Dumb Dumb Donald and His Cast of Incompetents

 

 

I feel a sense of sadness when I hear Dumb Dumb Donald speaking incoherently about things that he knows nothing about. He makes statements without any awareness of the consequences that his words entail. His pathological lying comes naturally as he is a pathological liar.

 

He enjoys creating the shock of words and threatened acting out behaviors. He makes statements that are intended to put citizens and their families into a place of potential loss regarding things that of great importance in their lives; jobs, medical care, having a place to sleep, public education just to mention a few. Randomly cutting five thousand jobs at an agency, getting rid of the post office as it has been in place for 250 years, eliminating public education, taking thousands of essential scientists out of the maintenance of our nuclear systems, and realizing that was a mistake. Realizing that his staff could not call these scientists back to service because his people erased all their information on the computers.

 

Trump’s cognitive limitations are best summarized by something that he said when he was President during the Pandemic. He stated that we had to stop testing for COVID because there are too many people testing positive for the virus. His solution to this was to stop testing, so that there will be fewer people testing positive for the virus. 

 

As responsible citizens, we need to be in touch with what we know to be true about ourselves, our fellow citizens, what is needed to live in a society that respects each person. We need to believe that each person has inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of fulfillment and stands equally before the law. Treating others as we would want to be treated would be powerful starting point for our   confrontation with Trump and his cast of incompetent followers.

 

Please keep the faith and follow your path with heart.

The Threat of Trump’s Delusional Thinking To American Democracy

  

 

Donald Trump is often referred to being a man-boy. Essentially, he is considered by many as being emotionally a child. Some have said that he reminds them of an eight-year-old school yard bully. He continually fabricates the truth and will say one thing in the moment, only to reverse himself in what he is saying in the next.

 

Cognitively his thoughts are often poorly formulated and are incoherent. His expression of himself in conversation is likewise often incoherent and rambling. This has become more evident, by those who have worked with him, over the past four years.

 

His ability to understand the cause-and-effect relationship between what he thinks and the consequence of acting out his thoughts is not available to him.  His statement during the COVID Pandemic, when testing was beginning to be used more frequently and the cases of COVID were steadily increasing, Trump stated at a press conference that we need to stop testing. He stated that the more we tested, that the more cases we would find in the population. He ‘reasoned’ that if we stopped testing, the number of cases would decline. This is not the level of cognitive functioning that is required of someone who resides in the Oval Office.

 

Another one of Trump’s assertions was that that Mexico would build a wall that would keep people out of the United States and pay for that wall. Mexico had no intention of building that wall or paying for it.

 

More recently, Trump expressed the idea that the United States, in addition of relocating immigrants from the United States, would take over Gaza, relocate a million and a half Palestinians and make it into ‘the Riviera of the Middle East.’ Again his inability to see that the consequence of such a plan would be totally prohibitive for the United States, was evident. Transforming a moon scape into an ocean front paradise would involve removing bombed out buildings and rebuilding an area of 140 square miles. The time and cost for such an enterprise would be staggering. His idea of ‘owning’ Gaza, sending 10,000 troops into the area, is in marked contrast to his expressing his belief that the United States should absent itself from

Global involvement and become more isolated from world affairs like Ukraine and the Paris Climate Control decision making process. And the negative outcry from those states in the area about the United States becoming a fixture in the region, again, demonstrated Trump’s absence of thinking through the consequence of his thinking.

 

Trump has a thought, expresses that thought and totally disregards the reality of the consequences of what he is proposing.

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked what he thought about Trump’s proposal to level and rebuild 140 square miles of Gaza, his response what that ‘President Trump thinking is on a different level.’

 

In truth, Trump continually expresses delusional thinking. Such delusional thinking is dangerous and has no place in the Oval Office. If we string together Trump’s actions that should have disqualified him from even running for the Presidency, an act of trying to overthrow the government on January 6^th; his encouraging his Oath Keepers and Proud Boys to exact retribution on those who oppose his will and words, such encouragement to do harm to those who disagree with him is illegal and should have landed him in jail.  

