One of the most challenging aspects of navigating the polycrisis is trying to ascertain the seemingly delusional mental states of major players like Donald Trump, J.D. Vance and the dominant and dissident voting blocks in the declining West.
That is to say, are these people deluded, drugged, deliberately disinformed or what?
With the breakdown of late 20th Century corporate mass culture and the post WW2 liberal consensus, we are seeing an unprecedented breakdown in shared information sources.
In 2025, spouses, family members, colleagues, and casual acquaintances can all be primarily informed by wildly varying information sources with few ways of knowing who is aware of what.
Let’s start with POTUS Trump because he made more than his usual a number of claims that appear to be wildly opposed to consensus reality including the usual about victory in Ukraine and peace in Gaza but also some specific claims that shocked this observer.
On October 14, Trump publicly met with Argentinian President Javier Milei and the surrealism was off the charts. The full video is worth a look if you have the stamina and sanity.
The most notable wildly false claim Trump made was the following about countries leaving BRICS (17:30 minutes in):
Donald Trump: I think if Biden would have, you know, Biden, that group would have gotten elected, meaning Kamala, you wouldn’t have the dollar as your currency anymore.
You wouldn’t have a world domination by the dollar if I didn’t win this election. And now the domination like bricks. I told anybody wants to be be in bricks, that’s fine, but we’re going to put tariffs on your nation. Everybody dropped out. They’re all dropping out of bricks. BRICS was an attack on the dollar. And I said, you want to play that game? I’m gonna put tariffs on your on your all of your product coming into the US. They said, like I said, we’re dropping out of BRICS and BRICS is like they don’t even talk about anymore.
Does he actually believe this? Are his staffers telling him that countries are leaving BRICS? Are foreign leaders telling him what they think he wants to hear? Is he taking psychosis-inducing amounts of Adderall?
This is on top of the already grim comedy of Milei’s presidency, the $20 billion U.S. bailout, and Milei’s ridiculous antics, including a stadium concert appearance to promote his new book:
ARGENTINA — after Trump sent his buddy Milei $20 Billion to prop up their economy (as they take market share from our farmers), Milei did a concert to promote his book (+ salvage his election)… while sprinkling in Hava Nagila to show fealty to Israel
Yes, this is real pic.twitter.com/BgcWntPyXL
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) October 7, 2025
Not to mention the way Trump supporting farmers are being screwed by Trump’s attempt to import Argentinian beef while Argentina grabs more of the Chinese soybean market that Trump’s tariffs have frozen American producers out of.
Atrios’ take on Bluesky points out something that should be obvious but is rarely said out loud. This planet is awash in mind-altering drugs and people are addled. Unfortunately it’s not possible to know exactly who’s on what, when:
https://t.co/UUfDEWHxyI pic.twitter.com/VgDwgwdCXO
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) October 19, 2025
I’ve spent much of my life being oblivious to what I was later told were obvious abuse problems on the part of various people I knew.
I slept on this 2024 Rolling Stone piece about Trump 1.0 being awash in drugs. Here’s a taste:
In January, the Defense Department’s inspector general released a report detailing how the White House Medical Unit during the Trump administration distributed controlled substances with scant oversight and even sloppier record keeping.
…
The report didn’t say why so many of those pills had been given out. But for many who served in the Trump White House, the investigation highlighted an open secret. According to interviews with four former senior administration officials and others with knowledge of the matter, the stimulant was routinely given to staffers who needed an energy boost after a late night, or just a pick-me-up to handle another day at a uniquely stressful job. As one of the former officials tells Rolling Stone, the White House at that time was “awash in speed.”Knowledgeable sources say that samples of the stimulant were passed around for those contributing lines to major Trump speeches, working late hours on foreign policy initiatives, responding to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, coping with the deluge of media inquiries about that investigation, and so much more.
…
The anti-anxiety medication Xanax was also a popular, easy-to-get drug during the Trump years, three sources tell us. Neither Xanax nor its generic, alprazolam, is mentioned in the Pentagon report, which notes that it is not a comprehensive list of the controlled substances ordered during the Trump years. Two people with direct knowledge of the situation recall senior officials getting Xanax from the White House Medical Unit — and sharing it with colleagues.
No reason to believe the party has stopped under Trump 2.0.
And I’m not going from the previous topic to the next topic for any particular reason, beyond my ability to miss the obvious in both instances, in this one, somehow I missed the gossip about Trump Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and would-be Trump 2024 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
If you’re behind like I was, these graphs from Corey’s wikipedia entry should catch you up on the nonsense:
While DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was participating in an immigration raid on April 8, 2025, she was accompanied by Lewandowski, who introduced himself to the federal agents as “chief of staff.” DHS later clarified that he is an adviser to DHS and a Special government employee (SGE)] The Wall Street Journal subsequently described Lewandowski as Noem’s “de facto chief of staff,” adding that there were “White House concerns about their relationship”. When then-FEMA administrator Cameron Hamilton testified before Congress on May 7, 2025, stating, “I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency”, a position which differed from the Trump administration, he was summoned to Noem’s office the following day, and was fired by Lewandowski, sitting at Noem’s desk.
When U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-California) was forcibly detained by security agents at a press conference Noem was giving in Los Angeles on June 12, 2025, Lewandowski, according to Padilla, ran to the scene “yelling, ‘Let him go! Let him go!'”
Lewandowski met his future wife Alison Hardy when he was in ninth grade and she was in eighth grade. In 1998, Hardy married Brian Kinney, who was killed onboard United Airlines Flight 175 on September 11, 2001. Four years later, in 2005, Lewandowski married Hardy. Together they have four children. Lewandowski is a Catholic.
In September 2021, Lewandowski was removed from his role as chairman of a super PAC called Make America Great Again Action after reports of sexual harassment accusations from a donor.
That same month, conservative media outlet American Greatness reported that Lewandowski was having an extramarital affair with South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, for whom he had long been a political advisor. Noem called the report a “disgusting lie”, saying, “these old, tired attacks on conservative women are based on a falsehood that we can’t achieve anything without a man’s help.” In September 2023, the New York Post and the Daily Mail published similar reports about Noem and Lewandowski, which Noem’s spokesman denied. As of September 2025, according to the New York Magazine, they were widely understood by those who work with them to be romantically attached, although both deny it.
The New York Magazine piece “Top Goon” is worth quoting at length as well:
“She’s going to play a key role in advancing Donald Trump’s effort to consolidate the powers of the presidency,” a former DHS official told me. “I think by the end of this administration, if she stays the whole time, she’s likely to become the warden of the police state.”
