Sound The TRUMPets! A Thread for Presidential Pondering 2016-2020(?)

[milk]

Fair enough.

No serious psychiatrist would diagnose a person without ever speaking to that person, or make any of their diagnostics public. Those commens are politically motivated and have nothing to do with either science or professional ethics.

yes a practicing clinician should stay away from that but only because of the ethics part. Someone with knowledge who's not in clinical practice (or teaching the field) can very well make tentative psychological observations without transgressing professional boundaries. I don't think it would be wrong to suggests tumb has a personality disorder because I think it's obvious he does and clinicians privately probably say it without reserve. It does have something to do with "Science," or more precisely with an understanding of disorders. Perhaps they shouldn't go on TV and say, "I have a diagnosis." But many probably say over dinner that the man is obviously sick.

[drogulus]

This is a conjecture based on nothing. Trump's record of bellicose actions --- as opposed to words --- is very thin.

     It's based on everything. If my family takes me to a shrink because I'm acting crazy, the shrink will not reprove them for diagnosing me without a license. Trump is at least one and possibly several kinds of crazy. Because his behavior is so extreme, shrinks know what it means. Don't confuse the rules about diagnosis with knowledge from observation.

[drogulus]

     Trump openly admitted on live TV to doing the thing he's accused of in the impeachment inquiry

     Trump is competent to stand trial, has confessed and should be impeached. Remember, he is presumed to be sane no matter what he does, because he can prevent for the time being the kind of examination that could lead to a diagnosis. He can be unfit without a formal declaration of unfitness.

      It's hard to imagine a circumstance in which serious impairment occurs only after a diagnosis of the nature of it. Usually the impairment comes first, then an examination follows. I'm sure there are exceptions where a routine examination reveals a case of dementia. That's probably at an early stage.

[Florestan]

    Trump is at least one and possibly several kinds of crazy.

Economy, philosophy, climate science, psychiatry... is there anything outside your area of expertise, I wonder?

[SimonNZ]

Why is it that you give Trump a pass for his authoritarian and dictatorial impulses and desires, however inept he is at implementing them, and his his admiration for the same in other leaders when you're so hyper-critical of the slightest flicker of authoritarianism elsewhere?


meanwhile:

Trump unloads to Fox News as impeachment threat heightens
The president spent nearly an hour riffing on topics from Nancy Pelosi to Hong Kong in what one of the network's host called a 'stress release.'

[...]Trump also encouraged Zelensky to look into unfounded accusations of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, including the baseless assertion that a hacked email server belonging to the Democratic National Committee is being housed somewhere in the Eastern European nation.

"I still want to see that server," Trump said Friday, advancing the conspiratorial line. "You know, the FBI's never gotten that server. That's a big part of this whole thing. Why did they give it to a Ukrainian company?"

The allegations seemed to strain the credulity of even the "Fox & Friends" anchors, a normally receptive audience for the president who appeared visibly skeptical of his statements regarding the server. "Are you sure they did that? Are you sure they gave it to Ukraine?" asked co-host Steve Doocy.

"Well, that's what the word is," Trump replied."[...]

[Florestan]

Why is it that you give Trump a pass for his authoritarian and dictatorial impulses and desires, however inept he is at implementing them, and his his admiration for the same in other leaders when you're so hyper-critical of the slightest flicker of authoritarianism elsewhere?

Don't you realize how ludicrous is to label Trump authoritarian and dictatorial when so many people, men, women and children, risk their lives on a daily basis fleeing from genuinely authoritarian and dictatorial regimes and trying to get exactly in the country ruled by the "authoritarian and dictatorial" Trump regime?

[SimonNZ]

Don't you realize how ludicrous is to label Trump authoritarian and dictatorial when so many people, men, women and children, risk their lives on a daily basis fleeing from genuinely authoritarian and dictatorial regimes and trying to get exactly in the country ruled by the "authoritarian and dictatorial" Trump regime?

Its not ludicrous at all. Were it not for the people pushing back against him, reporting his misdeeds and trying to hold him accountable he'd be a Putin Mini-Me.

I don't know why you fail to see this...unless its just that you don't like the people who are doing the pushing back.

[Florestan]

Its not ludicrous at all. Were it not for the people pushing back against him, reporting his misdeeds and trying to hold him accountable he'd be a Putin Mini-Me.

In other words, if the USA (a country with an uninterrupted 250-year history of strong and functional rule of law and checks and balances) would be Russia (a country where such things are unheard of in its whole 1,000-year history), Trump would be Putin. With this I can agree.

[drogulus]

Economy, philosophy, climate science, psychiatry... is there anything outside your area of expertise, I wonder?

     Everything is outside my area of expertise. That's why identifying experts is so important. People are not stupid because they are not expert. Economy, philosophy, climate science and psychiatry can all be approached they way I do, the way an educated nonexpert does. I'm pretty sure that when one of your cherished beliefs isn't immediately threatened you do what I do. Without being expert on gravity, you insist on clinging to the earth and walking on the surface of it. Why not stay in bad and wait for an expert to tell you it's OK to get up?

[Florestan]

     Everything is outside my area of expertise.

