General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTrump's Strange Behavior (Alternet)
The Video That Suggests Trump Is Suffering from Alzheimer's
Could a more serious illness be at work beneath the bluster and the ego?
Alternet
The most egregious parts of Donald Trumps personalityhis racism, his misogyny and his lack of scruples or ethicshave been on display for more than four decades. All of those traits have long been part of Trumps unapologetic public persona. But in recent years, Trump has become an even more extreme version of himself. The behaviors that accompany that shift could be closely correlated with dementia and a general cognitive decline.
The blogger behind the Neurocritic laid out what he sees as proof of Trumps mental deterioration. He notes that President Ronald Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimers at age 83, though he began to manifest symptoms far earlier. Researchers have combed through records of off-the-cuff speeches Reagan delivered and found significant declines in his mastery of language. By his second term, Reagans speech showed a deep drop-off in the use of unique words; a marked increase in the use of non-specific nouns (thing, something, anything); an uptick in filler words (well, so, basically, actually, literally, um, ah); and a greater use of low-imageability, high frequency verbs (get, give, go, have, do).
Trump seems to have parallels in all these areas. He has become notorious for his word salads, incomprehensible soliloquies delivered at the speaking level of a fourth-grader. He frequently falls back on words like tremendous and often drags on without using specifics. Trump often speaks at length while saying nothing.
Alex Leo of the Daily Beast transcribed one sentence Trump delivered at a campaign stop in South Carolina, a series of dead ends, unfinished thoughts and ramblings:
Look, having nuclearmy uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smartyou know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the worldit's true!but when you're a conservative Republican they tryoh, do they do a numberthat's why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortuneyou know I have to give my, like, credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantagedbut you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers meit would have been so easy, and it's 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 rightwho would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisonersnow it used to be three, now it's fourbut 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 haven't figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so you know, it's gonna take them about another 150 yearsbut the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.
brush
(53,764 posts)Marie Marie
(9,999 posts)That would be one for the books.
Demtexan
(1,588 posts)No one could understand them but it would be fun to watch.
dalton99a
(81,433 posts)Crash2Parties
(6,017 posts)except they'd get slower...and slower...and slower while using shorter words and longer pauses...
womanofthehills
(8,690 posts)Scurrilous
(38,687 posts)thbobby
(1,474 posts)Just fucking stupid. Palin and trump. Racist GOP couldn't handle that an intelligent and moral black man was president. Hence white trash Sarah Palin. Pussy Grabber trump. Such a tragedy that America is the loser in this bullshit.
PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,841 posts)is to give him an undeserved pass.
He's a narcissistic bully who doesn't give a flying fuck about anyone else. He's also 70 years old, doesn't exercise in any meaningful way, is obese, has a genuinely terrible diet, and supposedly sleeps very little.
That last one is actually the very most concerning, because people who don't get enough sleep wind up psychotic, not to put too fine a point on it. And everything else just feeds into his behavior these days.
Most people over 60 or 65 are definitely slowing down mentally. Especially if they do nothing to keep their brain exercised. Trump doesn't read. He has no interest in anything outside of himself. So over time his world has gotten smaller and smaller, and he hasn't a clue that there might be something wrong with that. Plus, he's surrounded by enablers.
So to repeat: he does not have any dementia. He's an idiot, but that's entirely different.
moonscape
(4,673 posts)alzheimer's and she was way smarter, and spoke more clearly, than this! Tracking her decline, it was entirely different manifestation. Reagan's also. Reagan's alzheimer's could be seen by his aw-shucks stalling as he reached for words, got mildly confused, but 45's characteristics are of a different kind.
RobinA
(9,888 posts)Dementia, my ass. He's being asked to function way beyond his capacity and the lack of sleep is an issue. I've said since day one, a break would not surprise me at all, although I doubt we will know it. If he starts sounding rehearsed and stops tweeting I will highly suspect that he has is no longer the one in control and that there's a reason for that.