"A man who could insist that it got sunny the moment he started his inaugural address- when we all saw the rain falling...is the kind of man who could convince himself that it would be fine to start a nuclear war, because of course he would survive the retaliatory attack - and so would his family - and whatever people he thinks are his friends or fans". - Keith Olbermann, 'Trump Is F*cking Crazy', p. 221.
We all knew that Donald Trump would react badly to defeat. But his refusal to concede, the destructiveness of his ongoing temper tantrum and his obsession with the belief he actually won, ought to be of concern to all. Especially as this misfit inhabiting his own reality has two more months to wreak havoc if his reality fails to conform with the outward objective one. And in his first presser since the election yesterday, saying ominously: "Yeah, I will leave but a lot of things can happen between now and January 20th!"
Such as what things? The Turd didn't say but one can only imagine. Keith Olbermann in his above -cited quote, in his book 'Trump Is F*cking Crazy (This is Not A Joke'), nailed this orange miscreant's pathology and how it translates into worry for every living human in this time. Because we have a misfit totally detached from objective reality - living in his own - who also has control over the nuclear codes.
When I posed a hypothetical to my Psychology post-doc niece Shayl her response was chilling, indeed terrifying. I asked what if a person of power - say a president- lived in a reality in which he totally believed he won an election, a 2nd term- but which he really had lost in the objective reality. And so would soon be displaced from power. Would there be any consequences if and when the actual reality broke through (say with Electoral College certification) into his reality? She replied: "Well, if he only believes his reality and that the other outer one is genuinely false, he would feel compelled to destroy it. For a sitting president the most expeditious way would be to launch a nuclear war - so as to destroy the reality he refuses to accept."
In other words, this would comport with Olbermann's conjecture, and hence be analogous to what the Greg Stillson president character did in 'The Dead Zone'. See e.g.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj9M34DzAKo&t=21s
Olbermann explored Trump's pathology of certain belief in his own alternate reality in his book, writing - as early as January 23, 2017:
"Trump has proved that not only will he lie to America about anything big or small, but just as important he will lie to himself about anything big or small. And more troubling yet, he will compel men weaker than even himself to lie on his behalf about anything big or small."
Thereby foreseeing our current situation when so many Republican traitors have promoted and enabled his claptrap that he may have really won and the post- election chaos and specious legal challenges need to continue. This as polarization and enmity mount as well as loss of faith in the electoral process. Olbermann again:
"Worst of all, the lies will convince some people, and they will convince one especially dangerous person in particular: himself. Because what Trump does not believe cannot be true. And this way lies madness and every evil great and small. Including the end of this country in a literal sense - and perhaps the end of civilization because like somebody living in a completely dreamlike state he will not believe the outcome of any of his actions could be failure or disaster or something harmful to himself."
Hence, the spectacle we beheld yesterday at his first "press conference" in weeks, where he belched "I know for a fact Joe Biden could not have gotten 80 million votes!" With CBS' Ben Tracy this morning, after the clip played, asserting: "In fact Biden did get more than 80 million votes but Trump refuses to accept that reality." So yeah, in Trump's misshapen reality that never happened. Also, in his reality his victory was stolen from him, confirmed when he squawked yesterday: "So the numbers are corrupt, they're all rigged and the people know it!" Despite his own cyber security chief (Chris Krebs) asserting in THIS reality - shared by the sane - that it was among the most secure elections ever (for which truth he was fired by tweet).
A day earlier this psychotic sore loser Dotard yelped at a Repub event in Gettysburg: "We have to turn the election over!"
Thereby with one sentence, skewering Holman Jenkins' Jr's latest bilge spouted in his Wednesday WSJ column: "Meanwhile the media fibs slightly when it accuses Trump of trying to 'overturn the election'."
But it can't be a 'fib' if Trump openly barks it out, as he did to the Reeptard conspiracy wackos assembled in Gettysburg. Besides, in his heart Trump believes the election can be overturned because he believes - again in his reality - that he won and was gypped out of it by a clever and corrupt "rigging". (Despite over 30 cases brought by his clown crew of lawyers, all but one of which has been tossed out -- with one specious Pennsylvania case pending.)
Even so, it’s very unlikely that Trump will manage to overturn the election results. But he’s doing all he can to wreck this nation "salt its soil" - on his way out, in ways large and small. Among other things, littering the federal agencies with his poison toad lackeys - often in civil servant positions - that will be difficult to root out. Also, replacing top defense and Intel personnel with his own goons and yes men. But this is only the beginning and we still cannot rule out that he won't do something even more drastic and destructive in the next 8 weeks. That is if the outer reality of his election loss finally comes crashing into his false reality that he won - say when the electoral votes are finally certified in the meeting of the Electoral College, December 14.
All this triggering the question from our Dutch friend, Frans: "If Trump was to get the nuclear codes and punch them in to prevent a world with Biden from materializing who's to stop him?" We sought to reassure Frans in our Zoom session, and Janice said she didn't believe he'd go that far. I said: "I believe he's watched every second by hidden cameras and if they caught anything like that an immediate intervention from the CIA, NSA would be initiated."
Of course, I didn't know any such thing would transpire. It was purely wishful thinking, but I hoped to hell it was so! Olbermann himself lets the reader know the folly that ensues if one really subscribes to his or her own reality, starting with Trump (p.222):
"At the CIA Trump told the agents he has a 'running war with the media'. He does not have a running war with the media. He has a running war with reality. His reality is what he says it is. You try alternative reality or facts in your life for one hour: drive on whichever side of the road you want, let your kids play with the stove and power tools, write checks against money you don't have. Just see how all that goes."
Bingo! And yet Trump is doing - has done - the equivalent of all that and more. Most prescient are Olbermann's words at the end of his chapter:
"We will all be lucky to survive having had him in charge. But even if we do survive, it will still be the greatest crisis of our lives. All our lives."
And bear in mind this was written in January 2017, three years before the coronavrius was even heard of, and Trump's response to it. Is there an even more terrifying crisis awaiting us? We don't know, only that Trump promised "a lot can happen between now and the 20th!"
See Also:
20 days of fantasy and failure: Inside Trump’s quest to overturn the election
Excerpt:
"The facts were indisputable: President Trump had lost.
But Trump refused to see it that way. Sequestered in the White House and brooding out of public view after his election defeat, rageful and at times delirious in a torrent of private conversations, Trump was, in the telling of one close adviser, like “Mad King George, muttering, ‘I won. I won. I won.’ ”
AND:
by Joan McCarter | November 25, 2020 - 9:04am | permalink
The sore loser impeached squatter in the Oval Office is never going to concede the election, but he will leave. And he's going to douse everything with kerosene and light a match on his way out. That's by doing things like putting a completely unqualified loyalist and conspiracy theory proponents on the transition team for a department as critical as Defense.
It also means further isolating the U.S. by withdrawing from critical arms control agreements. The U.S. officially withdrew from the Open Skies Treaty on Monday, a post-Soviet international agreement that allowed the participating countries—in particular the U.S. and Russia—to conduct surveillance flights over each other's countries. Not only is Trump officially withdrawing us from the treaty, he's getting rid of the U.S. Air Force planes that have been used for nearly 30 years to conduce the surveillance.
by Robert Freeman | November 25, 2020 - 7:55am | permalink
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