On paper, Noem sits at the top of this empire. In practice, power over immigration policy is fractured, shaped by competing factions, starting with deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who has vowed in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination to destroy nameless forces that have conspired against the right — the long arm of law enforcement, he warned them, “will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and, if you’ve broken the law, to take away your freedom.” Noem will be among those at the forefront of any such effort, surrounded by a tight inner circle that can be difficult to penetrate and often impossible to work with. “The culture over there is terrible,” the administration official told me. “People are scared shitless of Corey.”
Lewandowski has been integral to Noem’s rise, her right hand as they run roughshod over the rule of law and, like so many in Trump’s Cabinet, position themselves for a post-Trump future. Lewandowski is not only surreptitiously co-leading DHS without congressional approval but has brought Trumpworld’s manically pugnacious style to the department and drawn out some of Noem’s own pugnacious predilections, too.
After all, Trump’s immigration policies, while broadly unpopular with those who oppose masked men snatching people off the streets and spiriting them away to brutal foreign prisons, remain popular among Republicans. Frank Luntz, the veteran political consultant, thinks this is at least partly owed to Noem, who adds the necessary stage presence to Lewandowski’s muscle and Miller’s brain.
“She is probably the administration’s best spokeswoman,” he told me. “The only thing that bothers me is that her name is not mentioned as a potential 2028 Republican Party leader. She’s underestimated.”
I also have to mention the $172 million his-and-hers private jets Noem purchased.
I admit I’m shoehorning this Noem-Lewandowski thing into this piece, but that’s mainly because I deeply regret not plugging it into my piece last week on Russell Vought and Stephen Miller.
But also, Noem being talked up as future presidential material has me wondering if old Frank Luntz isn’t using psychedelic toads slime to hold down what has always appeared to be his hair piece.
I’m not saying Luntz won’t be right either, I’m just saying we’re collectively through the looking glass.
And speaking of same, this tweet featuring the most maximally triumphant take on Trump’s foreign “policy” has to be included in any catalogue of Trump-era delirium:
Don’t be naive.
Venezuela isn’t some “independent” nation.
We’re not sending 10k troops and 8 warships over drug dealers….
Trump is going after CHINA.
Trump’s Venezuela offensive is a THIRD BLOW to Xi: Iran – Gaza – Venezuela.
Just WATCH… pic.twitter.com/ftYoMLtWo1
— Chanel Rion OAN (@ChanelRion) October 17, 2025
Larry Johnson quoted a Zionist acquaintance with similar delusions last week:
(The signing of the Sharm El-Sheikh Peace Plan) changed everything. Arrayed behind Trump in Egypt were all of the key leaders in the world other than Putin and Xi. Trump has achieved something nobody thought possible. In the process he has isolated Iran, but just as important, he now made Putin look isolated when the rest of the world is trying to end wars and create peace and prosperity.
Putin will be under a lot more pressure to end the war now. At the same time, he is not winning the war, and is losing thousands more casualties just when there are severe labor shortages, and the economy is headed to further deterioration.
The attacks on the energy facilities is having real impact and a continuation of these attacks and attacks on rail lines will serve to cause much additional economic decline over the winter.
Paying men to go die is beginning to not work. It is very expensive and more men are fleeing. Winter is about here and so the fighting season is ending soon and the trees will no longer provide cover from drones. Putin can try to go on for a long time but the longer he does the worse the economy and the energy situation. The more isolated Putin becomes from the Mideast and other parts of the world who are now working together to build the economic growth the world needs.
This is the perfect set up for Vice-POTUS J.D. Vance’s message that “it’s time for Russia to wake up:”
Vice President Vance: One of the things I really admire about the president’s approach to this entire conflict and frankly all the diplomatic efforts of the administration is that it’s very grounded in reality and what’s happening on the ground.
If you go back to the last days of the Biden administration, if you go back to even a couple of months ago, the Russians were conquering large amounts of territory. Every month they were gaining another couple hundred square kilometers, maybe more than that.
And what’s happening right now, as the president articulated, is Russia’s really stalled. They’re killing a lot of people. They themselves are losing a lot of people and they don’t have much territorial gain to show for it.
And so the president is looking at the situation. He’s saying, ‘Look, the Russian economy is in shambles. the Russians are not gaining much on the battlefield.’
It’s clearly time for them to listen to his passionate plea for them to come to the table and actually talk seriously about peace. So, I don’t you ask what’s changed. I think what’s changed is the reality on the ground where the Russians are killing a lot of people.
Which brings us to this piece from Simplicius
Azov Brigade head Bohdan Krotevych says the quiet part out loud. He says European partners are kept from the front because AFU command does not want them to see the true reality of the situation there.
It seems at this point the AFU’s collapse is being hidden from all relevant parties, and this info blackout is trickling up to Trump and his circus who reimagine the war as Russia ‘badly losing’ with millions of casualties.
Or maybe Trump’s not so ignorant after all, per the Financial Times:
Donald Trump urged Volodymyr Zelenskyy to accept Russia’s terms for ending its war in a volatile White House meeting on Friday, warning that Vladimir Putin had said he would “destroy” Ukraine if it did not agree.
The meeting between the US and Ukrainian presidents descended many times into a “shouting match”, with Trump “cursing all the time”, people familiar with the matter said.
They added that the US president tossed aside maps of the frontline in Ukraine, insisted Zelenskyy surrender the entire Donbas region to Putin, and repeatedly echoed talking points the Russian leader had made in their call a day earlier.
Though Ukraine ultimately managed to swing Trump back to endorsing a freeze of the current front lines, the acrimonious meeting appeared to reflect the capricious nature of Trump’s position on the war and his willingness to endorse Putin’s maximalist demands.
Which is a decent pivot to the latest from Emmanuel Todd on the delusions of the European middle class:
are today’s middle classes, particularly the upper middle classes, reasonable? Are they peaceful? What are their dreams?
They are crazy. The construction of a post-national Europe is a delusional project when one considers the diversity of the continent. It has led to the expansion of the European Union, cobbled together and unstable, into the former Soviet space. The EU is now Russophobic and warmongering, with its aggression renewed by its economic defeat at the hands of Russia. The EU is trying to drag the British, French, German and many other peoples into a real war. But what a strange war it would be, in which the Western elites have adopted Hitler’s dream of destroying Russia!
