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Bluelagoon Hero Username: Bluelagoon Post Number: 12416 Registered: 12-2013 Posted From: 49.207.4.224 Rating: N/A |
One of the most telling moments of the campaign came at the end of the first debate. Clinton had brought up Alicia Machado, and Trump was struggling to respond. For some reason, he decided to attack Rosie OâDonnell. And read what he said closely. âRosie OâDonnell, I said very tough things to her, and I think everybody would agree that she deserves it and nobody feels sorry for her.â This read as funny when Trump first said. It even made it into the SNL skit. But read it again. âEverybody would agree she deserves it and nobody feels sorry for her.â Imagine saying this in a presidential debate. Imagine holding a grudge for this long, based on a 10-year-old segment on The View. Imagine being so unable to see past your own pain, your own humiliation, that you think the entire country agrees that 10 years later, it is completely justified for you to be slandering, embarrassing, and bullying a female comedian on national television. No one made Donald Trump say any of this. It all came from him. It all came from a man who canât control his impulses, who is obsessed with perceptions of his own mastery and dominance, and who canât help himself from trying to humiliate anyone who he feels humiliated him. This was a bad few weeks for Donald Trump, and itâs because of Donald Trump. Itâs not the media, itâs not Hillary Clinton, itâs not the Republicans, itâs not the Democrats, itâs not international bankers. Itâs him, and who he is, and what he does and how he reacts. For Trump, the first step toward righting his campaign isnât admitting he has a problem but admitting he is the problem. | ||
Bluelagoon Hero Username: Bluelagoon Post Number: 12415 Registered: 12-2013 Posted From: 49.207.4.224 Rating: N/A |
This basic impulse explains Trumpâs actions both backward and forward. Take his noxious comments to Billy Bush. âWhen you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab âem by the •••••. You can do anything.â Trump waves them away as âlocker room talk,â even though he wasnât in a locker room â he was on a television set, wearing a microphone, speaking to a television host. This is weird. Iâve made a lot of pre-TV hit small talk in my day. None of it required revealing explicit details of my sex life to Chris Hayes. Thereâs something deeper behind why Trump said what he said, what he thought he could get out of this kind of confession made to a man he barely knew and rarely saw. This is the small talk of dominance. Itâs the chatter of a man whose sole sorting mechanism for people is âwinnersâ and âlosers.â Itâs one wannabe alpha male telling another wannabe alpha male exactly how alpha he really is, even though no one actually asked. Itâs asserting dominance â they let me do anything I want, do they let you? None of the subsequent allegations of sexual assault against Donald Trump have been surprising. Theyâve been horrifying, yes, but not surprising. Trump had already admitted to sexual assault. And, more than that, he had already admitted to a kind of motive for sexual assault: Another way of saying âwhen youâre a star, they let you do itâ is if they let you do it, it means youâre a star. Sexual assault is about power, not about sex. Trump doesnât seem to be a guy who ever lacked for willing partners â if all he wanted was to get laid, he had ways that were less reckless, less dangerous, and less cruel. What Trump always seems to have wanted was power, and societyâs recognition of it â the proof that he was a star, the proof he could do what he wanted, the proof that he was truly dominant. Now think about that driving impulse to prove dominance in a context where Trumpâs dominance is really being threatened â where heâs being challenge by Hillary Clinton, by Paul Ryan, by the New York Times, by the knuckleheads on CNN, by the polls. Imagine what thatâs like. Imagine how that feels. Imagine how painful it is to watch the entire country come to view you as a loser. You have to fight it. You have to. Your whole sense of self-worth hangs in the balance. And so you find the polls that show you actually won the debate. You swear to take your revenge on the Republican traitors who abandoned you. You promise to bankrupt the outlets that humiliated you. You rally your faithful, recede into a protective cocoon of sycophants, friendly crowds, internet surveys, and golden toilet seats | ||
Bluelagoon Hero Username: Bluelagoon Post Number: 12414 Registered: 12-2013 Posted From: 49.207.4.224 Rating: N/A |
Pullum explains further: "When you say something like 'While Congress shows no interest in doing X, I feel that the American people believe it is essential,' the clause âit is essentialâ is inside the clause âthe American people believe it is essentialâ which is inside the clause âI feel that the American people believe it is essential,â and so on. You get no such organized thoughts from Trump. It's bursts of noun phrases, self-interruptions, sudden departures from the theme, flashes of memory, odd side remarks. ... It's the disordered language of a person with a concentration problem." | ||
Bluelagoon Hero Username: Bluelagoon Post Number: 12413 Registered: 12-2013 Posted From: 49.207.4.224 Rating: N/A |
eoffrey Pullum, a linguist at University of Edinburgh, argues that thereâs more going on than just a conversational, Iâll-let-you-fill-in-the-gaps-style. Trumpâs unorganized sentences and short snippets might suggest something about how his mind works. "His speech suggests a man with scattered thoughts, a short span of attention, and a lack of intellectual discipline and analytical skills," Pullum says. | ||
Bluelagoon Hero Username: Bluelagoon Post Number: 12412 Registered: 12-2013 Posted From: 49.207.4.224 Rating: N/A |
Look, having nuclear â my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, okay, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart â you know, if youâre a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, okay, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world â itâs true! â but when you're a conservative Republican they try â oh, do they do a number â thatâs why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune â you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because weâre a little disadvantaged â but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me â it would have been so easy, and itâs not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right â who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners â now it used to be three, now itâs four â but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they havenât figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, itâs gonna take them about another 150 years â but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us. .Trumpâs simple message â "the Iran deal is bad for the United States" â was interrupted by musings on his uncleâs education, his own education, the power of nuclear energy, prisoners, the intelligence of women, and the negotiating prowess of Iranians, seemingly without rhyme or reason. Slate even called on the public to help diagram it |