 

Trump is clearly unfit for office. He is a danger to our national security. His actions prior to his 2025 run for office should have disqualified from running for office in the first place. His delusional thinking about Gaza should be enough to remove him from Office. 

 

 

Trump’s Ugly American Shadow is Truly a Gift

  

Toni Morrison serves as my guiding light through this post-election valley of the shadows when she writes, ‘This is the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair. No place for pity. No need for silence. No room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language.  This is how civilizations heal.’

 

As for me Trump’s election has strengthened my resolve to embrace the values that I hold dear.  Relating to others as I would others to relate to me. Realizing that, ‘but by the Grace of God, there go I.’’ And, when one of us suffers, we all suffer.

 

When trump demeans women, people of color, immigrants, and Muslims, I find myself treasuring the next woman or person of color I come upon or the next immigrant or Muslim who crosses my life’s path. I find myself being present with and connecting with a deeper sense of belonging, to fellow members of my human family.

 

Trumps’ ‘Ugly American’ shadow is truly a gift.  He reminds me of what it means to express awareness, compassion, and loving kindness, moment by moment; to acknowledge that I am a person whose Divine Essence lives within me, as it lives within the lives of each one of us.

 

Thank you, Toni Morrison!

Donald Trump’s Emotional Illness is Infecting Our American Way of Life

  

Our leaders bring with them the sum-total of who they are. Donald Trump is someone who suffers from various emotional issues, issues that he brings with him into the Oval Office. To begin with he does not tell the truth and is considered a pathological liar. The 2021 election was stolen from him when, in fact he lost the election. He still asserts this misinformation to this day.

 

He is delusional in his view of himself. He considers himself to be like Jesus or Nelson Mandela. He often has ideas and fails to see the cause-and-effect relationship between his idea and what he needs to do to bring his idea to fruition. He asserted that Mexico would build the border wall and pay for it. Mexico did not pay for the wall that Trump wanted them to build. 

 

He behaves like a racist. He has distain for immigrants and wants immigrants to be rounded up and shipped out of the country. This is another example of his not considering the cause-and-effect relationship between his thoughts and his solutions to deal with an issue.  IF he deports immigrants who will plant the crops, work in the vineyards, provide necessary services for restaurants, provide medical care for the sick or serve as teacher aides in the school, provide trained skills in the building trades? And these individuals pay taxes. What would we do with the void that his plan to deport immigrants would leave in our communities?

 

When he was President, wanted to stop the reports about the spread of the COVID virus. His solution was to stop testing for COVID so that the statistics would be reduced. He also suggested that to overcome COVID, people should drink bleach. His cognitive processing often appears to be incoherent as is his expression of his thoughts.

 

He is insecure and suspicious of others and feels and demands total loyalty from those who work with him. He wants those who work with him to believe that the 2021 election was stolen as a precondition to be on his staff in any capacity. 

 

He has been deemed to be a sociopath by the mental health community. This means that he disregards other peoples’ needs and feelings. He is often vulgar in his description of others who he dislikes; ‘who would vote for a face like that?’ He has shown himself to regard women as eye candy and as objects for sexual pleasure. One only need listen to the Access Hollywood Tapes to get a picture of his views of women.

 

He is also a staunch supporter of the White Male Christian group, the Oath Keepers, and the Proud Boys. He supports and believes in the use of violence in relation to those who are antagonistic to his will and ways. Using executive orders, he pardoned those who participated in the violent attempt to disrupt and overturn the peaceful transition of power from his administration to the Biden Administration. 

 

He loves to create shock and awe. He thrives on destroying programs and institutional ways of providing necessary services to citizens. He is interested in cutting back on veteran’s services, enforcing hiring freezes on trained medical staff. He wants to cut back on FEMA which provides monetary support to communities that have been impacted by natural disasters. He is even considering eliminating FEMA altogether and having the states take care of their own natural disasters.