The comparison by social class therefore allows us to make a major intellectual breakthrough. Europeanism, and therefore Macronism, fall, through their external aggressiveness, on the side of nationalism, on the side of the pre-war far right. If we add to this the increasingly massive and systematic violations of freedom of information and popular suffrage within the EU, we come even closer to the notion of the far right. Founded as an association of liberal democracies, Europe is mutating into a far-right space. Yes, the comparison with the 1930s is useful, even indispensable.
In the grandiose Europeanist project, we find a psychopathological dimension already observable in Hitlerism: paranoia. Europeanist paranoia focuses on Russia. Nazi paranoia made the Jewish threat a priority, without however neglecting Russian Bolshevism (known as Judeo-Bolshevism).
…
Today in Europe, we are dealing with madmen, or rather with a collective madness that has gripped individuals from the dominant social classes en masse. In France alone, thousands of journalists, politicians, academics, business leaders and senior civil servants are participating in the collective hallucination of a Russia that would want to conquer Europe (paranoia). No individual can be held personally responsible. We are dealing with a collective psychological dynamic.
…
The Nazi anti-Semites had a completely different psychological constitution. The death of God, to quote Nietzsche, had certainly launched them on a quest for a Führer, but they were hardly lacking in superego and remained capable of collective action. The tragic performance of the German army during the Second World War bears witness to this. Who today would dare to imagine our upper middle classes rushing to their deaths, at the head of their peoples, towards Kiev and Kharkov? Our war in Ukraine is a joke, a product of the emancipation of the self, the offspring of personal development. Only Ukrainians and Russians will die.Unless…
Thermonuclear exchanges can do without heroes.
I don’t want to end on a grim note so let’s let Kamala Harris, someone who’s been in all three of our discussed states close us out.
Her new book got ripped in the Guardian for being celebrity addled and delusional:
A striking feature of her campaign was how it leaned into vibes and spectacle rather than substance, or building faith in Harris as a clean break from an unpopular and visibly deteriorating Joe Biden. Her new book, 107 Days, a memoir of the exact number of days she had to win the presidency, goes a long way in explaining why that was. In short, Harris – and those around her, including supportive media parties – got high on their own supply.
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The book reveals a politician who is all about the machinery of politics, rather than one with conviction spurred by a sense of duty, or a coherent and specific set of values that differentiate her.
…
My abiding feeling reading was: oh God, this was all just as bad as it looked. The celebrity-packed campaign roster was not, in fact, panicked desperation, but the preference of the candidate and her team. They thought that such a range of characters would show that Harris was “welcoming everyone into the campaign” – as if the power of celebrity could do the unifying work of coalition-building, rather than her own programme and politicking.The immersion in the filmic, the celluloid of US politics is so complete that there is a line about Jon Bon Jovi performing for her and it being a good omen, because he performed for a candidate who won in The West Wing. The media loved her. “And behold,” Harris quotes a Washington Post writer, praising her approach to Gaza, “she had her boat through the impossible strait.” Jon Favreau said Harris was “a sight to behold” at the Democratic convention.
I’ll close with some quotes from this video from Scott Carney, a YouTuber specializing in exposing frauds and grifts. He argues that we are on the verge of a society-wide collapse of trust so grave it could actually lead to a decrease in grifting opportunities:
we have arrived at the era of peak grift where liars, cheaters, and charlatans will have an ever harder time selling their wares to unsuspecting audiences. And this is not good news. It should terrify absolutely everyone who is watching this video because what happens after the collapse of the grifter economy is going to be so much worse than you could ever imagine.
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What happens when we zoom out to the overall grifting economy, or if you will, the macroeconomic conditions that allow grifters to succeed. The one resource that all grifters share is a fundamental baseline of truth, or if you prefer, reality. Now, by definition, grifters monetize lies by subverting truth. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be grifting. It would just be selling quality products that actually work.And herein lies a fundamental problem. For grifters to succeed, they need a stable base, which means a good economy, generally positive health outcomes, and enduring institutions, which ultimately earn the trust of the people in general. Grifters can only thrive by profiting off of the margins and the limits of that underlying foundation of trust.
…
Now add to this a proliferation of AI slop, state sponsored propaganda from Russia, foreign actors, and even our own propaganda, and online scammers who have stolen more than a trillion dollars in the last year. The net effect is that trust, the most important resource that grifters exploit to take your money, is being eroded at its foundations. Like any economic system, once you get an oversupply of one particular commodity, in this case grifting, it becomes increasingly difficult to make money in that niche. It’s simple supply and demand. Now, in a stable society with reliable institutions, people look for ways to beat the system where niche opportunities might let them get ahead. Sometimes they even succeed. But in a collapsing system, people need to seek out reliable information. And while I can’t tell you where that reliable information actually is right now, I do know that the demand for it is higher now than it has ever been in my lifetime.
And naturally our closing quote source repeats the Russian disinformation canard (has any country ever been worse at PR?) and on that note, I’m out.
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A quick note. You don’t need to be drugged to behave as if drugged, and become delusional. As this link notes, Hate Addiction Is Like Cocaine Addiction, hate is indeed a powerful neuro-chemical inducer which resembles drug addiction in several ways. If Trump reacts by hate and anger, there you are. It is being increasingly noted that Trump moves by racist, xenophobic, and pseudo-religious instincts which are strong markers of hate and anger.
that’s an excellent point.
I hate, therefore I am.
Said Carl Schmidt, more or less.
Or, I hate therefore I scam.
I disagree with the premise at the end. As times get ever more difficult, I think grifters will flourish even more, as hopeful pipe dreams masses make more risky, bigger bets
I address this below in the comments. Trust is essential for grifting. If everyone has to assume that anyone talking to them is trying to steal something then there’s no way to start the conversation necessary for grifting.
And he would be motivated by wanting to seem all powerful because of the years spent in fear – all the allegations and threats of jail by the establishment with Russiagate, etc.
Anger that would produce the desire to now want others to be afraid as much as he was all that time.
I think Trump already had the need to dominate, the fascination with applied fascism, and the hostility (his divorce case is very revealing in both regard) but agree that the lawfare inspired a desire for vengeance and drove him to take power-grabbing more seriously.
