When The Cult Leader Has Dementia
There’s been more than ample evidence of Trump’s complete delusion and burgeoning dementia. No, I’m neither a credentialed professional qualified to issue a diagnosis, nor have ever I had the opportunity to conduct a personal examination, but I also don’t think you need to be to arrive to this conclusion. You just have to pay attention to when the facade cracks.
The one bone I’ll throw is that some out there might erroneously expect cognitive decline of any kind to manifest in omnipresent symptoms. The reality is that those struggling with severe conditions will still present as fine most of the time, sometimes because they’re actively masking or operating on deep-seated auto-pilot. I once had a client with a documented history of traumatic brain injuries, who nevertheless maintained a spectacular masking performance. It wasn’t until he failed a MoCA test that his quirky habit of repeating the exact same story made sense. Even full-blown dementia patients are notorious for having “good days and bad”.
Ultimately, I think it’s a waste of time to belabor the point regarding his diminishing cognition though; my hot take is that you are either already aware of it, insufficiently informed, or part of his cult.
Example! Trump supporters had heralded his meandering Joe Rogan interview last September as emblematic of intellectual sharpness. Yet one of the first things he says in that interview was that he was very recently interviewed by Oprah, explicitly “Last week I did one of her last shows, I think maybe Thursday or Friday.” It’s true that he was indeed interviewed by Oprah on one of her last shows — if you want to be technical about it, his episode aired 3 months before the show’s final episode, but whatever, we’re already used to giving him the affirmative action treatment and grading him on a curve.
What’s much more alarming is that this Oprah interview happened in…2011. Time disorientation of this magnitude is a common symptom of dementia, particularly Alzheimer’s disease:
A person with dementia often has damage to their short-term memory. This means they may rely more on older memories to make sense of things now...The person may feel like they are living in the past, because they’re using older memories to fill in the gaps to make sense of the present.
When I pointed this out, his sycophants were more than willing to twist into a pretzel arguing both that Trump has an uncanny ability to recall specific weekdays from decades ago, but also that he faltered this particular execution:
I admit having no idea how to talk to someone who has consumed this much Flavor Aid. Whatever errant inane thought pops onto Dear Leader’s mind (like say “DEI caused this plane crash”) his NPC entourage is more than eager to affirm his delusions. Yes Emperor, you look fabulous in your new outfit!
Trump’s insane comments about Gaza are just another data point. He went from saying he’s committed to “buying and owning Gaza” one day, to “We don't have to buy. There's nothing to buy. We will have Gaza.” the next. Free weaving, man! Just pure, toddler-level, magical thinking.
More to the point, no bar is too low for his sycophant army of sanewashers. Sure, Trump unambiguously said Palestinians would have no right to return to Gaza, but according to Marco Rubio, what he really meant was that the relocation would be “temporary” and “interim”.
One reason you know I’m not reflexively TDSing is because I don’t actually disagree with Trump’s proposal in principle. The revanchist Palestinian movement has brought nothing but death and destruction to Palestinians and the region as a whole, while barely knocking Israel off its upward trajectory. I want the Palestinian movement to give up because they’re a jihadi nationalist movement with ultimately unreasonable objectives, much of this is masked behind a robust sanewashing industry. So while Gaz-a-Lago is a plan founded upon magical thinking (“No soldiers by the U.S. would be needed!”), it could at least shift the Overton window in a positive direction. I have no compunction with crediting his straight-to-VHS dribble when its consequences are positive, and there have been a few of those already.
Some folks thought my piece Party of Cucks was too crass, but as far as I can tell nobody has even attempted to dispute the sycophantic obsequiousness the conservative movement now eagerly drowns itself in. The perennial litmus test for remaining within the party is displaying a pathetically slavish devotion to whatever the big guy says, no matter how insane it might be.
You cannot retain the capacity to be an independent thinker within this context, which is why his underlings coordinate talking points like retarded automatons. Look how such good doggies Hegseth and Leavitt are in dutifully repeating the party line:
Tonight, President Donald J. Trump announced a bold vision for the United States to secure lasting peace in Gaza. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. President Trump is an outside of the box thinker and a visionary leader who solves problems that many others, especially in this city, claim are unsolvable.
I would just say to the question of Gaza; the definition of insanity is attempting to do the same thing over and over and over again. And as the president and prime minister pointed out last night, the president is willing to think outside the box, look for new and unique dynamic ways to solve problems that have felt like they're intractable.
Beep-beep boop-boop, please call me a good girl while you pat me on the head.
I don’t know how else to state what has long been plainly obvious to me. It’s bad to be a blind obedient follower, it’s bad to abandon critical thinking, it’s bad to lack pushback or opposition, it’s bad to jettison independent thinking, it’s bad to be a coward, it’s bad to publicly wallow in your own humiliation, it’s bad to be void of any principles, and it’s bad to derive your entire caloric sustenance from the ejaculate of a ward patient.
All of those things are bad! But maybe what’s worst of all is that it’s bad to be all those things while also pretending to be part of a stiff-jaw, jacked cohort of no-nonsense brave confident thinkers who live and breathe assertiveness. No, you’re all fucking posers that can’t even bother to put your mask on properly in the morning. Pathetic.
That article about vice signalling is good.
I've only noticed this phenomenon last year, but it's absolutely everywhere (in certain circles). People are so furious at the idea of virtue signalling that they think "I don't give a shit about good and evil and I support only what's good for me" is a great thing to broadcast now.
(It's especially weird because it's often hypocritical. The people sending these signals do *not*, in fact, care exclusively about what personally benefits them like emotionless robots. They still have ideologies and ingroups and loved ones. But still they signal as hard as they can.)
I agree with much of this article. But you liked Tracing Woodgrains's exposé on the FAA's shady hiring practices for air traffic controllers. Why do you now think "DEI caused this plane crash" is such an obviously insane take? Surely a higher incidence of collisions is exactly what you'd expect when diversity is selected for rather than raw competence.