Der Drumpf finally sat down for an interview with the WaPo kids, and....well, let's just say that if you've seen any lengthy excerpts from the rallies, and thought to yourself, this really is a guy who cannot communicate extemporaneously, because he cannot compose a coherent thought on the fly, then you are in for a treat here. Half the time you can't cut through the thicket of nonsense Drumpf is babbling on about, and the other half you can only tell that he's trying to either evade or spin the question. It's like he has some sort of weird bet with Sarah Palin as to who can sound like the biggest fucking moron.
To be as generous as possible it is tremendously depressing to realize that a 70-year-old man who has had the best of everything for his entire spoiled existence, attended the finest schools and has had everything he's ever wanted in life, conveys his thoughts with about as much articulation as a middle-school dropout. But then, this is the same guy who thinks his large-print self-love manifesto is on a par with the Bible.
Like everything else, the interview will not change any minds -- the people who worship him will love him more, and the people who detest him will find another reason why. But the real upshot here is that, despite his bullshit claim to be an outsider, Drumpf is the literal definition of an elite. And for someone who again has spent their entire adult life at that elite level, has met countless movers and shakers and conveyors of power and privilege, and demonstrates zero knowledge of basic foreign policy and economic principles, and has no coherent thoughts on any of them, is just bizarre.
The truly scary part of it is, I don't think it's because Drumpf's an idiot. I think it's because he's the type of narcissistic personality who genuinely believes that something is true -- empirically, verifiably, irrefutably true -- simply because he says it is, when he says it. If he tells you 2+2=5, and then a few minutes later that it equals 6, and then a few minutes later that it equals 3, it's important to realize that to Drumpf, all of those things were true, for him, at the time he said them.
Situational ethics are one thing, situational reality quite another. Up to about a month or so ago, I had tempered my distaste for Drumpf with the caveat that, as bad as he was, Cruz or Rubio would be even worse, just because of the things we knew about them. I no longer believe that to be the case. Drumpf's decision-making process appears to be not merely unpredictable, but utterly volatile. Coupled with what seems to be a complete ignorance of the precepts underpinning the projection of American military power post-World War 2, and the results could be at least as catastrophic as what we got with Fredo Arbusto and his failed wars.
Cruz is an insufferable asshole, but he also prides himself on his intellectual ability and stability; you may not agree with anything he says, but you understand the consistent intellectual undercurrent whence it originates. The more you hear Drumpf try to formulate coherent policy, the more you realize he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about, and has no desire to learn. He's three pounds of shit in a hundred-pound bag, bullshitting his way through this process with nothing more than guile and bluster. He's basically Greg Stillson.
To be as generous as possible it is tremendously depressing to realize that a 70-year-old man who has had the best of everything for his entire spoiled existence, attended the finest schools and has had everything he's ever wanted in life, conveys his thoughts with about as much articulation as a middle-school dropout. But then, this is the same guy who thinks his large-print self-love manifesto is on a par with the Bible.
Like everything else, the interview will not change any minds -- the people who worship him will love him more, and the people who detest him will find another reason why. But the real upshot here is that, despite his bullshit claim to be an outsider, Drumpf is the literal definition of an elite. And for someone who again has spent their entire adult life at that elite level, has met countless movers and shakers and conveyors of power and privilege, and demonstrates zero knowledge of basic foreign policy and economic principles, and has no coherent thoughts on any of them, is just bizarre.
The truly scary part of it is, I don't think it's because Drumpf's an idiot. I think it's because he's the type of narcissistic personality who genuinely believes that something is true -- empirically, verifiably, irrefutably true -- simply because he says it is, when he says it. If he tells you 2+2=5, and then a few minutes later that it equals 6, and then a few minutes later that it equals 3, it's important to realize that to Drumpf, all of those things were true, for him, at the time he said them.
Situational ethics are one thing, situational reality quite another. Up to about a month or so ago, I had tempered my distaste for Drumpf with the caveat that, as bad as he was, Cruz or Rubio would be even worse, just because of the things we knew about them. I no longer believe that to be the case. Drumpf's decision-making process appears to be not merely unpredictable, but utterly volatile. Coupled with what seems to be a complete ignorance of the precepts underpinning the projection of American military power post-World War 2, and the results could be at least as catastrophic as what we got with Fredo Arbusto and his failed wars.
Cruz is an insufferable asshole, but he also prides himself on his intellectual ability and stability; you may not agree with anything he says, but you understand the consistent intellectual undercurrent whence it originates. The more you hear Drumpf try to formulate coherent policy, the more you realize he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about, and has no desire to learn. He's three pounds of shit in a hundred-pound bag, bullshitting his way through this process with nothing more than guile and bluster. He's basically Greg Stillson.
