Month: September 2024

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Completely Batshit Deranged

From Greg Fallis:

I'm really beginning to believe that a line has been crossed. I'm talking about the line between neurosis and psychosis. I'm talking about Donald Trump.

A week ago, on August 30th, Trump sat down for a chat with Tiffany Justice of 'Moms for Liberty' (which, seriously? Is there a 'Moms Adamantly Opposed to Liberty' group somewhere?). The issue of trans rights came up and Trump said something completely batshit deranged.

"The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what's gonna happen with your child. And you know, many of these childs [sic] 15 years later say, 'What the hell happened? Who did this to me?' They say, 'Who did this to me?'"

That's…well, as I said, completely batshit deranged. And as much as I complain about the news media 'sanewashing' the batshit deranged stuff Trump says, I have to admit that I did the same thing. I laughed with others about it, and basically dismissed it as Trump being a fucking bonehead again, exaggerating wildly for effect. Because, c'mon, ain't nobody gonna to believe a kid goes to school and comes home days later (I guess the kid's parents were busy and didn't notice he was gone for a few days) with an entirely different set of gender tackle.

But then yesterday Trump held a rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin. And guess what? He basically repeated that same completely batshit deranged story. He said,

"Can you imagine you're a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, 'Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day at school,' and your son comes back with a brutal operation. Can you even imagine this?"

No. No, I can't imagine it. In fact, I can't even imagine any rational person saying it. I especially can't imagine a fucking candidate for POTUS saying it. And I double especially can't imagine a fucking candidate for POTUS believing it. But I'm actually beginning to wonder if Trump does, in fact, believe something like that is happening. I mean, if you say something completely batshit deranged once and it gets reported as being completely batshit deranged, a person who is NOT completely batshit deranged would know NOT to repeat it.

Completely batshit deranged.

But here we are. And all of a sudden, I'm hearing the lyrics to Psycho Killer in my head.

You start a conversation, you can't even finish it
You're talking a lot, but you're not saying anything
When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed
Say something once, why say it again?
Psycho Killer
Qu'est-ce que c'est?

Seriously, qu'est-ce que fucking c'est? It's delusional, is what it is. And that brings me right back to that line I said may have been crossed in the opening paragraph. Back in January of 2021, in an article about Trump for Psychology Today, Dr. Stephen Diamond wrote this:

Once a person, including a leader, has crossed over the line from neurosis to psychosis, for, by definition, a delusion is a psychotic rather than neurotic symptom, that person has now become debilitated or disabled by a severe mental disorder, and may no longer be able to continue to perform or discharge their job responsibilities safely, efficiently and effectively. Their reality testing–which is different than neurocognitive functioning per se–has been significantly impaired.

Bingo. By repeating that completely batshit deranged story, I have to question if Trump's reality testing has gone down the porcelain facility. It's pretty widely accepted that he's had a severe personality disorder for decades. But has he crossed that line? Is he actually delusional?

I'm thinking the answer is, yeah.

VOTE BLUE!

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The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend…If Only Out of Necessity

From Palmer Report:

That Sound You Hear is Hell Freezing Over

When Liz Cheney endorsed Kamala Harris earlier this week, it was a big deal, but not unexpected. It did, however, raise an interesting question. When I heard the news, I thought "What's Dick going to do?" I'm sure others had the same thought. Sure enough, now we have our answer, and it's historically significant. But will it be electorally significant?

If you'd told me that Dick Cheney and I would someday be voting for the same presidential candidate, I'd have assumed it meant that one of us was someday going to end up having a psychotic break. But here we are, with Dick Cheney endorsing my candidate, Kamala Harris. It's not that the famously neoconservative Dick Cheney has somehow become more moderate. Rather it's that his Republican Party has indeed had a psychotic break.

So where does this get us? When the news broke yesterday, I wanted to take a day before forming an opinion about its electoral significance. Sometimes unexpected political news can initially feel like it's going to have a different impact than it's really going to have, if only because of the initial shock value. As I often like to say, a lot of times in politics, the "biggest" stories end up adding up to nothing.

But I think this is different. It's one thing for Dick Cheney's daughter to endorse the Democratic Party candidate for President. Liz Cheney is a conservative, but she's spent years showing herself to be pragmatic and bipartisan. Dick Cheney, on the other hand, is the uncompromising conservative extremist who was to the right of George W. Bush. As far as we all know, Dick Cheney is every bit as much of a conservative extremist as ever. And yet he's endorsing the Democratic candidate.

Dick Cheney is also from a different generation. He's the last remaining major voice from the pre-Trump Republican era (except for George W. Bush, who refuses to say anything partisan these days). There are Trump-haters in the Republican Party who voted for a ticket with Cheney on it the last time they voted. And now Dick Cheney himself is telling those Republicans to vote for the Democratic candidate.

Let's keep in mind that when Donald Trump still had Republican primary challengers in 2024, he was still barely getting of the Republican vote in each primary state. Even once he was running unopposed, 15% of Republican primary voters were still finding a way to cast votes against him. Anti-Trump Republican voters are a bigger group than the media on either side likes to acknowledge. And now Dick Cheney, one of their patron saints, just told them to play for the other team in 2024.

We'll see what happens with this. But it feels like it's an impactful story. Even if it only moves the needle by let's say 1%, that would be enough to change the outcome in any swing state where Kamala Harris is currently on track to lose by less than 1%. So let's take it as a win and keep on building. You're still welcome to despise Dick Cheney as much as ever, if you like. But we'll take his help nonetheless.