From Philip G Zieglers's "God's Adversary and Ours: A Brief Theology of the Devil" page 92: "Crucially, it seems to me, diabolical falsehood and lying keeps close company with the problem of idolatry. For the problem of idolatry is the problem of false gods...and also the false worship of the true God. The problem of idolatry, then, is precisely the problem of discerning and recognizing what is true in the midst of the flurry of the ersatz, the pseudo-, the imitation, the merely 'god-like', the divine-ish. As idolators discover, our betrayal of the truth here is soon enough returned in kind, as the idol itself inevitable betrays our trust in turn.....John 8:44 claims that when the devil lies "he speaks according to his own nature for he is a liar and the father of lies, and the devil is one in whom there is no truth....these claims are as close to a metaphysical definition of the being of the devil as we have yet come across. Diabolical enmity to truth goes deep, indeed all the way down - it is congenital, constitutional. To be the devil is to be incapable of truth."
It’s hard not to be glib, bullshit artist or lunatic dementia patient? Seriously, it’s both. As an expert bullshitter who has made a lifetime career screwing business associates with his bullshit he now finds he’s bit off just a little too much. Add in some dementia and age enhanced mental illness, he finds himself in a corner of his own making.
My fear, and I don’t believe this is irrational, is that the guy who always out outrages himself to wiggle out of tight situations will reach for … wait for it … nuclear weapons.
T is a very unwell person. Not just a madman or a person suffering with dementia, he is sick...in the mind and body. Watch his slow walking, his lethargic speech Wednesday. His incoherent and unintelligible ramblings are getting much worse. His anger has worsened. He is more disconnected than ever. His daily erratic behavior has worsened. Everything about T right now and I believe going forward will only heighten these deep seated characteristics. And lest we forget, T's Dad had Alzheimers. And there is a certain factor in genes that lends itself to the possibility of T in the beginning stages. My father in law ( a gentle man) had Alzheimers and I can tell you that erratic behavior, anger, lethargy, slow movements, incoherence, late night dictates, lack of inhibitions (such as calling Black people the "n" word, yes, I was so shocked when my father in law said that), lack of sleep and more were all part of the early stages. And the silence from the Republican elected officials is just as bad as T himself. The GOP is complicit with every single thing that T and his minions have done and are doing to allow T to destroy our nation, our reputation and our children's future. I am sad ... and furious.
I think that in the coming prosecutions, we need a more top-heavy approach. We need to prioritize those at the top, and focus on those underneath mostly insofar as they can turn evidence against their superiors. Maybe starting at the very bottom is a more tried and true approach in general, but in this case the imperative to send a message to the world is urgent.
And we must also *heavily emphasize* what Mark Hertling said about the distinction between enlisted vs. officer oaths (which I'm stunned we didn't hear about more, particularly from Mark Kelly and those Congresspeople who were under attack from Pigsbreath for reminding the military of their oaths to the Constitution). When we punish "lower-tier" people (i.e. below politically appointed top brass), it needs to be the officer class.
In my view, we are witnessing the catastrophic final devolution of a fundamentally disordered mind. This disorder has been apparent for decades in the president's psychopathic disregard for other people, his lack of awareness of how his petulant, childish behavior looks to functional adults, his inability (manifested prolifically in both his business and political careers) to plan and anticipate difficulties, and frankly (and not glibly), his apparent functional illiteracy. The biographical and social factors that have allowed this low-IQ person to skate through life are richly documented. This past weekend we reached the point that all of this is apparent even to a cretin like Marjorie Taylor Greene. But the rest of us don't need to pretend for the benefit of the others that this hasn't been plain as day from the beginning. It is evidently going to do nothing but get worse until he is in a position not to do any more damage. Finally, glibly: TOLD YA SO.
I think the answer is pretty obvious. He will declare victory and skedaddle, leaving the strait to Iran. It's probably true that Iran and China will force all ships going through the strait to pay a heavy toll and probably in Chinese currency, but to his mind that will be a problem for the NEXT president to try to explain. Sure gas prices will spike, but that's going to happen no matter what, so he may as well get some immediate relief.
The MAGA media will declare him a military genius and go back to screaming about boys signing up for girl's sports and leave him f alone.
On the question of reality finally catching up with an inveterate liar or evidence of cognitive decline, my answer is: both.
On the one hand, Iran is the first place to fail to play along with him both over a significant enough time period & so publicly that it is near unmistakably evident - to all but the most determined cultists - that there is a very wide, deep canyon between Trump's words & positions and reality.
