‘You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, and those are good odds.’

Don-the-Con has said that with mail in ballots, there is ‘so much voter fraud’ present in our elections. He will sometimes add, ‘you know what I mean…’ as if those who listen to him know what he is talking about and are in agreement with him…’You know what I mean’ is a con-artist’s way of ensnaring his victims into believing that they believe in his way of thinking. For the gullible, this ploy often works.

So much for another example of Trump’s delusional thinking.  The voter fraud claim is an out right lie. Trump’s con is that his real reason for such a gatherings of his supporters at precincts is to intimidate those who would vote against him, or make it more difficult for non-supporters, many of whom are people of color and the elderly to vote.

In addition, he is showing his true colors by his demand for people to return to work during the coronavirus Pandemic. His need is have the economy rebound from the Pandemic. The economy cannot rebound if people do not work. He is gambling that with a return of the work force, the economy will improve and he might win the election. Another snap shot of his delusional world is that most experts estimate that, for the economy to return to where it was, will take years and not the six months that we have before the election.

The part of this that reveals his lack of compassion for others and their welfare, is that with the return of the work force, in the face of a Pandemic, more people will become sick and how many thousands will die. To show you what kind of a guy Trump is, he doesn’t really care. It is another case of ‘me first, and not we first.’

Oh, by the way, to add more confusion to this plan, Trump wants to shut down the ‘joke of a postal service, as he refers to the Postal Service that was first run by Ben Franklin.  He wants to shut down services, so that everyone will have to go to their voting precinct, to cast their vote. If he makes it more difficult to vote, he thinks he might have a better chance of winning…

   

An Exercise In Survival: We The People vs. Donald Trump and/or The Coronavirus

There are people who I know, respect and love, who have backed away from any negative comments surrounding Donald Trump. Their reason for this ‘backing away’ is there has been enough negativity, already!

So much has disparagingly been written about Donald Trump. Comedians have lampooned him, and he has claimed that ‘people are always pick ‘in on me.’ He says this without seemingly ever looking at himself in the mirror and asking, ‘what is it that I am doing to receive such commentary on my behavior?’ This lack of awareness on his part is significant in our understanding about Trump and his behavior.

Over the years, I have come to perceive him as someone who persuades others to do or believe something, typically by use of a deception. His comment during the 2016 campaign, ‘I could shoot someone on 5^th Avenue and not lose a vote,’ was a telling admission of how he perceives himself and others. He is ‘Don-the Con’ and ‘them is the suckers.’ I have noticed that when ‘the Donald’ is running his ‘con’ he will often say, ‘you know what I mean.’ By doing that, he is reinforcing the fact that what he is saying is a matter of truth for others, when, in fact, it is not. What he is doing is incorporating others in his delusional thinking.

There is an old adage that says: ‘you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, and those are good odds.’ Trump has lived and thrived in his life based on this belief.

Trump’s lying had gotten so bad that CNN, for a brief period of time, set up an alternative fact news department to deal with Trumps misstatements, assertions and behaviors.

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 WE are living in a time and environment where few have ever before lived. We have a pandemic running ramped in our midst, with a President who doesn’t believe in the findings of scientific research and scientific data. In fact, we have a President who recommends fish tank cleaning chemicals and shots of Lysol as potential cures for a coronavirus that is killing tens of thousands of people in a matter of months. Trump seems more comfortable living in a delusional world than in the real world. He also tends to jettison those who speak truth to power. Hopefully Dr. Anthony Fauci, the foremost authority in the field of infectious diseases and a man of ethical integrity is not on his way out.

In Trump, we have a President whose ignorance and intellectual laziness has created its own danger in his ‘leadership’ role in our government. It has been reported that he does not read briefing reports on national defense issues, data updates on the Coronavirus, or of the potential ravages of ‘getting America back’ from being sequestered. 

 

Our governmental machinery has been unable to function due to partisan political entrenchment. The welfare of citizens has been placed on the back burner in deference to political considerations such as making it more difficult for brown skin American’s to vote.  This is being done because, if these folks vote, the Republican strategists predict, the G.O.P. will lose the 2020 Presidential Election, along with the Senate.

At the same time, our Senate has sat dormant for the most of the past eleven years. Their role with Obama was to not support any proposals that the White House presented them for consideration. In essence, the Senate’s goal was to make Obama a one-term president. And, today ‘Moscow Mitch’ has refused to allow votes on over 200 bipartisan bills during the past three years of the Trump era.

We have our political institutions frozen by Trump’s denial of   of the oversight role of the House, in relation to his accountability for ethical misbehaviors. In doing this he is denying the very separation of powers that the Constitution mandates. As a result, some historians have asserted our government has regressed over 100 years in his little over three years since occupying the Oval Office.

We have in Trump, someone who thrives on chaos, confusion and conflict. His mode of operating is to lie, deny and deflect issues that need to be treated with honesty and clarity.

He will often divert attention from one issue to another issue to confuse an already confused public. Most of his pivots are filled with destructive consequences. Such behavior reinforces the perception that Trump persuades others to do or believe something, typically by use of a deception.

We needn’t look any further than his insistence on ‘getting America back to work,’ from being sequestered to see the confusion and conflict that runs along side of his scattered gun approach to dealing with a coronavirus. He would rather send people back to work in an effort to improve the economy than consider how many more people will be exposed to and die from the virus.  His deceptive motivation for doing, his con, if you will, is by improving the economy and putting people back to work, such a move will improve his chances of being reelected to the Presidency. In effect, he cares not about the people and the risk that opening up the country will create for citizens, he only cares about being a ‘winner’ and being reelected to the Presidency.

The more balls Trump has in the air, the more the consternation he creates, the more the center of attention he is, the more he seems to deceive and thrive. His ‘me first’ over ‘we first’ approach to people is pathologically transparent. It is also a statement about the toll that his malignant narcissism has taken on his stewardship of the Oval Office.

farwelljs@yahoo.com