 

Trumps emotional illness is infecting our country. His desire is to destroy the essence of what America is made of. He thrives on being the center of attention and will say things that are not true or behave in ways that that are deliberately provocative. As was mentioned previously his thought process and expressing of himself is often incoherent. This is who we have residing in the Oval Office, today. 

 

What do we need to do to begin to relate to this flawed, limited human being? His use of retaliation intimidates those who would stand up to him. Our need is to stand by what is true for us and express that truth to anyone who tries to control us by intimidation. Trump is the man child who craves to have limits set for him. Our need is to express our truth and by doing so, we set our limits to all whose path we cross in life.

 

 

 

 

 

The Contrast Effect: By Experiencing the Worst, We Are Put in Touch With its Opposite

 The worst of something will often put us in touch with its opposite…By seeing people being mistreated, we see the pleasure of treating others as we would want to be treated.

 

Kurt Lewin did work with this notion in the 1930’s. Interest has

been rekindled regarding this way of making sense out of our thinking process in today’s world of war and misinformation. The innocent 46,000 Palestinian men, women and children who have been killed in Gaza in the last 15 months, requires our coming to terms with the horror of this inhuman behavior.

 

In today’s political world in the United States, Contrast Effect is beginning to become a talking point in relation to Trump and the Mega group as they begin to tout the mass deportation of migrants, in the discontinuing of Social Security and Medicare, the raising of taxes on the average citizen to off-set the cutting of taxes for the wealthy and their outright lies and conspiracy theories.

 

As people suffer, the ways of doing away with such suffering can become more evident within our communities, and why might this be so? The Dali Lama has written something that speaks to who we are in our very essence. He writes, ‘Whether one is rich or poor, educated, or illiterate, religious or nonbeliever, man, or woman, black, white, or brown, we are all the same. Physically, emotionally, and mentally we are all equal. We all share basic needs of food, shelter, safety, and love. We all aspire to happiness, and we all shun suffering. Each of us has hopes, worries, fears, and dreams.  Each of us want the best for our family and loved ones.  We all experience pain when we suffer loss and joy when we achieve what we seek.  On this fundamental level, religion, ethnicity, culture, and language makes no difference.’

 

Within each of us lives an essence of awareness and compassion.

Jon Kabat-Zinn has written ‘When we are truly present, in the now, our natural state of being is to be compassionate, to feel empathy with another person or living thing.’

 

I find myself put in touch with my essence in relation to animals who are in distress and need.  There are commercials that present starving dogs, who have been abandoned, trembling in the cold. When I see these commercials, I want to hug our two Rhodesian Ridgebacks and promise them that they will never be abandoned, again. This is a simple example of Contrast Effect.

 

By our experiencing the worst, we can be put in touch with our essence and begin to heal what we see before us. This is a natural process that takes place within us and can bring us back to the present moment that connects us with our compassion and caring nature.

 

Wishing you a Happy New Year

 

 

 

It is Against the Law for Donald Trump to Serve As President of the United States

  

I am writing this as an ordinary American Citizen who is sick and tired of observing the vulgar and disregarding of other peoples’ needs and feelings that is Donald Trump. He, to my eyes, is a seven-year-old school yard bully who has never been held accountable for his words and behavior.

 

Since 1970, at least 26 women have publicly accused this man-child of rape, kissing, and groping without consent: looking under women’s skirts and walking in on naked teenage pageant contestants. 

 

On May 9, 2023, a New York jury in a civil case found Trump guilty of sexually abusing and defaming Jean Carrol in 1996. She was awarded a five-million-dollar settlement for damages.

 

If anyone needs more evidence of Trump’s attitude toward women, all they would have to do is to listen the Access Hollywood tape in 2016, while he was a candidate for President. This was exposed by the Washington Post for all to see and hear.

 

Then we have the January 6^th event that was to overturn the will of the People who voted for Joe Biden. Trump orchestrated this act of sedition, encouraging his followers to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from his Presidency to the Biden Presidency. He even called for the hanging his vice president for not supporting his act of insurrection. 

 

The Fourteenth Amendment Section 3 clearly states ‘that no one shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress or elector of President or Vice President, having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, who has engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the government of the United States, or given aide to comfort to the enemies thereof.’

