Trump 39: The Return of the Wall

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[onekidanddone]

13 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

Shouldn't there be dog dishes and Milk Bones instead of coffee cups?

[GreyhoundFan]

14 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

Shouldn't there be dog dishes and Milk Bones instead of coffee cups?

My dog loves to try and drink out of cups.

[Cartmann99]

Well, color me surprised that a jackass like Sid "Jesus Shot" Miller is whispering in Orange Donnie's ear:

[Cartmann99]

Being Raised by Two Narcissists Taught Me How to Deal with Trump

Quote

 

If you’ve watched the past three-plus years of the Donald Trump circus looking for some glimmer of hope he’ll get owned, some sign he’ll finally be proven to be an amoral con man and a fraud, I am here to disabuse you of that notion. Because no one with power or authority seems to understand how to deal with Trump’s unique brand of asshole behavior, it’s not likely he’ll ever be checked until the next election—if then.

Why am I so sure? I’m the child of two narcissists.

When you’re a child of narcissists, you get very good at noticing patterns in behavior. You learn to recognize the signs leading up to “meltdowns” (public tantrums over the tiniest of slights that are held up as great injustices), “dressings down” (forcing someone to listen to a complete accounting of all the ways they’re terrible), and “wagon fixing” (teaching someone a lesson for imagined slights by doling out an outsized punishment). You learn this because it is necessary for your survival, to keep out of the line of fire, or at least out of the shrapnel zone. Narcissists as parents are all about wielding control over people, and they don’t care what kind of asshole they have to be to do it.

Now, I’m not weighing in on the president’s mental health or trying to diagnose him with narcissism from afar—that's a controversial topic even among psychiatrists, and I’m no professional. But children of narcissists are hyperaware of asshole games being played because we’ve had the most experience with it, and often, we know how best to handle it.

If I can’t technically call Trump a narcissist, he sure looks like an asshole. And assholes will do what’s needed to elicit behaviors from the people around them to ensure they get what they want.

Most people without proximity to narcissism can be easily snowed by assholes. Assholes know how to finesse situations to their advantage. This doesn’t always mean by yelling or forcing people’s hands. A lot of times, it’s just about making their opponent feel like they don’t have any moves left. Consider the many vendors who have tried unsuccessfully to sue Trump over unpaid bills. He relied on their unwillingness to take him to court, or their lack of resources to see the fight through to the end. He was frequently right.

This is where the media comes in: Trump has finessed his situation (being the president) into a situation where media have no real moves left. The press needs eyeballs, and to can’t just ignore the guy in the White House, so they have to report on the circus.

Sometimes, coverage takes the form of fact-checks, but no one should hold out hope that that will prod Trump into admitting he was wrong or showing any kind of remorse. Children of narcissists will tell you that their biggest fantasy growing up was that their parent would somehow realize they were wrong, and make things right with their child. Ask any child of a narcissist if this ever happened (it didn’t).

Why doesn’t this work? Democrats, and even some Republicans, apologize all the time when caught out by the media. The answer comes down to a simple truth: Assholes are incapable of being shamed.

I’ve never seen either of my parents show legitimate remorse for anything they’ve ever done (and the list includes my dad running over my foot with his car by accident). Shame is a consensual activity. For someone to be shamed, they have to accept your reality that they have committed a bad act. In order for someone to accept someone else’s reality, they have to hold that person in high enough esteem. Assholes make sure no one ever hits the bar. If you object to asshole behavior, you’re “crazy,” “a whiner,” “doing it for personal gain,” etc.

There’s no evidence anyone has ever successfully shamed Trump. Not over his alleged sexual assaults, not over images of migrant children being locked in cages, not over his family’s documented history of dodging taxes.

The media and Democrats alike may be used to a more traditional model of public politics, where extremists can be brought low by Have you no sense of decency, sir?–style moments. In the past, it was assumed that when someone was caught out in an obvious lie, they would retreat and admit fault.

Except Trump’s answer to, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” is pretty clearly a solid no.

