Discussion: Obama Rails Against Trump: He's 'Not Going To Make Your Lives Better'

[bluestatedon]

A descent from narcissism to galloping megalomania followed by a complete breakdown was always in the cards and the most likely outcome.

A Face in the Crowd (1957) - "Dark Night of the Soul" scene

- YouTube

[katscherger]

You nailed it!

[darrtown]

I’m really gonna be missing Mr Obama.

[sysprog]

The President ‘railed’? He ‘tore into’? C’mon. This is OBAMA. He told the audience what they should beware of. He ‘educated’.

[chammy]

The President was so on his game yesterday. He never acknowledged Trump by name. He called him the republican candidate. He was stellar, delicious and so on his game. He gave a nice economics lesson to the people of Elkhart Indiana to remind them that unemployment was 19% in their area when he took office and it is now 4% and reminded them of all the progresses we’ve made and how it makes no sense to go back, He was beyond fabulous, as usual.

[chammy]

I want to lock all the doors in the WH so he can;t leave.

[mattinpa]

Ralph, it’s certainly and sadly true that we’re all better off if a notorious private citizen is mocked than if a dangerous candidate is being argued against. Trump presented little threat to the republic in 2011. But I think contempt-laden condemnation from the likes of Obama, Clinton, Warren et al. may well be the high-water mark and a thing Trump should enjoy while it lasts. If character is destiny, and most of the time it seems to be, mockery and rejection are his ultimate fate. He’s turned the public understanding of what and who he is into a kind of pyramid scheme over the years, and I think there’s a bunch of strong evidence it’s about to crumble. Could be the optimism talking but he’s got dueling fraud trials, Mark Cuban wondering aloud if he’s a billionaire, an entire political party acting like the parents of a bride who’s made a deeply foolish choice in the husband department—but I prattle on. We could all continue the list, though. He’s having a pretty crummy week, let’s put it like that.

[hoagie]

Trump reminds me of my beloved Labrador Retriever–now gone. When riding in the backseat of the car, he would cock his head and stare at the window when he wanted it opened. I would see him from the driver’s seat and push the button to open his window. I KNOW he thought that it was his cocking his head and staring that opened the window. Pavlovian. That’s rump.

[centralasiaexpat]

He’s just an asshole. Lots of billionaires are just like him. It’s unusual that a mere millionaire is so obnoxious and conceited, though.

[clunkertruck]

 And usually the answer is he doesn’t have an answer.”

Sorry, Mr. President … But, as of yet, the word NEVER is more apropos —

[centralasiaexpat]

Obama doesn’t say the name because is respecting the practice of the Republican leadership.

[mattinpa]

@hoagie

Trump reminds me of my beloved Labrador Retriever–now gone. When riding in the backseat of the car, he would cock his head and stare at the window when he wanted it opened. I would see him from the driver’s seat and push the button to open his window. I KNOW he thought that it was his cocking his head and staring that opened the window. Pavlovian. That’s rump.

It’s funny you mention that. I read a while back that experiments with pointing, etc. seem to have established that cats and dogs can grasp what’s called the “theory of mind,” the understanding that other individuals have their own subjective world, thoughts, feelings, etc. If you point, they’re capable of understanding you’re a separate person with your own thoughts, one of which is that you’d like them to look where you’re pointing.

And Trump, he can’t do that. A cat or a dog has a more sophisticated understanding of the difference between itself and another consciousness than does Donald Trump. He’s like some sort of primitive life form, a virus or bacillus, mindlessly responding to various stimuli. As Mark Singer put it, he’s got “an existence unmolested by the rumblings of a soul.”

[suicide_arsonist]

Well, yes, for anyone except Trump. As if they count!
From the podium, he will be in heaven. An that is all that counts, right?

[mattinpa]

@centralasiaexpat

He’s just an asshole. Lots of billionaires are just like him. It’s unusual that a mere millionaire is so obnoxious and conceited, though.

I wouldn’t blame you for getting impatient with the amateur psychologizing but I can’t agree on this one. I’ve known plenty of rich folks. Some are, indeed, entitled assholes. I don’t think that’s a form of mental illness. A number of therapists have publicly said he’s pretty obviously and severely got NPD going on. There’s a ton of other disturbing stuff going on over the years with him, and it fits any criterion you want to look at for mental disorder, abnormal psychology, and so forth. Boy ain’t right.

[yail_bloor]

Sounds heavenly. I can see Trump’s angels singing their deadly hymn. Don’t blink, by the way. Blink and you’re dead.:

[hoagie]

As I’ve said before, I hope HRC has good psychologists advising her on how to handle rump. In some ways, it will be cruel because the goal is not to be therapeutic but rather to unravel him, but hell, the Republic is at stake.

[ajileye]

@captaincommonsense

“rails”? This president doesn’t “rail” against anything.

Here…here!

Commonsense isn’t a flourishing attribute of hyperbolic news-barkers

[centralasiaexpat]

You are right that I am impatient with amateur psychologizing. I also recall amateur analyses of Bush being pronounced. The kind of therapist who will publicly diagnose someone they have not met is not generally the kind I respect. Trump can be diagnosed as unfit for office without resorting to armchair diagnosis.

My feelings on this matter are colored by an event of about 40 years ago. Reuben Fine, a practicing Freudian analyst as well as a chess grandmaster, at one time ranked in the top five players in the world, publicly humiliated Bobby Fischer with some sort of diagnosis. I believe he violated professional code in doing so. Additionally, as a player who had been absolutely destroyed by Fischer on the chessboard, he had an ulterior motive.

Therapists are a kind of modern clergy. To proclaim someone as mentally ill is a bit like calling someone a sinner in that the layman in either setting does not have access to the hierophantic wisdom behind the pronouncement. There are better ways to deal with Trump.

[clunkertruck]

@mattinpa

I’m pretty foggy on child development but I believe there’ve been models that say until a certain age—4 or 5, say—a child doesn’t really understand there’s a real world out there that follows its own rules. If you put something in a box, the child believes it’s disappeared, and so forth. He’s got that infantile sociopathic thing going on—he really can’t grasp that there’s a world outside the me-centered Trumpian universe, that there are other people in it with their own identity, thoughts, and feelings, that there’s a universe independent of him and indifferent to him. I doubt he ever will.

I know some very wealthy people – Most are very cognizant of the world around them – But there are a few who have a serious “sickness” – GREED – Dollar signs spin in their heads as though the arm was pulled on the “one armed bandit” – Problem, though, is that the spinning never stops –
It seems to be such a distraction, that they lose any and all realization that there are consequences to any action — And they seem quite addicted to the phenomena – When it takes hold, it is very common that the behavior leaves devastation in it’s wake –

They are quite the " dollar chasing after a dime" folks — And it is clinical –
I (almost) feel sorry for him —

[mattinpa]

@hoagie

As I’ve said before, I hope HRC has good psychologists advising her on how to handle rump. In some ways, it will be cruel because the goal is not to be therapeutic but rather to unravel him, but hell, the Republic is at stake.

Psyops, the military calls it. All’s fair in this situation.