Tag: Trump

Trump On 60Minutes

I watched Lesley Stahl attempt to interview Donald Trump on 60Minutes last night. He was amazingly childish and immature while managing to also be arrogant and condescending. I’ve actually had employees like him. Managing them was as bizarre as his behavior on the television show.

Trump’s cognitive dissonance was frequently revealed. He’s always dismissing the mainstream press as false news and denigrating their veracity. Meanwhile, when Ms. Stahl asks him for proof, he tells her to read the newspapers. Well, which is it, Donald? Fake news or evidence?

The FBI that he so often disparages was cited and lauded in the plot to kidnap Governor Whitmer of Michigan. Yet, again, if his justice department had the evidence that’s being published routinely (according to him) in newspapers, why isn’t that same Justice Department bringing charges?

I won’t address the multiple times he was exposed as lying. Just not worth it because it’s surreal. He can be shown videos of the things he’s said, shown videos of evidence revealing his lies (like when he’s claimed “everybody behind me had a mask” at an Arizona rally), and quoted verbatim, and simply refuses to acknowledge that he’s been caught in the lie. That’s nothing new; he’s been doing it since he began running for the presidency, and continued it once he moved into the White House.

Nor is it worth talking about his healthcare plans. They’re in the same blackhole of existence as his tax returns. He will never reveal either.

The cognitive dissonance, and that his supporters don’t see it, is worth addressing.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

1978.

This song seemed everywhere for a while, but it’s one of those that’s been put on the bottom of the pile. It doesn’t seem to get much air play these days. Did its mix of acoustic and electric guitars not age well?

“Fooling Yourself (Angry Young Man)” by Styx rose through my mind’s layers as I read political news from the right about how great Trump is. Absolutely everything, from this young man’s point of view, was brilliant. Trump, to him, is powerful and intelligent, returning the United States to a position of international prestige and influence.

COVID-19? Why, that’s overhyped, as Trump just proved, in the young (his claim – I don’t know how old he is, just his claims) right-winger’s mind. No worse than the flu and already going away. No, the greatest threat to America comes from “libtards” and their willingness to give everything away (he believes “Obama destroyed America and the economy”). Further, Trump’s recent sickness was really just a cover for him to rise up and finally vanquish the Dems and “libtards”.

Okay.

So, yes, reading him, I thought, “You are really fooling yourself.” I can’t say that he’s under a rock; no, he’s fooling himself with his conviction that everything on the “lamestream media” is fake news. I don’t understand how they — these right-wingers who insist everything is fake news — receives the real news. That’s an opaque process. So, I reiterate, he’s fooling himself.

Which brings me back to Styx’s 1978 song, “Fooling Yourself (Angry Young Man)” from their album, The Grand Illusion. For my part, I think Trump’s claims about what he’s done is just grand illusion. Maybe it’s just me fooling myself.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Blame Paul Krugman for today’s song.

I was reading his post about zombies. You’d conclude, then, that today’s music features music by or about zombies.

Nope.

Krugman addressed Republicans et al who won’t or can’t change their thinking about unemployment compensation, the social safety net, and the economy despite decades of validated data that the Republicans are wrong. I then widened my scope of thought to include civil rights and equality. Voting rights. Police force and violence. Eventually my aperture narrowed to change.

Raise your hand if you’re convinced change is easy. For most, it isn’t. Change messes with psychology and comfort zones, habits and vices, and the way it’s always been versus the way we’d like it to be. Trump and his followers are already demonstrated that they’re mired in tar pits; they can’t and won’t change.

All this brought me to songs about trying to change. There are numerous musical releases about seasons and change. I went with Tracy Chapman’s 1988 song, “Fast Car”.

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Monday’s Theme Music

A conversational tic, “Do you know what I mean,” triggered recollection of the Lee Michaels 1968 song. Know what I mean?

It fits for today as topic lines are starkly drawn. Voting by mail can’t work, they say, but I did it throughout my military career and since moving to Oregon in 2005, so I think it works, know what I mean?

Trump couldn’t come up with shit for the pandemic, but he eagerly sends geared paramilitary Feds to cities led by Dems, know what I mean?

Pro baseball started playing in bubbles in the U.S. and now they’re canceling games because players have tested positive, know what I mean?