Your point is well made. I think it worthwhile to provide context. In modern times, this weaponization and manipulation of hatred traces back to the days of Nixon’s enemies list, the Powell Memorandum, through Lee Atwater’s race baiting to the present day of Trump et al NAZI terrorism. This progression occurred under the back drop of a Capitalist system that no longer served the majority. From 1820 to 1970 wages and standards of living steadily, if unevenly, increased. In this economic situation, where the wealthy grab an ever increasing share of a dwindling pie, appeals to a shared prosperity are impossible. This is replaced by the politics of division, keeping the electorate at war with themselves while the wealthy and connected loot the wealth of the nation. These are the methods by which the British, followed by the US, managed their respective empires. These methods are simply being applied to the home front. It is no accident that Obama officially ended restrictions on the use of propaganda stateside. What Trump is doing is an extension of the “War on (of) Terror” to his political enemies via terror tactics against people of color.
There are also personality types – I’ve encountered them a couple times – that just make stuff up to have words come out of their mouth. And they never learn a lesson cause it generally hasn’t hindered them in any way. Not surprising, it’s a good personality type to be a salesman. I used to have a neighbor that would lie about everything – even what he had for breakfast in the morning and then forget what he told you and tell you something else later in the day. I don’t know that it is psychosis as much as a personality thing.
that kind of compulsive lying is associated with the “dark triad” of antisocial personality traits.
I think the French for that sort of liar is “un mythomane”; they usually end up believing what they say as well, ultimately blurring lies with reality.
Pah. This cartoonish zen tendency that demands one never to have any strong opinions, preferences, hatreds, dislikes, etc. (“hate rots your heart! Go with the flow! Love everyone!”) is completely counterproductive. What the obfuscatory twaddle in that link is saying is basically that emotions cause chemical changes in the brain, which is not exactly news and is not exclusive to hate. There is absolutely nothing wrong with hating other people; in fact, I’d be quite suspicious of anyone who somehow didn’t hate any politician or political tendency (Ursula von der Leyen, anyone? Benjamin Netanyahu? Marco Rubio? come on!), especially in the current economic climate.
Might I also remark that the Bible, which contains “love your enemies, bless them that curse you” (Matt. 5:44) is quick to depict the political enemies of early Christianity (viz. Nero) as the spawn of Satan and the coming of the Antichrist (Rev. 13:18). Apparently even The Omnibenevolent himself can’t abide by “love everyone” doctrines.
Good comment until you conflated the Big JC with the Revelator. Big difference. John the Revelator never heard the Sermon on the Mount or any of that hippie peace and love stuff. ; )
Alas, you’re too rational. In their telling, it’s all supposed to be divinely inspired by the Holy Boo, so one would reasonably expect some sort of consistency from cover to cover no matter the haunted human who actually picked up the quill.
The claim of Biblical inerrancy is a very recent one dating to turn of the 20th century Southern Baptists — infamously the least literary branch of Xtianity of all time.
No one who has spent even a few minutes reading the Bible could imagine it to be the work of a single author.
But yeah, that hasn’t slowed them down at all. Emmanuel Todd has some very interesting ideas on the role of the decline if Christianity in the fall of the west. Replacing it with a literal anti-Christ pro-traders in the temple imitation has been very successful.
>That is to say, are these people deluded, drugged, deliberately disinformed or what?
May we choose all of the above?
I have a comment in moderation about the same question. I have chosen hate and anger as the reasons explaining it all.
Spot on IMHO
What about dissembling?
that too!
We must.
Aurelien > We say lazily that certain things are “unthinkable” when we mean just that they are unacceptable to us. But there are also things that genuinely cannot be thought, because there is nothing in our experience to make that possible… For the western ruling class, then, defeat is literally unthinkable: the required neurones are not present.
> One of the least-remarked but most powerful forces in international relations is mutual incomprehension.
At least one master of cold reading began to believe he was psychic, from grifter to delusional. Aurelien is concerned with a lack of plasticity in the adult trained mind, which nature can alleviate with new generations of learners. But this post of yours, drives home that the wash of psych drugs undercuts the givens. Ketamine fueled jawohls at inauguration events hadn’t been a thing in my lifetime, so I’m not sure I can adequately comprehend this beyond some pretty general human ecology frameworks.
Also the impact of long covid on most everyone. I know I’ve lost multiple mental steps since 2020.
Hannah Arendt: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”
So true.
I’d describe the current situation in the US as having 3 groups…the convinced MAGA, the convinced liberal/Democratic core and the the rest of us who are drowning in propaganda from all directions and we’re loosing the ability to distinguish between fact and fiction.
This is where I am. What bewilders me is 2 of the 3 groups who are convinced. Why? Why are they convinced? Why would they believe anything that comes out of the mouths of any politician, and why would they believe anything fed to them by MSM?
It goes back to self. They can’t look inward and admit they are following a false god. The media and pols just feed them what they want to hear and things move on a planned.
2 groups need to look in the mirror. I won’t hold my breath.
you should give a little more credit to the power of propaganda. Formulas like “repetition = persuasiveness”, “perception IS reality” etc have equipped armies of mindfuckers with the tools to lead the herd as it were.
No argument there, but, as we can all see this as well. How many times have we watched a video of a bunch of news channels saying he exact same thing – like it is scripted – because it is.
Another example would be a Maddow clip that was going around showing her saying Russia 60 times in a half hour show. Unbridled propaganda for the masses in both cases.
Then there are the people themselves. I have had conversations with both sides, and when I show them facts that are undoubtedly true, but they don’t fit the narrative they want, they find a way to discredit it. The source, the author, you name it, they will find a way not to believe it. Or if you are talking to a democrat, when proven to be wrong, the next thing out of their mouth is “but Trump.” Truth doesn’t matter.
That’s on people, and I don’t know how we change that.
the inclination to double down on a belief when confronted with disproving facts sets is a well-known condition impacting large numbers of humans, just like the susceptibility to believing things because of the amount of repetition involved.
It’s just the human material.
she nailed it.
In psychiatry “delusional” refers to a psychotic break from consensus reality. More often in commentary it extends “mistaken and wrong” to “very mistaken and very wrong,” so much so that from another perspective, beliefs and actions look crazy. But are they? They may instead indicate that “delusional” assumptions, which opponents consider unthinkable, serve the “deluded” quite well.
To quote the proto-Orwell Humpty Dumpty in his conversation with Alice:
To state the obvious, Trump does not use words to truthfully communicate facts and intentions. He uses them instrumentally to get what he wants. It is a fool’s errand to look for what he “really” believes. It will change with what he is after.
Some will observe that what is adaptive locally, like the liar’s parasitic exploitation of trust, may not be globally, as when it leads to conflict that consumes us all.
A forlorn hope: that the “deluded”—whose local successes may culminate in global folly—can maintain enough contact with the limits of power to know when their sticks are not that big, and act accordingly.