On the other, common steps toward senility include poorer filtering, poorer decision-making, poorer understanding (especially in regards to taking in new information) & poorer impulse control. The belligerence many of us have witnessed in older people with cognitive decline is often a mixture of not being able to take in new information, or not being able to reconcile new information with their position & the stress of feeling that and needing to try to cover in the moment. Does such a scenario play a part in some of the positions the president has articulated in person or via social media? It's plausible enough to not be beyond the realm of possibility. Is poorer understanding, impulse control & decision-making playing a part in his lack of deftness at being able to dodge this particular mess? Again, it's plausible enough to be perfectly possible.
However, I would posit that what we're seeing could simply be an inveterate liar who starting playing a game that involves both human lives - civilians & American service personnel - and economic stakes so large as to completely disrupt the global economic order, and the combination is too hot for him to avoid not getting his hands burnt. Could the decision to have gotten into a situation with stakes that hot be influenced by cognitive decline? Absolutely, but unless he reaches a threshold of decline where he does or says something publicly that's so obvious (e.g. mid-speech suddenly not know where he is or what he's doing - a different part of the brain to subtle decline around decision-making) then it'll remain hard to prove. And if it's hard to prove, to an extent it ultimately stops mattering.
By which I mean, so what if cognitive declines are contributing to his messaging or decision-making? Unless it's so obvious that it's plain fact, he's the person in the job, making the decisions and the messages and knowing whether he's just 'rich guy, untethered from reality & enabled by idiots' crazy or 'rich guy, untethered from reality & enabled by idiots whose being effected in real-time by neurocognitve decline' doesn't make a vast deal of material difference. Unless/until the legislature suddenly decides to start asserting its rights or someone tries some version of removing him from office, successfully, the military must continue to follow the orders they're given - except/unless those orders are so clearly illegal that officers & enlisted personnel refuse them. And, equally, the messaging (and any negotiation that is or isn't occurring) is still his too. Short of this theoretical point of no return, where decline is so great & so public that common consensus even amongst supporters is that he's no longer got capacity, all discussions around the question are as academic as a debate about whether x or y action by George III might've been influenced by a bought of porphyria-related insanity, 225+ years after George III died, let alone after whatever action is the subject of discussion.
It's likely this war is *already* our Suez Crisis. As for the demagogue's mental health, there are definitely signs of dementia but the larger problem-- and danger-- is that he's being school in the limitations of the old canard "perception is reality." He's lost control of the narrative and it's gnawing at him because it's making him look like a loser. Trump can't understand how the Iranian regime is still openly defying him after all the firepower he's rained down on them. And this-- his fundamental misunderstanding of power, and the pitfalls of the absolute power he's lusted after his entire life-- this is why Door #3 is worth a mention.
Door #3: Trump follows through on his threats and our military commanders obey his order to commit war crimes by demolishing most of the country's infrastructure. Or he only destroys some but it leaves the regime still defiant. Thus, he destroys more, and more, and more over the next-- oh, say, probably two weeks. I suspect he's already floated the idea of using tactical nukes, that he really *wants* to use a few, and so far at least has been talked out of it. But I think it will be back on the table when, as is likely, the regime is still standing.
So, it is clear that President Trump is bigly angry at how things are going. So, why is Hegseth not on the chopping block? This seems like a classic time to throw the obvious fall guy under the bus and Pete is absolutely, positively that guy in this situation. And yet I get the sense that Trump is doubling down on Pete as being the guy who can somehow get us out of this.
As someone who has been forced to watch way too much Trump reality TV, I think the classic Trump move would be to blame everything on Hegseth, fire him, and then put Rubio in charge of de-escalating things with Iran. Then, Rubio is the next fall guy if that doesn’t work. I’m concerned that the script writing for this season has fallen a notch.
He is losing touch with reality, acknowledging that he never really had a firm grasp of anything outside himself, and what he wanted, ever. What is getting dangerous is the desperation.
We have a big problem with MSM not reporting the truth. Their corporate overlords do not want to offend the man in the White House, fearing retribution. The man is clearly demented with flight of ideas, not able to articulate or expound upon a reasonable idea and he is functionally illiterate. Unfortunately we have no one in the Republican Party willing to call him out. Democrats should be the ones to call him out,very loudly using examples of his dementia, call news conferences every day if necessary. His condition has to be shown to the American people often enough until they understand he is demented and incapable of running the country
"The $64,000 question is whether the Iran war is merely a case of reality finally catching up with a bullshit artist, or if the American president has become either a madman or a dementia patient."
I think even peak-bullshit artist Trump wouldn't started bombing Iran. Bygone Trump, I think, would not have gone after Iran without having broader international support. An Iraq War kind of coalition.
It's all bad. I just hope it's not tactical nuke bad.
