I’ve read Tom Clancy extensively, and I thoroughly enjoyed the movie Idiocracy. But it seems to me as if some mad scientist has spliced the genes of Mike Judge and Tom Clancy together, and the resulting mutation is writing our current affairs down in technicolor and real time. I hate to say again, what it seems so many have already said, but, you just cannot make this S**t up. The lickspittle that has taken over The White House is evidently numbered alongside Russian assets, seemingly straight from a Tom Judge Clancy book. The Russian stooges of Pennsylvania Avenue.
(disclaimer: rhetorical hyperbole)
" And everybody -- even my enemies have said, there is no collusion." Donald Trump seems fond of the logical fallacy, argumentum ad populum. It’s his chief defense. It is also a sign, from where I sit, that he is lying about there being no collusion. I wonder if he knows that his standard self-defense is a logical fallacy which stems from his own cognitive dissonance. When he says, "Believe me!"" or "Trust me!", I always hear what he is really saying, "I'm lying", “I’m full of crap!” “Please don’t discover me!”. Beyond these few logically fallacious phrases, he has the limited vocabulary one might expect from an eight-year-old. However, I suspect that an eight-year-old would use more nouns and complete sentences.
I simply believe there is something more malignant at play here.
Cult of psychopathy?
Our, ‘President who might not be’, praises his son's 'transparency' but I wonder if he even realizes how transparent his own deceptions and manipulations are? I doubt it, rather, he just doesn’t care; cluster B personalities rarely do, preferring instead, to act as if above reproach.
Regardless, sociopathic, megalomaniacal tyrants, like Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot, or #Stalin, to name but a few, surrounded themselves with sycophants, so that their fragile egos need never be suspected, and when it did become a problem, history shows, that these types of men ultimately killed off dissent. Given enough time, this usurper of the Oval Office, this man who is trying to be president, could have us all believing the same lies.
Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister said, “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.” And if you have listened to 30 seconds of Trump, you have listened to six months. He only has a few lies. He spreads them prolifically.
According to Frank Dikötter, of the University of Hong Kong, “The cult of personality turns everyone into a liar.” And that is exactly what I see happening. Donald Trump repeats lies over and again and reinforces those lies with logical fallacies such as argumentum ad populum (appeal to the majority), and other equally obvious, ‘Jedi mind tricks’. The mad king seems bent on subverting legitimate reporting with cries of, “Fake news” and/or outright ad hominum attacks.
Any elementary study of tyrants throughout history reveal this as page one of the dictator’s playbook.
“Millions were led to their death as they cheered their master,” said Dikötter of Mao Zedong. “The cult of personality obliged everyone to become a sycophant.” I pondered that last sentence for a long while. I am reminded of Trumps first cabinet meeting and the bile that rose in my throat while watching it. I’ll certainly be purged. I have no tolerance for it. It sickens me. I don’t know if I am willing to ever shut up about that. I don’t know how anyone but Donald Trump, would want to live in that world.
The mad king's gold
Evidence for Donald’s aversion to all things dictatorial may be found in the way his homes lavishly resemble those of Arab sheiks and Russian oligarchs.
Or in his unconscious adherence to the psychopathic behavior found in every single cult of personality, such as secret deals and sealed meetings, unwillingness to divest his private interest, attempts to obstruct and/or prevent prosecution, silence the media, and crush opponents. Of course, there is again, his boyish admiration for cults of personality.
His ‘partner in crime’, Vladimir Putin criticized Stalin’s regime, as a cult of personality yet he again, is playing by the same play book. He suppresses dissent, by any means possible, even taking lives, if you are to believe the stories. It’s difficult not to. Russian media, such as RT, formerly the less covert, Russian Television, is state owned and Putin controlled.
If one is perceptive it’s not too difficult to see how ‘The Donald’, is adopting a few fake news outlets, like Breitbart and/or Fox News. Even more, these may very well have been involved in disseminating Russian lies and deception. (Knowingly or otherwise.)
It is crucial that we do not forget, “Our repugnant leader” shoves respected world leaders from his path. He shuns handshakes and diplomacy while praising Cults Of Personality like Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin. And he clearly has their playbooks written on his barren mind. I am surprised that we have yet to hear Hitler or Stalin praised. I imagine that he secretly sings them. One day maybe one family member or another will tell all about it.
Maybe they’ll write a book from their prison cells? I look forward to it. Not their book, their prison cell.
Anita Robinson in “The cult of personality is the curse of the modern age,” Irish News, April 4, 2016, wrote, “The cult of personality is the curse of modern communication. Why should we believe that the actor, the entertainer or the sportsperson, the well-born, rich (whether by talent or accident), or just famous for being famous, have anything original, wise, or philosophical to say? Yet, smitten by celebrity, we hang upon their lips.”