While boasting about their big wins, of course. And plotting the next sneak attacks and scams.
The danger? That in their hubris and contempt for limit—and wounded and enraged by loss of face—they will not back off when they should.
and some of these psychotic types have nukes.
For me your comments on Trump himself seem obviously accurate. Trump says stuff for effect depending on his audience; he doesn’t care whether his words are factual or not. His background with World Wrestling Entertainment and “reality” TV provided excellent training for his type of demagogic politics. He says things to push buttons. That said, it is truly hard to know what he actually believes is “true” about particular issues.
On the other end of the spectrum, I have been stunned by the degree to which friends or former colleagues in liberal and/or progressive bubbles *actually believe* some of the crap they are fed by their own “expert” and media sources. It is easy to just assume people are lying; we forget how easy it is to delude ourselves on issues we “believe” in. I remember nodding my head knowingly to all those “My Dad was Brainwashed by Fox News” stories in the 1990s, not anticipating that some of my highly educated compadres would be just as capable of strongly held fact-free beliefs. Confirmation bias is a very powerful force, especially when, as Nat notes here, we all have our own personally customized sources of “information.”
I’m not discounting being drugged or disinformed. I’d add “bribed or blackmailed” to the list of influences as well, which I think are obviously significant in many cases today. But the older I get the more I appreciate the capacity of privileged and powerful people to be quite delusional in propping up their own self-serving worldview.
Excellent point. The difference between Bush/Cheney and the Trump/Biden/Trump eras is Obama, MSNBC, Vox.com, Facebook, Twitter and the bipartisanship of bullshit.
The GOP went from Poppy Bush who got his news the same places that his Dem peers did. By the 2000s GW Bush and his generation were actually listening to Rush Limbaugh etc.
After social media and Obama legalizing propaganda against US citizens everyone was in the same boat, just looking for their preferred flavor of bullshit firehose to drink from.
“…their preferred flavor of bullshit firehose to drink from.”
That made me laugh, although I totally agree with it. In the past 5 years I’ve only logged into my Facebook account maybe 10 times for some very minor and specific reasons and completely ignored my feed. I just got so frustrated with the garbage I was being feed and even more dismayed watching friends argue over what I found to be totally propaganda posted garbage from either side. I gave up on mainstream media during the Obama years.
This parallels my experience as well. Many “smart” people I know fully bought into Russia Russia Russia, Covid is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, plucky, honorable Ukraine is going to win, etc. Maybe its just those hate fueled delusions mentioned above.
I’m sure I have my biases, but I’m tending toward not believing anything (not that this is s good thing), or more like a gambler, looking at the odds something might be true.
I remember a very cold war public service announcement from my childhood that, if memory serves me, featured a blindfolded child repeating untruth, and then made some statement about stopping brainwashing – might have been Radio Free Europe was the solution… it bothered me so my older brother explain the concept of brainwashing, and we scoffed at these poor Soviets being brainwashed. Now, I am living it.
Same boat here. I’d been reading about Ukraine for years, including many mainstream sources which described the hardcore white nationalists who had come to power in Ukraine after the US sponsored coup and was appalled when, after the Russian invasion in 2022, so many people who should have known better started portraying Ukraine as the plucky freedom fighters and Russians as some bloodthirsty soulless others bent on world domination. My CNN watching friend bought it hook, line and sinker and still does. I have forwarded articles posted in WaPo, CNN, NYT, Newsweek, etc. between 2014 and 2022 describing the hard right that now controlled Ukraine and pointed out that either the media was lying then or lying now. He can’t bring himself to admit that there were any lies at all. I can point out how corporate media has known liars and war criminals like John Brennan and James Clapper on their payrolls to no effect.
I do try to second guess my own opinions, and recently I’ve found myself prefacing arguments with “If this information is to be trusted…” given the ubiquity of AI, bots and all kinds of government sponsored propaganda. There are probably a lot of things we’ll never know for sure, but we do need to have some common and shared reality if we’re to continue with a civil society.
With all the bad info out there, it becomes more and more important to cut through the BS and loudly proclaim There Are Four Lights no matter what Cardassians (or perhaps Kardashians) say otherwise.
“…we scoffed at these poor Soviets being brainwashed. Now, I am living it.”
…and we always have been, just never to such a scarily sophisticated degree.
before intertubes(at least in the “golden age” when all those journals and foreign papers and FOIA Docs were free), it was headshop bookshelves, obscure radical bookstores…and eavesdropping on our elders who had “been there, in the soup”, etc.
i heard my grandad’s truth regarding both pappy boyington and mcarthur…bc he met them, for instance….and stepgrandad about the invasion of japan.
and listening to some braggart or another at a dinner party talking abt working for haliburton in Central America, bringing the boulion home under a tar in a chevy luv.
all datapoints that one can fit together, over time, into a sort of cohesive narrative framework…and then compare that framework to what one can observe.
NC(and LATOC, before it, for me) is awesome for this ongoing exercise…all these far flung disparate POV’s and CV’s…
thats what we’ve got as a tool to cut through the FUD fog and attempt to get at something resembling Truth.
Hard to know whether Trump-in-private actually values a reality-based view. People who encounter him in at least semi-private settings (not-confidential non-transactional settings, such as dinner with public figures) describe him as humorous and gracious. No word on his prejudices, which I would expect to be consistent with the social-dominance orientation of his psychology.
The kayfabe of his reality star public performance blends in with and somewhat obscures the authoritarianism of his demagogic and sometimes populist political rhetoric and appeals.
At least as distorting of objective perception though is that Trump performs against the foil of a political opposition completely submerged in hypernormalization. The boomers of “the Resistance”, of “No Kings” rallies, of the politics of outrage and lawfare and Russiagate, are his nemesis, his chosen antithesis. Weirdly, against them, he can claim the mantle of fact. To refute “hoax”.
So true! So damn true! The sad thing is the Resistance Boomers are a problem that must be solved, which is why Trump is winning. He’s perfect to defeat them.
The real political split is as generational as it is partisan (and among the younger generation it’s very gender divided. Ethnic divisions are being blurred but gender divisions are at what IIRC is an all-time high.)
I do not have any insight into the nature of the gender division, but I think I experienced it in my last workplace, a business office, when the workforce skewed strongly young female with some suddenness. The office culture changed remarkably and not altogether for the good. The “longhouse” is the term. The types of sociopaths at large and their methods shifted. I have had multiple female colleagues and several bosses over the years but this was new stuff. Lots of tone policing and very aggressive at times.
