Tuesday, June 01, 2021

TRUMP IS GULLIBLE AND DANGEROUS, BUT HE'S NOT CRAZY

The most important news story of the day is this tweet:


It's easy to laugh:
The savvy response to this kind of thing is that of course he doesn’t believe it, it’s just part of an eleventydimensional scheme to A B and C, etc.

The truth is probably simpler: Donald Trump is a deranged old man who genuinely believes some completely crazy things.
Also:


So is he just nuts? Or does he know something's coming?


Or is it just about the cash?


I'm not sure it's any of those things. Trump was the president of the United States, but he's also an ignorant old white male Fox News viewer who thinks like most other ignorant old white male Fox News viewers: He believes we're constantly on the verge of a liberal apocalypse and he thinks wild conspiracies are plausible. People who believe nonsense -- that Democrats are cannibal pedophiles, that 9/11 was an inside job, that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are real, that the COVID vaccine contains microchips -- aren't necessarily crazy. Most of them are just gullible. That kind of gullibility is epidemic in America right now, but most of the people who falls victim to it aren't mentally ill.

There probably are plots to reinstate Trump in the works. It's likely that most of the schemes are laughably inept, but others might be dangerous even if they don't succeed -- like the January 6 riots. And one of these days the rule-or-ruin Republicans really are going to kill someone prominent, or come very close.

Trump is probably listening to bullshit artists like Sidney Powell, Roger Stone, Mike Flynn, and Mike Lindell. They get off on impressing an ex-president; he gets off on their promises of a restoration to his former glory. It would be sad if it weren't a sign of a once-serious country in apparently irreversible decline.

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