That brings us to tantrums. Most adults would rather die than have someone witness them melt down. But if you can’t be shamed, tantrums become a powerful tool. I’ve seen my mother have a four-hour stomping fit, slamming doors and going nonverbal, because she simply didn’t want to attend a family dinner. If anyone asked her why she was behaving that way, she reacted like they were supposed to know why and be very sorry they caused her to have to do these things. Children of narcissists will tell you their tantrum coping skills are legendary, because they’re well practiced.

Assholes view tantrums as another means to an end. You might compare them to a crying baby, but babies get results. Babies get people to drop everything and cater to them. When you’re the president, of course, your tantrums can be on a much bigger scale—your tantrums can shut down the government and leave 800,000 workers without pay for weeks.

The media can’t ignore a news event as consequential as the government shutdown, but they could follow advice psychologists give about tantrums when it comes to Trump’s smaller fits of pique. That means not amplifying Trump’s tweets and on-stage rants. It means not including them on shows, or embedding them in articles, or using their content as uncritical headlines for stories. Even when the purpose of such stories is to explain why Trump is wrong about something, the narrative inevitably shifts to be whatever the president wants it to be.

What good is having power if you can’t hold it over people to get what you want? Growing up, my parents would refuse to pay for things they didn’t want to pay for and tie it to some “moral failing” of mine they wanted to control. My mother wanted to give my pet away so she could renovate the room his cage was in, so she entrapped me in a situation where I was forced to lie, then insinuated I was “a sneaky kid, and there’s nothing worse on this earth than a sneaky kid.”

Assholes will always know the extent of leverage they have and they will always, ALWAYS use the threat of it to get what they want.

Trump loaded the White House with his purported friends, but more importantly, these were people he had experience with, and most importantly, leverage on.

He has controlled the White House with the implicit threat that he would fire anyone who didn’t play ball with him. Those with independent streaks have by now been mostly cast off.

Wielding rejection is the most classic case of asshole behavior. But it’s also the one that’s the most exploitable by the press. This White House is one of the leakiest administrations of all time, and for all the turnover, Trump hasn't been able to stop people from gossiping to reporters. It's those leaks, and his inability to stop them, that should scare Trump—grifts don’t work if you can see the trick being pulled.

Assholes can be and do get defeated, but expecting a true Watergate moment—where the president steps down to prevent the country from falling further into chaos—is not based in reality. Media outlets and Twitter personas do a disservice to everyone when they hype up the cinematic ending that’s never ever going to arrive. Understanding what others know about aberrant behavior and how to navigate it might be the only way to hold the president even minimally to account.

The number-one most sobering realization you have when you are in therapy for narcissistic parents is that they will never change. But the best realization you get out of that is you can free yourself of their control over your emotions. Assholes usually don’t change, because there’s too much benefit to the way they do things. But the country does not have to feel beholden to the asshole.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Dana Milbank: "Trump’s sacrifices are hard. You think it’s easy working 11 to 5?"

Spoiler

Being president isn’t easy under the best of circumstances. Imagine how hard it must be if you’re Donald Trump.

“I probably work more hours than almost any past president,” Trump announced Sunday, adding that he “had no choice but to work very long hours!”

On Monday, after retweeting his own assertion from a few days earlier that he is “working hard,” he eliminated any doubt: “No president ever worked harder than me,” he declared.

Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage while recovering from exhaustion after leading the country through the Depression and World War II. Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke after laboring in Europe to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles and then selling it to the country. But they were loafers next to Trump.

The president appears to be stung by a leak of three months of schedules showing he spent about 60 percent of his workday in “Executive Time” — watching TV, tweeting, gabbing and the like. When last week’s schedule was leaked to Axios, it showed Trump had cut back Executive Time — to
50 percent!

This sacrifice was hard. You think it’s easy working 11 to 5?