How exactly that may translate to or interact with the larger political discourse remains a mystery to me. Political punditry, even online, seems mostly a bro activity. Is that an illusion? Something I am missing? Should I watch The View?
I observed this change when managing large #s of millennials, thankfully online. I believe the critical studies identity politics stuff that was a minority but vocal presence in the liberal arts depts when I was in college and mostly ignored by everyone else had taken a thorough grip by the 2000s and the Millennials inhaled.
Also there is a lot of evidence that women have been taking over the professional managerial class….just in time for it to be next in line to be crushed in the ongoing oligarichial expansion.
There’s a divide among the young because IMHO our culture treated women as the bosses and leaders of tomorrow.
Recently the cultural pendulum has swung back towards the males being in charge again.
As always the solution is class politics.
KEEP CALM AND CLASS ON!
but the much bigger divide is between the over 50s and the under 50s.
This classification of “over 50s”…venturing into what I call the “NY Times Millennials” territory?
Meaning, I was always sus of the focus around a particular group or type as being broadly representatative.
I understand your suspicion. FWIW I’m 60 myself.
I’m not talking about cultural pieces or general impressions though, the polling data has been dramatic and obvious since 2016. There was a huge majority of (then) under 35ers for Bernie and the older Dems were dead set against him.
Pattern repeated in 2020 and might have in 2024 had there been a primary.
This split has continued although Biden/Harris’ collapse has softened some of the older resistance to change but I haven’t seen that in polling data or electoral results yet.
Mamdani’s NY Primary win seems to have been a dam bursting moment.
So as to the grifting aspect, Trump either fully pardoned or got George Santos released from jail last week! What contempt they have for their own base (though still probably less than what the Dimmie Elites show to theirs, with all the hippy-punching of anyone mildly left) who were the targets for Santos’ insane mountain of lies (my mom died in 9/11 & I was present at the Boston marathon bombing; oops she’s still alive, no he wasn’t, etc.). They had their money stolen, but DJT says nothing to see here, it’s all fine. Maybe Santos will become a lobbyist?
Cabinet position with such fine lying skills? I watched him some during his campaign and he can tell fibs with the best of them.
But the good liars don’t constantly get caught.
Yea, they made Obama a saint.
Exactly. Not sure if you’re a classic rock fan but there was a big difference between Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones and Mick Jagger. Jones, who drowned unmourned and unloved at 27, couldn’t hide the fact that he was a complete scumbag.
Jagger and Richards were able to channel Jones’ immorality into some great records and indulge in similarly bad behavior without ever letting the “just a couple of middle class lads trying to survive becoming Gods of Rock” mask drop.
The difference between John Paul 2 and Benedict is similar to the difference between Obama and Biden. Helps to be charismatic to pull off the grift.
So true. A good conman doesn’t steal your money, he gets you to happily hand it over to him, and often multiple times and maybe you even insisting on giving more than he originally asked for.
Obama was/is one of the best. So many I know still wish for him to be president again. They want him so bad they would even vote for his wife.
I can’t think of two people who should be farther from that office than those two.
Amazing how this works. People love to be lied to by good liars.
“I can’t think of two people who should be farther from that office than those two.”
Really? How about the Clintons?
Scylla and Charybdis it is between those duos, eh? 😬
Really? How about the Clintons?
LOL! Great point. It really is a long list when you think about it.
A long list and getting a lot longer …
I really should have worked that one in. It was some epic contempt for GOP voters and consensus reality. I don’t even know that Trump got a bribe for doing it.
Probably unnecessary – just stoking outrage is enough for Trump.
Not so sure about the total collapse in trust prediction. Trust in institutions collapsing completely, well that’s already underway and will likely continue. But trust between individuals? I don’t think so, everyday communism and the networks of reciprocity and mutual exchange that are a feature of all our lives will mostly likely continue and would probably become even more important in that kind of scenario.
Those non-market exchanges at the individual and community level can even be the seeds for rebuilding our debased institutions. As long as we’re not all dead from climate change or nuclear war, or nuclear war induced climate change.
My assumption is that Carney, like many of us, is mostly interacting with people online rather than “in the trenches” as they say. Small group resiliancy is the hope but that requires a consensus which will ultimately require smashing the tower of babel and getting people back on the same page (literally).
To be fair, with Trump I do not think that drugs are a factor with him. Maybe Covid-brain, but not drugs. Trump is a creature from the business world but from the part that surrounds themselves with loyalists and yes men/women. Tulsi Gabbard nearly got herself pushed out of his circle over a minor disagreement and others would have taken note. But you also get the fawning with Trump and I have seen his golfing buddy Witkoff at a Cabinet meeting laying it on thick. Those who bring him bad news, aka reality, or information that disagrees with is ideas probably never make it near Trump himself. This goes beyond Group Think and steers itself into a personality cult in his government.
That’s all true, but then there also the persistent rumors that he’s been such a dedicated adderall user that he wears adult diapers.
I don’t believe he sees it as a recreational drug, but then, neither did Elvis.
Shit, I just found this Rolling Stone piece from 2024. Will have to do a sequel.
Went ahead and added it in.
well, that really explains a lot,lol.
and i can hear it, now:”not drugs…its medicine”.
which is what i’ll tell myself when i light that hogleg here in a bit.
and trump is famously a teetotaler…and i havent seen any evidence to the contrary. (Unlike, say, a certain cackling winemom who refuses to find a rock to get under)
but a real doctor, prescribing xanax or stims would feel entirely ok to such a one, in my experience.
(mom excluded…she wont take any medicine but levaquin(!??—long crazy tale)
Knowing nothing about such things, is Adderall our version of Pervitin?
similar. it’s a stimulant that is overprescribed to “treat” attention deficit disorder in the US
The great error of our time is the belief that trust cannot be generated where it is most needed. Yet the modern world operates on engineered trust. The reliability of aircraft engines, the integrity of money transfers, and the efficacy of medicine are all ensured by engineered practices. Curiously, in the USA we have no faith that human ingenuity can overcome grift, propaganda, and stagnation. Thus the famous Onion headline: “No Way to Prevent This’, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”
Fortunately, reform comes in waves, and the next cycle will sweep away much of the nonsense. People ultimately act in their material interest, and no amount of propaganda or delusion can overcome this force for long. Meanwhile, doomers will continue to proclaim doom.
Rapid and dramatic enough decline functions as doom.
