Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Jon Chait, Friend Of The Blog

Apparently, Jon Chait reads my blog, since he addresses the exact phenomenon I wrote about yesterday: the failure of an agreed upon objective reality.

Chait couches it in different language, however.  He notes that what Trump is basically engaging in is authoritarianism.  Trump can determine what the truth is because Trump is president and you're not.

Trump's motivation for lying repeatedly and unapologetically is actually really important.  If he's lying because he wants to bend the country - or at least the third of the country who really, really likes him - to his vision of reality, then he's an authoritarian.  If he's "gaslighting" the country, he's the con man we all know him to be.  Or, perhaps, he believes his lies.

If the last option is true - if Trump believes what he's saying because he's president and he's Trump - then Trump is psychotic.  I know the Goldwater Rule says you can't diagnose a public figure from a remove, but I'm not a psychiatrist.  Plus, seeing and believing things that aren't real is pretty much an agreed upon definition of psychosis.

I guess the question is whether Trump gets removed by impeachment for colluding with the Russians to undermine American democracy or whether he gets removed by the 25th Amendment.

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