Trump’s assertion that he is the hardest-working president is consistent with other superlatives he has shared. He has kept more promises, cut more regulations and built a better economy than any other president and been more popular than any Republican president. Just about no president did more in his first six months, and no president did more in his first nine months, or the first two years. Yet no president since Abraham Lincoln has been treated worse by the media!

Some might think Trump’s hard-work assertion reflects a doth-protest-too-much compensation for perceived laziness. He has likewise boasted that “nobody has been tougher on Russia,” that nobody “has been more with the military than I have as a president,” that “nobody wants to speak more than me” under oath with the special counsel, that “nobody believes in the First Amendment more than I do,” that “there’s nobody that respects women more than I do,” that he is “the least racist person” and that “nobody reads the Bible more than me.” But this is to be expected of a man with a very good brain and the best words.

Trump surprises himself with how hard he works. After his first 100 days in office, he told Reuters: “This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.” The poor guy can’t even get a dog. “I wouldn’t mind having one, honestly, but I don’t have any time,” he told supporters Monday.

Trump must work harder than his predecessors because there are more demands on him. He has to spend more time appointing staff, for example, because his appointees keep quitting. George Washington had a lot on his plate, but he didn’t have to attend so many MAGA events or craft so many Twitter insults. Lincoln fought the Civil War, but he didn’t have so many Fox News interviews or a round of golf every five days, on average.

Overworked Trump told an El Paso audience Monday night that before taking the stage, his advisers told him about a possible deal to avert a government shutdown. But Trump told them, “I don’t even want to hear about it” before his rally speech.

It’s hard to squeeze in intelligence briefings, because Trump has to spend so much time devising clever strategies. On Tuesday, he disparaged a bipartisan border deal crafted to avert a shutdown but then said if a shutdown comes, “It’s the Democrats’ fault.” That’s hard to come up with!

And consider the physical stamina required. Though he is unequivocally “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” it’s hard work to manufacture so many crises over NATO, NAFTA, DACA, Iran, China and the border. One of his border crises even required using duct tape.

Before Trump’s visit to far west Texas, the El Paso Times reported that violent crime in the city had fallen more than 34 percent by 2006 — before a border fence was built there. The city’s Republican mayor said El Paso was safe “going back to 2005.” So it took a lot of strength for Trump to declare the opposite, telling supporters Monday the mayor is “full of crap.” Hard work!

Meanwhile, he continues his arduous campaign against Hillary Clinton (there were “lock her up” chants in El Paso), his tireless battle against Robert S. Mueller III’s credibility (a Post-Schar School poll finds Mueller trusted more than Trump by a 23-point margin) and his mighty struggle to shield Saudi Arabia from the consequences of its human trafficking and its murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In fact, just listing all of Trump’s hard work makes me crave some Executive Time. Wake me in an hour?

 

[AmazonGrace]

Trump invents 4th of July and more about inauguration corruption.

 

[onekidanddone]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

My dog loves to try and drink out of cups.

My cat likes to drink from my water glass. He will stick his head all the way in and I'm afraid one day he will get his cute little gray face stuck.

[GreyhoundFan]

I love Hillary's response to Dumpy and the repugs trolling her:

[onekidanddone]

Anybody remember this disturbing logo?  I don't think it even lasted a day

Spoiler

 

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Howl]

19 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Being Raised by Two Narcissists Taught Me How to Deal with Trump

Excellent find.  The best predictive stuff I've read about Trump comes from the children of narcissists and this is no exception. 

Trump is also (to my mind) an evil genius; what he does is visceral and brutally effective.  He's been sucking the air out of the room from the minute he was nominated and MSM have let it happen. His other evil genius is branding; i.e., Make America Great Again. 

I'm also curious about the psychology or psychopathy of those who closely ally themselves with him, his staff and aides in the WH.  

[AmazonGrace]

 

[CTRLZero]

There is a federal courthouse under construction in Nashville, with a big sign on it that says, "Donald J. Trump, President."  I feel like I'm suddenly in an alternate universe whenever I walk by.  ?  Two years in, and I'm still in denial.  In years to come, I'm sure I'll experience some level of traumatic flashbacks whenever I encounter his name.