It’s not that we have no have faith that “human ingenuity can overcome grift, propaganda, and stagnation,” it’s that our prosperity depends on grift, propaganda, and stagnation to the detriment of the rest of humanity. American ingenuity is dedicated to prolonging imperialism, whose horsemen include those three very elements.
Why would the American people want to overcome what fuels their ill-gotten standard of living? They know how their bread is buttered (with lies and blood). Even as that standard of living declines with imperial decline, they cling to its mouldering enormity like a man to an elephant’s tail as it tumbles over a cliff.
The Atrios post about drugs use by the decision makers, uppers mentioned specifically, reminded me of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb2pVuXHjlg/
Mad Men – Don Draper on Speed
I’d forgotten that scene. need to rewatch that series. Good TV version of John Lennon’s “Dr Robert”
Years after I had watched the series, I came across this author:
https://www.meer.com/en/94873-mad-men-fascism-and-the-american-dream/
(article version of a longer book by the writer)
I thought, “Damn, missed a good drinking game for a drinking show. Two shots for every reference to the f word.”
Odd coincidence finding “Mad Men” being mentioned here. I came across it at my local library a few weeks ago and began re-watching the series. Much obliged for the link to the article.
“And speaking of same, this tweet featuring the most maximally triumphant take on Trump’s foreign “policy” has to be included in any catalogue of Trump-era delirium”
A maximally triumphant presentation, but there is a pattern of disruption. I wouldn’t label it “Trump’s foreign policy”. However, I do consider of Brian B’s posts about “continuity of agenda”. Without rating success or failure of any of the measures, or going into detail for each cause of disruption, here’s a visualization of part of a pattern to consider (this one skipped over Venezuela, Iran and some others):
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-top-20-countries-in-debt-to-china/
This list shows more countries:
https://ceoworld.biz/2024/05/06/revealed-countries-most-in-debt-to-china-2024/
Many have been in the news lately with similar disruptions.
Thanks for a great thought provoking post.
As an old person, my take is the US has been in a state of genteel decline all my adult life. The financial crisis of 2008 feels like an inflection point when the decline became much less genteel and is still reverberating in society. I keep thinking of Chris Arnade’s book Dignity which documented the lives of “back row” people in America in the runup to the 2016 election (and was mentioned more than once in this blog then IIRC). Part of the narrative at the time was to inform those people their lived experience over the past eight years was not valid and Hillary Clinton was the answer to their discontent.
Trump was elected.
I think you’ve summed it up perfectly. Btw, I see the anger growing everywhere in “the West”, it’s just that the US has its own peculiar style and is leading the way, to hell.
“One of the most challenging aspects of navigating the polycrisis is to try to ascertain the seemingly delusional mental states of many major players…”
And possibly ourselves. In my old age, I find myself more and more curious about how economic, cultural, emotional, and political/technological factors/strands seem deeply interwoven into my own personal motivations.
For example, in the 1960s I thought that the sole origins of my rage and anger in politics were because I was threatened with being drafted into a war in a place I couldn’t initially find on a map. I was then emotionally attracted to the most extreme forms of political protest. But 60 years later, what I now call my self-righteous indignation/anger/resentment about the Vietnam war was also significantly linked to the hurt and pain of childhood experiences that were then only dimly understood or denied.
I could say, “me, too”. I find myself having conversations with myself I should have had earnestly 50 years ago.
There was a time when Mother Jones magazine was very narrowly targeted to a readership who felt betrayed by parental units and whose politics reflected that. I recognized that for the obvious reasons but don’t always pick up other cases, though I suppose liberal and conservative corral several varieties with a similar foundation.
“Grifters can only thrive by profiting off of the margins and the limits of that underlying foundation of trust.”
Disagree with this. In a no trust society grifters would be totally unleashed. We would have no means of exposing their con if we have no verifiable fact to counter it with.
Got to beg to differ as someone who’s read every version of PT Barnum’s best-selling autobiography and Melville’s The Confidence Man too many times. Trust is essential to grift. Without trust, all theft is by stealth or violence.
Agree about the nature of grifting. The end result of “successful” grifting is a betrayal. The feeling of betrayal is a reaction to what is perceived as the abuse of trust.
As is often said, when you can fake sincerity, you have it made. Perhaps that is why so many of our politicos come off looking like second-rate actors. Reagan began as a second-rate actor, so, he was perfect for the role of President.
One reason I consider the profession of politico to be a rich man’s game, now equal opportunity, is the degree that dissembling is an integral part of “upper class” social relations. (This might be my bias showing, but, there it is.)
Stay safe.
The pickpocket had to physically interact with his mark to get their money, whereas an online pickpocket merely asks the mark to send it to them.
No mention of Cocaine when it is being brought into Baltimore by the Container load (40,000 pounds at a time) seems like an odd omission.
It’s not just the Whitehouse, many congressional staffers work insane hours under intense pressure and self medicate with whatever is available and socially acceptable in their milieu.
Booze is a lot less popular than it used to be, the drugs one uses/misuses are also a class signifier.
Adderall and Cocaine are cool, booze other than wine is not.
cocaine is black market so harder to document, but yes, very popular on Cap Hill in my experience in the 2000s
Speaking of cocaine, I think that the entire nation needs to send an apology to Hunter Biden. When that bag of cocaine was found in the White House, everybody just assumed that it belonged to Hunter instead of being part of the White House staff goodie bag.
Don’t slander my Acting POTUS for Life Dream man, Hunter B! That toot was his all the way. He had a lock on the WH toot market in his day. A lock!
Gosh memories …
Tim Robbins movie Bob Roberts scene where he dictates a response to a little girls Xmas card – don’t do Crack, its a ghetto drug. Meanwhile one of his Stepford wife looking assistants pop a bloody nose – ha.
Not to mention the Raygun admin were totally aware of everything happening in Florida back in the day. It was an epic three’fer – banks were making silly packet, twas seen as making the right sort of entrepreneurs/financial types more productive, and lastly staved off a recession in Florida that would have effected the GOP in next elections.
Even here in OZ now Cocaine is everywhere in the capital cities and its silly expensive and cut hard. Few years ago before wifes stroke and up at Noosa for Xmas brother in law was saying he could not go to anyone’s place for drinks without getting offered a line. Anywho I saw this movie living in Calif South Bay LA in the 80s. Big reason I moved to Boulder, CO at the time.
