In today’s Washington Post Jennifer Ruben says this may be Trump’s stupidest Tweet ever:
President Trump has issued shameful tweets, offensive tweets and self-serving tweets. Rarely, however, has he sent out a tweet that better conveys his abject ignorance about the country and economics than the tweet he posted Wednesday:
”Our Country was built on Tariffs, and Tariffs are now leading us to great new Trade Deals - as opposed to the horrible and unfair Trade Deals that I inherited as your President. Other Countries should not be allowed to come in and steal the wealth of our great U.S.A. No longer!”
No, no, no.
Our country was founded on a principle Trump often seems unacquainted with: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
I think Trump feels at a somewhat less than fully conscious level that other countries are out to steel quite literally his own precious bodily fluids. Here’s another person, albeit a fictional one, who felt the same way: Commander Jack D. Ripper.
Consider:
- I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
- Do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk, ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake? Children's ice cream!...You know when fluoridation began?...1946. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works. I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love... Yes, a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I — I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women, er, women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake...but I do deny them my essence.
I am not attempting to diagnose Trump. Been there, Done that.
I am offering a psychodynamic perspective of what makes Trump tick. This does not require a diagnosis though it does necessitate an understanding of how unconscious forces influence attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.
I believe that Trump is not only a very insecure man generally but that his hypermasculinity, his need to surround himself with beautiful women and trade in wives for newer models, his predatory and misogynistic behavior suggests he is deeply insecure about his masculinity.
Like in Dr. Stangelove, these beliefs can start a war, in Trump's case so far it is only a trade war.
Thursday, Aug 16, 2018 · 5:26:54 PM +00:00
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HalBrown
Excerpts:
Scarborough said he believes that the president has a pathological need to be liked which leads him to take irrational steps with the sole purpose of getting praise and support from people who already like him.
..
“Donald Trump now is at the point he’s so fragile and cannot ever, ever be in any interaction, any exchange in any room that’s just not pure lionization, canonization, and it defies any left-brain logic. He’s built so fragilely now that he can only exist in an alternative universe, regardless of whether it’s the smart or dumb political thing, where he is basically pillowed around by that 30 percent.” Donnie Deutsch
...
“They just sort of erupt out of him. He learned to do one extraordinary thing during the campaign, which is the sort of stream-of-consciousness rallies in which for a segment of the electorate, they are catnip, they are amphetamines. They are whatever you — some kind of drug that really pump people up — and that’s really what he knows how to do. So that’s what he’ll continue to do, and it turns out the other 60 percent, more and more, but this is not just all some diabolical plot. This is a man out of control.” Eugene Robinson