You can say that again.

an educated nonexpert

Is that what you fancy yourself to be?

[SimonNZ]

In other words, if the USA (a country with an uninterrupted 250-year history of strong and functional rule of law and checks and balances) would be Russia (a country where such things are unheard of in its whole 1,000-year history), Trump would be Putin. With this I can agree.

He wants his political rivals locked up - even now. He wants journalists discredited and attacked. He wants the truth to be whatever he says it is, no matter what you can see with your own eyes. He wants the office to enrich himself and consolidate his power and that of his family. He ignores laws and seeks to have them changed to better serve his personal ends and avoid punishment for his own crimes. He sees loyalty as more important than duty or competence.

Does he actually have to achieve dictatorship before you become concerned? Or is it that the enemy of my enemy (liberals) is my friend?

[drogulus]

You can say that again.

Is that what you fancy yourself to be?

     It's a matter of practice more than being. I haven't "be"ed in a long time, I mostly just do things.

[Florestan]

He wants his political rivals locked up - even now. He wants journalists discredited and attacked. He wants the truth to be whatever he says it is, no matter what you can see with your own eyes. He wants the office to enrich himself and consolidate his power and that of his family. He ignores laws and seeks to have them changed to better serve his personal ends and avoid punishment for his own crimes. He sees loyalty as more important than duty or competence.

This is nothing new or unusual for me. You have just described the former leader of the Romanian Social-Democratic Party, currently serving a 3-and-a-half-year sentence in jail. Literally everything you wrote applies to him.

Does he actually have to achieve dictatorship before you become concerned?

I reckon that if the Romanian rule of law was able to resist the Socialist assault, the US rule of law will also be able to resist Trumpian attack. Even assuming he wants to be a dictator, he'll never be one.

Or is it that the enemy of my enemy (liberals) is my friend?

That is a principle I have rejected multiple times, right here on GMG.

[Florestan]

     I mostly just do things.

I doubt that educating yourself on the topics you pontiificate about is one of them.

[SimonNZ]

I reckon that if the Romanian rule of law was able to resist the Socialist assault, the US rule of law will also be able to resist Trumpian attack. Even assuming he wants to be a dictator, he'll never be one.

Perhaps, but my question was why you don't condemn him the way you condemn percieved authoritarianism elsewhere.

Re the comparison with Russia: Putin wins elections which follow election law...by continually changing the laws to ensure that victory, and so only the people he chooses to run against are eligible, yet preserving a figleaf of legality and democracy. I don't see the contrast with Trumpist Republicans as being so striking.

[Florestan]

Perhaps, but my question was why you don't condemn him the way you condemn percieved authoritarianism elsewhere.

I remember having recently condemned Chinese and Bolivian authoritarianism. Feel free to argue they are "perceived", not real.

You want me to condemn Trump? Fine. Hereby I solemnly condemn him. I don't like him and, contrary to what I wrote recently, I would never vote for him. (I would have never voted for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders either). Satisfied?

Re the comparison with Russia: Putin wins elections which follow election law...by continually changing the laws to ensure that victory, and so only the people he chooses to run against are eligible, yet preserving a figleaf of legality and democracy. I don't see the contrast with Trumpist Republicans as being so striking.

Do you imply that Trumpist Republicans have been continuously winning elections for the last 20 years by continually changing the laws to ensure their victory?

[SimonNZ]

I'm implying that if you stack the courts and highest legal offices with people who are not just of your party but are loyalists to your cult of personality then election law can be whatever you say it is, and "checks and balances" can be whatever you say they are.

[drogulus]

     

I doubt that educating yourself on the topics you pontiificate about is one of them.

     I'm just as good at not being expert as you are. If regular people couldn't learn from experts then experts should all move to an island and commune with each other. We have no use for them because we (heh!) lack expertise.

     Trump will be impeached by nonexperts on the Constitution. They will consult whatever expertise they need. They will produce justifications for their actions that the public will judge by their nonexpert standards. The world will go on and normal people will learn about it, from experts and by their own lights. I'm OK with that.

     It sounds to me like I'm not supposed to be able to learn anything if I don't know it in advance as an expert.

[Florestan]

          It sounds to me like I'm not supposed to be able to learn anything if I don't know it in advance as an expert.

You misunderstood me. Learning things as a non-expert is certainly possible but carries the risk of actually misunderstanding what you think you have understood, especially in highly counter-intuitive fields such as economics; there's also the confirmation bias which makes us learn mostly things that align with what we have already learned. Your problem is that you present things you learned as a non-expert with all the aplomb of a real expert and none of their doubts or caution. That is all.

[drogulus]

You misunderstood me. Learning things as a non-expert is certainly possible but carries the risk of actually misunderstanding what you think you have understood, especially in highly counter-intuitive fields such as economics; there's also the confirmation bias which makes us learn mostly things that align with what we have already learned. Your problem is that you present things you learned as a non-expert with all the aplomb of a real expert and none of their doubts or caution. That is all.

     Yes, I'm like everyone who comments on their areas of interest. Also, I got style, lots of it, and aplomb.

     Now I'm going to return to my relentless war against the Big Bang in cosmology, and all who sail in it.