purposes? In the end, I think he’s weak, but I have no reason to believe he isn’t also an act; his ‘wellness’ gets a lot more meta from this perspective, because his character or persona might as well be a pacified form of the Joker from Batman for all the nihilism and contempt on display… but it’s as per the cue.
I think what you meant here was “I’m calling the candidate I don’t like a habitual liar in order to justify my support for the candidate who’s a habitual liar.”
A mechanic is better at spotting make, model and year of cars. A student of physics is better at spotting examples of electromagnetism, and someone who’s studied and worked in the field of psychology is better at spotting the criteria. …so maybe your opinion should count for something.
You’re talking about David Brooks there, right?
I think that’s where I’m having trouble, to me ‘mentally ill’ is too broad to even be a brush. I suppose in that sense it’s only an smear, though it’s maybe it also a colloquialism descended from the older-fashioned (and largely useless) word, ‘insane.’
I agree that it sort of might encourage or imply a facile sort of boolean view that people are either ‘whole’ or ‘broken,’ ‘sane’ or ‘insane,’ mentally sound or mentally ill, and such language serves more to confuse than inform. I can understand why this would be a pet peeve to anyone who is a doctor or patient who deals with these topics for real. There are definitely ways to approach Trump’s political pathology without dragging mental wellness healthcare into it…
Anyway, he’s obviously high-functioning and convincing enough to make a large number of people believe that he’s well enough to be the leader of the free world… That’s the definition of ‘not insane’ in that political culture, society, or context (and a demonstration why the word and its relative concept can be so fraught or even meaningless).
