Comments by "wily wascal" (@wilywascal2024) on "A Portrait of Donald J. Trump, by Vic Berger & VICE News" video.
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--Instead of striving to bring out the best in people, Toxic Trump reveled in bringing out the very worst.
--Instead of uniting the country, Toxic Trump sought to divide us.
--Instead of abiding by and honoring our Constitution and the rule of law, Toxic Trump held them in disdain, disregarded them, and degraded them, running the most corrupt and least transparent administration in U.S. history.
--Instead of strengthening democracy and our cherished institutions, Toxic Trump worked to diminish and destroy them, inciting a terrorist insurrection against his own government, attempting a coup to steal an election.
--Instead of ensuring a peaceful transfer power after losing the election, Toxic Trump kept insisting against all evidence that he won, continuously repeating the Big Lie that the election was "stolen," inciting the terrorist insurrection against the nation's Capitol.
--Instead of confronting a serious threat to Americans with a deadly global pandemic, Toxic Trump lied to the American people about it, ignored it, and refused to take any responsibility for his gross homicidal criminal negligence that resulted in one out of every 800 Americans dying from COVID-19--over 411,000 American lives in just ten months, as many casualties as all of WWII.
--Instead of confronting the ever-increasing existential crisis from climate change and its harmful effects, Toxic Trump gutted regulations and withdrew from the voluntary Paris climate accords, exacerbating the problem and poisoning citizens.
--The eight largest single-day net drops in the Dow Jones Industrial Average occurred under Toxic Trump.
--Instead of creating jobs, Toxic Trump was the first President since the Great Depression to preside over a net loss of jobs over his tenure.
--Instead of lowering the national deficit, Toxic Trump increased it from 19.2 trillion to 27 trillion, eight trillion dollars in four years----the highest rate of increase of ANY President, ever.
--Instead of helping out the least among us, Toxic Trump widened the wealth and income disparity gap. 50% of his $1.9 trillion tax cut went to the top 5%; 65% went to the top 20%, with the top 40% benefiting next most, and the bottom 20% only receiving 1%. Moreover, his huge tax cut for big corporations and the wealthy left a legacy adding $1,000,000,000,000 a year to the federal deficit while lowering federal revenue.
--Instead of building bridges, humane immigration reform, and infrastructure, Toxic Trump built walls, cages, and concentration camps, separated children from mothers, allowed American infrastructure to decline and deteriorate, rejected economic opportunity.
--Instead of raising our standing and security in the world, Toxic Trump lowered and weakened it.
--Instead of draining the swamp, Toxic Trump turned it into a noxious overflowing sewer of Republican corruption.
--U.S. poverty level steadily rose under Reagan, steadily decreased under Clinton, steadily rose again under Bush, steadily decreased again under Obama after recovering from Bush's recession. Trump inherited a booming economy and declining poverty level from Obama, but the poverty level increased sharply during his last two years in office.
--Toxic Trump spent more time on the golf course and watching TV than he spent doing his job, golfing over 300 rounds while in office, almost always at his own golf courses, where he could enrich himself at taxpayer's expense.
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"I have a chapter in the book on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders. These are people who have a deep need for grandiosity, to be the center of attention, who need to control others, and who lack empathy and lie without hesitation. These are psychological traits perfectly attuned to manipulation and projection.
But the malignant part is about sociopathic tendencies. Almost every cult leader thinks he’s above the law, which is why he’s allowed to persecute and harass or harm anyone he wants. When someone really believes this, they can rationalize all kinds of destructive behavior."
--Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Narcissistic cult leaders like Trump thrive on chaos. They'll create crisis situations. When they walk in the room, you never know if they're going to be good and kind-hearted or be mean and call someone out or create some kind of dangerous situation.
A cult leader is also a master of manipulating information, so that his followers will only trust details that come from him. This is what Trump accomplishes every time he cries "fake news" or discredits a reporter as "terrible" or "nasty." He knows that Americans have access to all sorts of information, so he has to make his followers distrust other sources.
A cult environment like "Q" and Trumpism discourages critical thinking, making it hard to voice doubts, when everyone around you is displaying dogmatic faith and obedience to their leader. A process of indoctrination is in use that can be seen as coercive persuasion, or thought reform, commonly called "brainwashing". The resulting internal conflict, known as cognitive dissonance, keeps them trapped, as each compromise makes it more painful to admit that you've been deceived..
“Shared psychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“madness for millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology.
When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and a propensity for violence—even in previously healthy individuals.
Destructiveness is a core characteristic of mental pathology, whether directed toward the self or others. When mental pathology is accompanied by criminal-mindedness, the combination can make individuals far more dangerous than either alone.
In my textbook on violence, I emphasize the symbolic nature of violence and how it is a life impulse gone awry. Briefly, if one cannot have love, one resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to fear. Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: rejection by a nation in his election defeat.
Violence helps compensate for feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity."
--Bandy Lee
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“I'm not scared of the Maos and the Stalins and the Hitlers.
I'm scared of the thousands of millions of people that hallucinate them to be "authority", and so do their bidding, and pay for their empires, and carry out their orders.
I don't care if there's one looney with a stupid moustache. He's not a threat if the people do not believe in "authority".” ― Larken Rose
Setting aside the sleazy immoral Reich-wing grifters at the top -- people like Trump, Congressional Republicans, Reich-wing demagogues and media -- the rank-and-file of the GOP has become a fascist cult. To be clear, Trump did not create the cult, it existed before him. He merely served as a unifying figure they chose to rally around and worship as their fool's gold god. Trump appealed to their basest nature and told them what they wanted to hear. Now, those Reich-wing grifters may have cultivated their cult to exploit for their own greed, power and vanity, but at least to some extent the Republican cult in turn seeks to exploit the GOP for their own various misguided purposes. They CHOOSE to be willfully ignorant, to believe or espouse the lies, because as a political calculus they shortsightedly see it as expedient to their ends.
What must also be taken into consideration are the characteristics of a cult. Why do people join a cult? Why do they choose to remain in a cult? No need to go into detail; the answers are largely common knowledge or easily researched. But it should be pointed out that in a complex world, the simplistic and rigid beliefs embraced by cults can be very alluring, no matter how fantastical and removed from reality. It should also be acknowledged that the Republican cult is not a monolithic entity, but an amalgamation of sects, including White supremacists, Christian nationalists, libertarians, sovereign nationals, anarchists, tax resistors, Qanon and other extremist fringe groups. Of course, not every Republican is an extremist, a fascist, or untethered from reality. But this latter more benign group is nevertheless part of the fascist Republican cult, complicit in their support of the whole, whether through their silent acquiescence and votes or willing assistance.
It's a very dangerous feedback loop, a vicious circle, one that as it sinks further into depravity its threat correspondingly rises, for as the Republican cult has over time been becoming increasingly more radicalized, we witness the election of more radical politicians to represent them, more radicalized Reich-wing media and demagogues to feed them propaganda. While some Republicans are leaving the GOP and some others are speaking out and trying to save their party, they constitute a weak minority, unfortunately.
In a normal, sane world, the Republican cult would have ended or been marginalized after the Mueller Report, after Trump's Ukraine shakedown and impeachment, after Trump's horrendous handling of a deadly global pandemic, after his election defeat, or after January 6th and his second impeachment. But that hasn't happened. Instead, the Republican cult continues to become increasingly more radicalized and extreme. As President Biden says, "We are in a battle for the soul of this nation." And that battle is far from over.
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