If you can’t read the above (from my Mac laptop online dictionary):
flac·cid| ˈfla(k)səd | adjective (of part of the body) soft and hanging loosely or limply, especially so as to look or feel unpleasant: she took his flaccid hand in hers. • (of plant tissue) drooping or inelastic through lack of water. • lacking force or effectiveness: the flaccid leadership campaign was causing concern. DERIVATIVES flaccidity | fla(k)ˈsidədē | noun flaccidly adverb ORIGIN early 17th century: from French flaccide or Latin flaccidus, from flaccus ‘flabby’.
RawStory author David Baddash (New Civil Rights Movement) picked up a tweet and built a story around it (read it here). He noted that “top national security lawyer Bradley Moss appears to be enjoying mocking the lawsuit..” The tweet that prompted this was from a lawyer who specializes in litigation on matters relating to national security, federal employment and security clearance law, as well as the Freedom of Information Act/Privacy and also writes articles published on HUFFPOST. Reference
The article in RawStory features several tweets by Moss and by a couple of others but the masterful use of descriptive words which prompted the RawStory piece is this one:
Here are a couple of choice comments to this article on RawStory:
thunderboltnlightfoot • 13 hours ago
If there is something that Mr. Tinyhands Goldenshower hates more than his tiny hands it's being called 'flaccid'.
Trump has been referred to as a cry baby many times, occasionally prefaced by thin-skinned. In fact there a good Trump cry baby YouTube:
I hope somehow this new description gets to Trump. It may not sting him the way I assume that the baby balloon did. It is something that he had to be aware of. One of the giant versions floated at Trump rallies is on display at The Museum of London. From there they started being displayed outside many Trump events.
I don’t know how many of the balloons were sold, but Trump baby balloons are available on Amazon, some for under $10.
Credit goes to Matt Bonner who made the balloon design and to the organizers of the first event to feature the balloon which was 20 feet tall.
One of the organizers (of the London event), Max Wakefield, described the balloon protest as being in response to "the rise of far-right politics that dehumanises people in order to get into power", and saw it as an attempt to introduce some "good British humour" into the political discourse surrounding Trump's visit…
Wakefield said "The only way that you can make any impact with Donald Trump is to mock him, because you can't engage him in any kind of argument — it never gets anywhere." Wikipedia
The baby balloon probably takes first place among anti-Trump protest symbols and viral mockery that actually got through Trump’s egomaniacal denial psychological defenses (See addendum). “
The will publicized Stormy Daniels little toadstool characterization ranks up there when it coming to stinging mockery that “got to” Trump.. (See “Stephanie Grisham Reveals Trump Called To Tell Her About His Penis.”) “Flaccid little cry baby” should be in the running for a runner up prize.
Parsing out the phrase:
- Flaccid: The sample sentence in the definition I included (she took his flaccid hand in hers) isn’t the way it is commonly use. Substitute hand for another part of the anatomy.
- Little crybaby: The word little modifies cry baby, i.e. a little baby who is crying. The derogatory phase big crybaby could have been used instead, so I suspect either consciously or unconscious Moss wanted it to convey the image of a baby with a little wee-wee. In fact, Trump is a big cry baby, i.e. a baby that cries a lot, who is also a little crying baby.
Of course Trump prides himself on not crying. See “Donald Trump gives amazing answer to the question: 'Do you cry?'”
Malignant narcissists don’t cry when they are distressed, sad, or hurt. Instead they have tantrums and lash out at those who have offended them. They feel anger, they get enraged, but this doesn’t mean that particularly powerful mockery doesn’t get to them at all. If you watch anything but Fox News, you see snippets of ranting and raving, sometimes incoherently, at his rallies. This is not the completeTrump. It is the Trump for public consumption It is a portion of the real Trump but there is more to him.
Under all the bluster and self-aggrandizement Trump is a deeply insecure person who was deprived of love and nurturing as a young child. Mary Trump wrote about how he was “brought up by a heartless father and emotionally detached mother he became a stunted man/boy constantly needing the approval and applause of others but remaining dead emotionally to other people’s needs.” Reference
You can say he is a despicable human being who takes satisfaction out of inflicting pain on others (i.e. a sadist) being but he is still a human being and nobody has perfect, impenetrable defenses against all assaults on their self-concept. For someone like Trump the way to exploit a chink in their armor is through highly effective mockery that targets something they are already insecure about.
There have been hints that there are things that get through Trump’s psychological defenses. An example is the rumored “pee tape” (I wrote about it the other day) which he brought going off script in a speech on Thursday.
Addendum:
About psychological defenses:
- We all use psychological defenses that distort reality.
- Ordinary psychological defenses distort reality only slightly and do little or no harm.
- Pathological psychological defenses distort reality severely and put us at risk.
We all use psychological defenses to avoid unwanted awareness. The defenses a mentally healthy person uses distort reality only slightly. But a mentally compromised person relies on defenses to dramatically reshape their experience of reality. When someone presents obviously distorted reality and insists it is not distorted, we wonder whether they are trying to deceive us or they are mentally unbalanced. Perhaps it is in our best interest to examine the pandemic of deception and mental disorder mixed into the world we live in today. Read entire Psychology Today article about the various psychological defenses.