 

To me, Trump personifies the worst in what a person can represent by his words, behavior, and inability to be truthful. And he is legally disqualified from being able to run for or function as President of the United States by his seditious behavior on January 6. I ask, how can we stand by and watch someone like Trump whose behaviors have been illegal and disqualifying of him to serve as our President, serve as role model for our children and serve as our national leader?

 

When will we wake up and take responsibility to correct the absurdity of having a sexually deviant, racist, an insurrectionist, a convicted felon, and a cognitively and emotionally limited 7-year-old in the Oval Office?

 

For me, according to our Constitution, Trump is ineligible to be my President. His being allowed to continue moving into the Oval Office is illegal. Anyone who has facilitated his illegally becoming President, should be held accountable to the full extent of the law.

 

 

Does Trump Really Think Things Through, Or Is He Cognitively Limited, Or is He Just Suffering the Pains of Old Age?

I watched Trump’s recent Meet the Press interview with Kristen Welker. I listened to her questions and his answers. I came away with the sense that Trump has limited ability to listen to, understand and process questions that he was asked. He comes to conclusions that are not truly connected to the question with which he was presented. He often seems to be unable to see the cause-and-effect relationship between his thoughts and the effect his thoughts have on others. His thoughts and expression of his thought are increasingly becoming more and more incoherent over the course of the past four years.

 

His belief, for example, is that a 60 percent tariff would not cost an American an increase in the price for a television that has been imported from Canada. A television that costs 100.00 dollars in Canada would carry an additional tariff of 60.00s. When the T.V. is delivered in the United States, the store that is buying the product will pay an additional 60.00 and the total cost for the store owner would be 160.00. In Trump’s thinking, the store owner would not pass on that 60.00s to the customer who would only pay the 100.00.

 

His famous ‘Mexico would pay for the border fence to keep immigrants out’, was his assumption about what would happen. No such agreement was ever made or agreed to by Mexico.

 

In another discussion, during the Pandemic, he refused to take the preventative vaccine because he did not have the COVID virus. He did not see the connection between the vaccine and its role to help prevent his catching of the COVID Virus. Again, he many times fails to see the cause-and-effect relationship between his thought and the reality of a given situation. In this he often fails to see the potential consequences for his behaviors.

 

In the Meet the Press interview, he indicated that he wants to remove immigrants from American communities.  He believes that immigrants ‘poison the blood of our citizens.’  He talked about families where children were born into a family where the parents were not American citizens. The children of such parents automatically become an American Citizens. He asserts that he does not want children born into such situations to become American Citizens.

 

He also stated that, ‘in order for children who are born into American citizens to not be torn away from their families, all family members will need to be removed and sent away to the parent’s country of origin’, again if the country of origin agrees to accept by the family. 

 

Such issues focus on Trump’s limited thought process. He fails to consider how much will it cost to send immigrants away from the United States. How will this be done? How will these people be rounded up? Who will replace these folks in our American work world? Who will plant and tend to the crops? Who will maintain our vineyards? What about replacing skilled carpenters and trades people? Who will take over food service positions? What about health care providers and those in medical support positions? And each of these individuals contribute to the American economy by paying taxes to the United States Government. It has been said that to remove these immigrants from our work force would be financially disastrous to our basic American economy.

 

His pulling out of NATO is another example of where he fails to see the cause and effect of such thinking. Since NATO there have been 80 years of peace since the end of World War II. Without the United States presence, there would be no guarantee of such continued peace in the region. By the United States leaving NATO, the whole region would be negatively impacted by Trump’s disregarding of the United States role in the region and on the world stage.

 

 

I had just saw an interview with New Jersey’s newly elected United States Senator, Andy Kim, whose parents migrated to the United States from Korea over 50 years ago.  He and his sister were born in the United States and became citizens years before their own parents became citizens. I wondered, where in Trump’s world, would Andy Kim fit? Would he have to be removed from the United States Senate because he was born in the United States to immigrant parents from Korea?