From Philip G Zieglers's "God's Adversary and Ours: A Brief Theology of the Devil" page 92: "Crucially, it seems to me, diabolical falsehood and lying keeps close company with the problem of idolatry. For the problem of idolatry is the problem of false gods...and also the false worship of the true God. The problem of idolatry, then, is precisely the problem of discerning and recognizing what is true in the midst of the flurry of the ersatz, the pseudo-, the imitation, the merely 'god-like', the divine-ish. As idolators discover, our betrayal of the truth here is soon enough returned in kind, as the idol itself inevitable betrays our trust in turn.....John 8:44 claims that when the devil lies "he speaks according to his own nature for he is a liar and the father of lies, and the devil is one in whom there is no truth....these claims are as close to a metaphysical definition of the being of the devil as we have yet come across. Diabolical enmity to truth goes deep, indeed all the way down - it is congenital, constitutional. To be the devil is to be incapable of truth."
It’s hard not to be glib, bullshit artist or lunatic dementia patient? Seriously, it’s both. As an expert bullshitter who has made a lifetime career screwing business associates with his bullshit he now finds he’s bit off just a little too much. Add in some dementia and age enhanced mental illness, he finds himself in a corner of his own making.
My fear, and I don’t believe this is irrational, is that the guy who always out outrages himself to wiggle out of tight situations will reach for … wait for it … nuclear weapons.
T is a very unwell person. Not just a madman or a person suffering with dementia, he is sick...in the mind and body. Watch his slow walking, his lethargic speech Wednesday. His incoherent and unintelligible ramblings are getting much worse. His anger has worsened. He is more disconnected than ever. His daily erratic behavior has worsened. Everything about T right now and I believe going forward will only heighten these deep seated characteristics. And lest we forget, T's Dad had Alzheimers. And there is a certain factor in genes that lends itself to the possibility of T in the beginning stages. My father in law ( a gentle man) had Alzheimers and I can tell you that erratic behavior, anger, lethargy, slow movements, incoherence, late night dictates, lack of inhibitions (such as calling Black people the "n" word, yes, I was so shocked when my father in law said that), lack of sleep and more were all part of the early stages. And the silence from the Republican elected officials is just as bad as T himself. The GOP is complicit with every single thing that T and his minions have done and are doing to allow T to destroy our nation, our reputation and our children's future. I am sad ... and furious.
I think that in the coming prosecutions, we need a more top-heavy approach. We need to prioritize those at the top, and focus on those underneath mostly insofar as they can turn evidence against their superiors. Maybe starting at the very bottom is a more tried and true approach in general, but in this case the imperative to send a message to the world is urgent.
And we must also *heavily emphasize* what Mark Hertling said about the distinction between enlisted vs. officer oaths (which I'm stunned we didn't hear about more, particularly from Mark Kelly and those Congresspeople who were under attack from Pigsbreath for reminding the military of their oaths to the Constitution). When we punish "lower-tier" people (i.e. below politically appointed top brass), it needs to be the officer class.
In my view, we are witnessing the catastrophic final devolution of a fundamentally disordered mind. This disorder has been apparent for decades in the president's psychopathic disregard for other people, his lack of awareness of how his petulant, childish behavior looks to functional adults, his inability (manifested prolifically in both his business and political careers) to plan and anticipate difficulties, and frankly (and not glibly), his apparent functional illiteracy. The biographical and social factors that have allowed this low-IQ person to skate through life are richly documented. This past weekend we reached the point that all of this is apparent even to a cretin like Marjorie Taylor Greene. But the rest of us don't need to pretend for the benefit of the others that this hasn't been plain as day from the beginning. It is evidently going to do nothing but get worse until he is in a position not to do any more damage. Finally, glibly: TOLD YA SO.
I think the answer is pretty obvious. He will declare victory and skedaddle, leaving the strait to Iran. It's probably true that Iran and China will force all ships going through the strait to pay a heavy toll and probably in Chinese currency, but to his mind that will be a problem for the NEXT president to try to explain. Sure gas prices will spike, but that's going to happen no matter what, so he may as well get some immediate relief.
The MAGA media will declare him a military genius and go back to screaming about boys signing up for girl's sports and leave him f alone.
On the question of reality finally catching up with an inveterate liar or evidence of cognitive decline, my answer is: both.
On the one hand, Iran is the first place to fail to play along with him both over a significant enough time period & so publicly that it is near unmistakably evident - to all but the most determined cultists - that there is a very wide, deep canyon between Trump's words & positions and reality.
On the other, common steps toward senility include poorer filtering, poorer decision-making, poorer understanding (especially in regards to taking in new information) & poorer impulse control. The belligerence many of us have witnessed in older people with cognitive decline is often a mixture of not being able to take in new information, or not being able to reconcile new information with their position & the stress of feeling that and needing to try to cover in the moment. Does such a scenario play a part in some of the positions the president has articulated in person or via social media? It's plausible enough to not be beyond the realm of possibility. Is poorer understanding, impulse control & decision-making playing a part in his lack of deftness at being able to dodge this particular mess? Again, it's plausible enough to be perfectly possible.