[apple1]

2 hours ago, Howl said:

... I'm also curious about the psychology or psychopathy of those who closely ally themselves with him, his staff and aides in the WH.  

In particular - Stephen Miller and Sarah Sanders.

[Destiny]

Per CNN, the menace is going to sign the bill to keep the government open, and declare a national emergency for his stupid wall. It sounds like he got McConnell on board with this. No link, because it's a breaking story and I'm watching it on CNN TV.

[fraurosena]

Fucking McTurtle is indeed going along with it. That Russian money donation did the trick, I suppose. This is potentially a power grab by the presidunce and his cronies. And if the Senate doesn't oppose him, it's very, very scary. All the power will go to the executive branch and the legislative branch will be side-lined...

However... the presidunce will be taken to court on this emergency. You can count on that. And as he has stated himself on Monday in El Paso that construction on the wall was already well on it's way, well... he shot himself in the foot with that remark and it will not hold up in court. Thank Rufus!

[onekidanddone]

4 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Fucking McTurtle is indeed going along with it. That Russian money donation did the trick, I suppose. This is potentially a power grab by the presidunce and his cronies. And if the Senate doesn't oppose him, it's very, very scary. All the power will go to the executive branch and the legislative branch will be side-lined...

However... the presidunce will be taken to court on this emergency. You can count on that. And as he has stated himself on Monday in El Paso that construction on the wall was already well on it's way, well... he shot himself in the foot with that remark and it will not hold up in court. Thank Rufus!

I see no good anymore.  I can't breath my heart is racing and I'm falling apart.

[Ais]

1 minute ago, onekidanddone said:

I see no good anymore.  I can't breath my heart is racing and I'm falling apart.

I am watching this shit show from Northern Ireland where our own Government walked out 2 years ago and haven't worked a day since. 

Between that, Brexit and Trump, the world is f****d.

 

Every time I see these developments I think of you and those in a similar situation. It is no consolation but please know that there are people out there who care about how this affects you. 

[formergothardite]

Should my panic level stay on yellow or is it time to move to red now? How likely is it that the state of emergency move is going to work?

I thought I had read somewhere that Trump had recently brought contractors into the white house to discuss the wall. My speculation is that he is is dire need of at least the pretense of building a wall for some reason. Perhaps he has made promises to people to whom he owns money and the only way to fulfill them is to hand out contracts for the wall. Trump constantly makes promises he never intends to keep, but his fixation on the wall to the detriment of his own self is something else. He could easily just say "I built the wall" and his followers would start chanting "We built the wall!" He has to build this wall for some reason. Or at least pretend to build the wall. 

[onekidanddone]

I can't get up from my desk. I need to get my Ativan my heart is racing buy I can't get up. I called my husband an asked him to come home, but he is about an hour away.

What do I do now?

[Ais]

@onekidanddone Stay on here. Talk to us. And breathe. 

That feeling you have right now is terrifying and paralysing and the only response you can give it is to breathe. Deeply and slowly. Until you can reach your Ativan.

And then you can do the next part. One bit at a time

 

[onekidanddone]

13 minutes ago, Ais said:

@onekidanddone Stay on here. Talk to us. And breathe. 

That feeling you have right now is terrifying and paralysing and the only response you can give it is to breathe. Deeply and slowly. Until you can reach your Ativan.

And then you can do the next part. One bit at a time

 

I'm watching my husband's progress home via the stalk your family find my friends app. OneKid just breezed past me to use our shower.  

ETA: Good he is getting of the highway and taking the back roads which means he will get here sooner. 

Probably bad form to ask my daughter to get my sedative. 

[Ais]

@onekidanddone at least we can rely on our kids as a reminder that life just keeps charging on lol

I had an attack like that on Friday afternoon that lasted to Monday morning, although different circumstances obviously. I just knew something upsetting was coming, and it did.

Anyway, I'm glad you have your stalking to keep you focused, it helps a little.