Good luck with a bunch of dopamine crashed out minions or BSD’s …. thingy …
i think a lot of it is that, people want someone to trust. they want someone to lead and guide them. the world is confusing, and having news media going “this is the answer” is a bit of a relief. the classic david foster wallace quote, “There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.”
this is legitimantely a lot of why i am catholic. there are so many complicated political issues that i do not have the time to think about deeply, so i happily offload the burden of thinking deeply to the catholic church. my thoughts on a lot of topics are just “whatever the pope said.” in a world where people need to have opinions on everything, it is desirable to have some institution larger than the self to offload the burden of having opinions onto. it’s just that the institutions people put their trust in suck. (will get to that later.)
in many ways i have offloaded a lot of the work of having opinions to this site. other sites as well, but like, i am too busy to be looking deeply into certain political issues. i have 3 jobs right now (ripppp) alongside being a student. and while i do understand the biases and trust the credibility of my news sources, there’s always a voice in the back of my head going “maybe i’m the delusional one here.” my glorious bloggers vs their despicable msm. which is where having a moral backing and certainty in christ is a relief.
as for institutions, i think a lot of it is also groupthink toxic positivity, where the loudest voices are not the smartest ones. and coasting off vibes, not rigorous consideration of options.
i worked on a local political campaign in 2024 for the democratic party. it was a weird vibe. sometimes someone on the team would have an idea, and internally others would think the idea was stupid, but be too polite to tell them it was stupid. one person wants campaign buttons, “sure i’ll make campaign buttons” but nobody else really wants campaign buttons. there was a mild beef over standouts where a bunch of people wanted more standouts (understandable, standouts are fun) but the Big Dem advisor we had was like “standouts are ineffective, send more mailers.” often one person wanting a thing would result in it happening, because nobody really knew what they were doing. the people just needed direction so bad, that it was easy to get pulled in the wrong direction. i think a lot of politicians are just as lost as the average person. and it’s not necessarily malice, just wanting easy answers.
also, everyone was trying to hype the candidate up, manifesting a win in many ways. it felt like hyping up your friend to ask for a girl’s number at a bar. “just do it just try it.” regardless of if you think they’ll succeed, feeling obligated to support them. the campaign manager would tell me about the things she was keeping from the candidate as not to stress the candidate out more.
there was a weird toxic positivity to it all. hard to describe. very much herd mentality. i think a lot of politics is like this. sometimes i see snarky internet guys mocking photos of politicians but they just make me think of the campaign i worked for, and how every politician probably has some hypeman going “you should post this online!” politicans are influencers, and get affected by the whole social media thing a lot. it really is a circus, where politicians want likes and such.
in my experience (10 years of working on massive political campaigns at a mid-tier staffer and consultant level, top tier on smaller campaigns), candidates are almost all narcissists and almost no one really understands how communications works (this includes most of the “pros” who are more focused on profiting off the campaign) so yea, very educational dynamic.
candidates and managers are besieged with suggestions, mostly stupid (“get your candidate on the Daily Show” was a long-time favorite of mine) so they deliberately tune out most suggestions.
re: there’s always a voice in the back of my head going “maybe i’m the delusional one here.”
Hold on to that voice! when you stop hearing it you ARE definitely the delusional one.
“Survival of the Fittest [financially -natch] writ large ….
Have a productive[tm] day …
Let’s talk about the people who originally made Trump the way he is.
When he was sent to military school, you can bet that he was bullied and possibly
physically attacked by the inmates, er, students. Of, course, that’s why
that kind of school is eternally popular with wealthy parents who decide the child
is ‘spoiled’, and needs discipline. Or in the case of King Charles, the child was
overly protected and needed a dose of manhood to ‘toughen them up’.
Well, sometimes the magic works and sometimes it doesn’t. I myself was bullied
in military school, but I found the one place where no bullies dared to go-
the library. Trump in his impotence must have vowed revenge, but it came
out against US. But he is a very insecure would-be revenger. I would suggest
his high-school nemeses be publicly shamed, but most of them are probably
billionaires. Furthermore, in his current state, he would probably lionize these
same felonious men, and give them cabinet posts instead of giving them their
long past comuppance. Trump is a straw man with a little frightened inner child
inside. Anyone else in his condition would probably deserve compassion,
but his soul (if he had one) is curdled into a sour mess.
if those stories are true( that is always an “if”), trump WAS one of the bullies in military school.
IMO, my guess he was both “born” to be the giant A=hole that he is, and always was…. AND he was the product of his father and mother…. People like that grooming their children to be “strong”…. which only means uncaring. To get over on anyone for anything means something else in their heads/worlds; as opposed to everyone else who just calls them ;”sociopath”.
the mindset of lots of people on western long island where trumps family did business…. there are a lot of a-holier-than-thou kinda people. Teaching their kids that that is right.
Maybe like the zionist kids and the nazi kids before them; who really think they are supposed to be like this… as opposed to everyone else in a more sane time.
> And speaking of same, this tweet featuring the most maximally triumphant take on Trump’s foreign “policy” has to be included in any catalogue of Trump-era delirium:
JeeeeeeezusssssFamilybloggingKeeeerrrriiiist!
The absolute worst part of this is a (WH?) “reporter” asking why Trump doesn’t “have the coast guard stop them”?
Do these people even know #WhereTF Venzuela is?!! Do they think it’s off the coast of Miami somewhere? Do they understand the jurisdiction of the Coast Guard?!!!
OH. MY. GAWD.
Tbf, the Coast Guard has been operating in some pretty strange places… I suspect that southern shores of the Caribbean may not be all that unfamiliar to them.
I went to the coast guard website to double check as well. Yes, you can find the US Coast guard operating in Japanese and Cuban waters – both places not being US territories; but galavanting down to 10º above the equator is an immense reach.
I think this also is one of those times in history that could be called an era of mass hysteria.
It seems to be the result of the war on terror, and the 24/7/365 stream of never-ending propaganda and social psy-op programs.
For the last 24 years, the content of our information streams has been almost entirely false or mis-characterized.
Everyone under 30 years old has only known this environment all of their lives. And considering how thorough the propaganda has been for the entire lifetime of anyone alive to be reading this; it all adds up to a society positioned to be afflicted with this disease of mass hysteria.
A good education in 5 th grade about current events, and then civics classes and actual history in high school would act as a vaccine to hopefully make the children immune to social control. But the opposite has/is happening.
I just think everyone is nuts.
The group “after skool” had a good video about “mass psychosis”… about this subject.
They also had the good one about the allegory of the cave…. for those who notice
I’ll check out that video! thanks