COVID-19 deaths are taking place, and positive cases are rising, they canceled the in person Republican convention but still want to open businesses and send children to school, you know what I mean?

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Trump often declares how others should feel. He loves extolling the greatness of himself, and how wonderful he is. “I’m the greatest,” he’ll often declare. “People should be thanking me.”

Not me; I’ve not seen anything come from his miserable administration that cues up thanks.

Somehow, from coalescing thoughts and manifesting feelings, up rose New Order’s “Blue Monday” (1983):

And still, I find it so hard
To say what I need to say
But, I’m quite sure that you’ll tell me
Just how I should feel today

h/t to Genius.com
I don’t believe the song ever mentions Monday. That amuses me. The vocalist’s robotic, deadpan delivery offers a delicious counterbalance to the lyrics, no doubt by design.

Enjoy your day. Let me know how you feel.

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Memorial Day

With 97,000 plus deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the United States in 2020 and states starting to re-open, I believe we’ll probably start seeing a new meme about ‘Memorial Day’ as we’ll certainly cross 100,000 deaths before Memorial Day.

Which prompts me to recall Trump’s February 26 comment. “You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”

Today, three months later, we’re at 1,637,593 cases in the United States, which is a long way from zero.

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Political Rant

Sorry, but I’ve reached a saturation point with the POTUS and the coronavirus. I need to vent before I bust a spleen (yes, a new phrase that I just made up). (Yeah, that’s a lie; it’s an old expression.) (And I’m not going to bust a spleen.)

See? Consistent. Exaggerate; I own up to it. Lie, same. Consistent.

But, here in the last two days, we have Trump telling the states that they don’t need as many ventilators as they claim.

Trump downplays need for ventilators as New York begs to differ

Meanwhile, he’s berating (and threatening) Ford and GM for not making more ventilators, fast. (Side irritation, as part of that, he’s demanding that GM open their Lordstown, Ohio plant, a plant that GM sold in 2019. Always on top of things, that dithering Donald.)

Trump lashes out at GM, Ford over ventilators

Even as he’s claiming that too many ventilators are being requested and that GM and Ford must make more faster (and sooner), he’s telling states that he won’t give them more unless they’re nice to him.

‘It’s a two-way street’: Trump suggests federal coronavirus aid will be given to governors who ‘treat us well’

Yet, even as he says these things, he said a few weeks ago, “And we’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” (March 10, 2020)

Prepared? Doesn’t sound like it. Doesn’t look like it.

These statements do not align; they are not consistent. Some might claim that it’s part of a dog and pony show for the public’s consumption, but the inconsistencies don’t strike me as such.

Today, the United States took the lead in total number of cases, almost reaching 97,000 as I write this, surpassing the totals in China and Italy. We’re fortunate to have not met their death totals, but with this administration acting in its mercurial, disorganized ways, it feels like that’s just a matter of time.

The rant is over. That is all.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Read a WSJ/NBC poll results. Posted today, the poll was conducted during 11 – 13 March 2019. It was about the coronavirus. The surprising results weren’t about support for the POTUS (not much changed there). No, more surprising was that most polled, particularly Republicans, didn’t think COVID-19 would have a major impact on their lives.

The poll was conducted as the NBA was shuttering the season for a while. The POTUS mad a speech that Wednesday and the stock exchanges showed a brief rebound. Since then…well, the news speaks for itself about what’s been shut down. It’s easier to list what isn’t shut down or impacted by the coronavirus. I guess it isn’t a surprise, then, as the POTUS has previously denounced COVID-19 as a hoax, or overblown as fake news by the media. Fox News happily supported those points for a while.

I then read another commentary on Italy’s situation (over twenty-five thousand cases now, and twenty-one hundred deaths). Then came an article that the U.S. (with over four thousand cases today) is where Italy was two weeks ago.

Finally, I read about Patient 31. She’s a woman in South Korea who carried on life as usual, attending church, eating at a lunch buffet, and working through a fever, a carrier who didn’t go and get tested, a woman now identified with a spike in South Korea’s coronavirus cases, a woman now considered a super-carrier.

Then I thought back to all the Americans who plan to continue business as usual, just as Patient 31 did.

From that came an old Bob Seger melody, “American Storm” (1986). Seger’s song was about a different epidemic, the increasing use of cocaine. But all the warning signs were ignored, and it spread. Feels like another song, about another storm, is due.

 

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