'I am the Chosen One,' Trump proclaims as he defends trade war with China

it's one hell of a drug

and Adderall is just meth with a good PR agent

Certifiably fucking insane.

n/t

candidates keep pointing out his lies and gargantuan foibles - the pressure will cause this useless meat Popsicle to crack under the pressure.

That's as bad as -- maybe worse than -- thinking China pays his tariffs.

What worries me as that with his trade war blowing up in his face, Trump will be so desperate to make any kind of trade deal that the Chinese hold all the cards now. They can screw us and Trump will still claim he won the war, please adore him.

Quite a bit too literally.

“This isn’t my trade war, this is a trade war that should have taken place a long time ago,” Trump told reporters outside the White House.

“Somebody had to do it,” the president said. He added, while looking to the heavens: “I am the Chosen One.”

Harry Potter was The Chosen One.

And getting worse.
Combined with his equally demented retweets about being the "king of Israel.. ", it's getting genuinely scary.
He is not a well man.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-quotes-conspiracy-theorist-claiming-israelis-love-him-like-he-is-the-second-coming-of-god/2019/08/21/603cea14-c405-11e9-9986-1fb3e4397be4_story.html

The inevitable and only possible outcome for those suffering from NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder).

that you do not act corruptly and make an idol for yourselves of any form or shape, whether in the likeness of a male or female,

How much more evidence do they need that he’s nuts?

When do we resume the regularly scheduled program?

And whoever laughed to cover for him should be put out to journalism pasture.

the regularly scheduled programming has been preempted by the Ministry of Truth, (Minitrue) indefinitely...and now for a message from our sponsors. Oh, and there NEVER was any regularly schedule programming. Repeat that!

doubleTrump good

The chocolate ration (chocorat) has increased by 25 grams per week!

Dwn the memory hole

Link to tweet

Here is how Winston Smith described doublethink in the novel:

"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.'

"In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. The mixture in itself was remarkable enough, because it spelled the end of the illusion that gullibility was a weakness of unsuspecting primitive souls and cynicism the vice of superior and refined minds. Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness."

Hannah Arendt
The Origins of Totalitarianism

precise and prescient can it get?

It seems like that fits "the base" rather well, at least in part currently and in whole with time.

One has to wonder if works like that and Orwell's writings are not being used as playbooks by the GOP, et al. Or is it just a repeating pattern that some astute academics, intellectuals and authors discern?

The fundamental of totalitarism is that the party / leader is right - always right, even though this defies credibility - so truth becomes relative - relative too what the leader is saying on the say, and devoid of substantial meaning without that context. The more fantastic and absurd the lie - anti-Semitism is a favorite, the more insubstantial objective facts, the easier doublethink becomes. Everything is a lie / the leaser tells it like it is .

I wonder what that says about the individual psyche and collective consciousness of this species?

Is this an inherit, wired trait or an aspect of cultural conditioning, or both? I consider the nature/nurture debate to be about two sides of the same coin, so, even with the many variables involved, I imagine the same is true for traits/culture. Certain kinds of conditioning in a culture begin very early in the developmental process, and there are obvious flaws in that in respects to authority and the deprecation of critical thinking. Western religious dogmas often allow for and encourage authoritarians and subservience to them, whereas the teaching and promotion of higher order, rational ethics might actually negate that, so the nature of the education system is implicated as well.

As far as the masses go, ignore-ance seems to factor in as a vulnerability, yet, historically, many intellectuals, academics, philosophers, scientists and clergy have been lured into the miasma of tyranny for various reasons like power, self-preservation and other perks, once it gets going full swing as populism. Perhaps a herd mentality holds sway, as well?

Yet, in light of the above, we could say that a society/culture, collectively has to take responsibility, to the proper degree, for how resilient a population will be to that kind of phenomena, that is, if it does respect its population and does not consider such resilience to be a threat and it does not require its citizens to be pliable and easily manipulated for ulterior motives. And yes, I am being sarcastic and know full well that is the case. The American education system, overall, has not been utilized, in my opinion, to accomplish the task of inculcating skills and values that a true democracy and freedom demand. In fact, it has been increasingly doing the opposite since, at least, the 50s-60s as far as quality goes. The dumbing down began around that time, though the authoritarian essence has prevailed much longer and, other than in higher education, since the inception of compulsory education.

"War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength;"

Orwell worked with military intelligence. Ignorance is strength is SOP. Whether it describes the modus operandi of cells, covert operations, or major endevors, such as D-Day, best practice is that information be tightly restricted on a needs to know basis. That ignorance of classified material is regarded as military strength is a tautology.

and cheat.

"I am the Chosen One," tRump
"More popular than Jesus," Beatles

Come on let's do it.

Don't you just want to eat him up?

And he scrubbed it from the Helsinki press conference transcript.



Trump was chosen because he would do what was best for Russia.

you will see exactly why he thinks this. He is off his rocker.

He's a fry short of a Happy Meal.

Remember the kind of followers that he's got.