However, I would posit that what we're seeing could simply be an inveterate liar who starting playing a game that involves both human lives - civilians & American service personnel - and economic stakes so large as to completely disrupt the global economic order, and the combination is too hot for him to avoid not getting his hands burnt. Could the decision to have gotten into a situation with stakes that hot be influenced by cognitive decline? Absolutely, but unless he reaches a threshold of decline where he does or says something publicly that's so obvious (e.g. mid-speech suddenly not know where he is or what he's doing - a different part of the brain to subtle decline around decision-making) then it'll remain hard to prove. And if it's hard to prove, to an extent it ultimately stops mattering.
By which I mean, so what if cognitive declines are contributing to his messaging or decision-making? Unless it's so obvious that it's plain fact, he's the person in the job, making the decisions and the messages and knowing whether he's just 'rich guy, untethered from reality & enabled by idiots' crazy or 'rich guy, untethered from reality & enabled by idiots whose being effected in real-time by neurocognitve decline' doesn't make a vast deal of material difference. Unless/until the legislature suddenly decides to start asserting its rights or someone tries some version of removing him from office, successfully, the military must continue to follow the orders they're given - except/unless those orders are so clearly illegal that officers & enlisted personnel refuse them. And, equally, the messaging (and any negotiation that is or isn't occurring) is still his too. Short of this theoretical point of no return, where decline is so great & so public that common consensus even amongst supporters is that he's no longer got capacity, all discussions around the question are as academic as a debate about whether x or y action by George III might've been influenced by a bought of porphyria-related insanity, 225+ years after George III died, let alone after whatever action is the subject of discussion.
"Is this a category difference from how erratic he was four years ago? A decade ago?"
IMO, the only difference is that the "supreme" court unlocked the handcuffs and let him go wild. He has no constraints now and he knows it.
Trump has no plan. He’s destroying us
It's likely this war is *already* our Suez Crisis. As for the demagogue's mental health, there are definitely signs of dementia but the larger problem-- and danger-- is that he's being school in the limitations of the old canard "perception is reality." He's lost control of the narrative and it's gnawing at him because it's making him look like a loser. Trump can't understand how the Iranian regime is still openly defying him after all the firepower he's rained down on them. And this-- his fundamental misunderstanding of power, and the pitfalls of the absolute power he's lusted after his entire life-- this is why Door #3 is worth a mention.
Door #3: Trump follows through on his threats and our military commanders obey his order to commit war crimes by demolishing most of the country's infrastructure. Or he only destroys some but it leaves the regime still defiant. Thus, he destroys more, and more, and more over the next-- oh, say, probably two weeks. I suspect he's already floated the idea of using tactical nukes, that he really *wants* to use a few, and so far at least has been talked out of it. But I think it will be back on the table when, as is likely, the regime is still standing.
So, it is clear that President Trump is bigly angry at how things are going. So, why is Hegseth not on the chopping block? This seems like a classic time to throw the obvious fall guy under the bus and Pete is absolutely, positively that guy in this situation. And yet I get the sense that Trump is doubling down on Pete as being the guy who can somehow get us out of this.
As someone who has been forced to watch way too much Trump reality TV, I think the classic Trump move would be to blame everything on Hegseth, fire him, and then put Rubio in charge of de-escalating things with Iran. Then, Rubio is the next fall guy if that doesn’t work. I’m concerned that the script writing for this season has fallen a notch.
He is losing touch with reality, acknowledging that he never really had a firm grasp of anything outside himself, and what he wanted, ever. What is getting dangerous is the desperation.
We have a big problem with MSM not reporting the truth. Their corporate overlords do not want to offend the man in the White House, fearing retribution. The man is clearly demented with flight of ideas, not able to articulate or expound upon a reasonable idea and he is functionally illiterate. Unfortunately we have no one in the Republican Party willing to call him out. Democrats should be the ones to call him out,very loudly using examples of his dementia, call news conferences every day if necessary. His condition has to be shown to the American people often enough until they understand he is demented and incapable of running the country
When I read that list of nonsense demands, the only logical response that I think people should give Trump is “Sir, this is a Wendy’s.”
"The $64,000 question is whether the Iran war is merely a case of reality finally catching up with a bullshit artist, or if the American president has become either a madman or a dementia patient."
I think even peak-bullshit artist Trump wouldn't started bombing Iran. Bygone Trump, I think, would not have gone after Iran without having broader international support. An Iraq War kind of coalition.
So it's the dementia.