A Big Balloon Of Hot Air and Ignorance: America's Biggest Crisis May Be Trump's Lack of Substance. Anybody Got A Pin?

Could it be a Learning Disability?

 The Shallowness Of A Know-Nothing President. 

There is no depth, no substance to the 45th President of the United States. He provides no details, no resources, no factual basis, not even any continuity of any sort to his rhetoric. He seems to think that he doesn’t really need to present any substance, just what he calls “common sense” and “gut instincts” punctuated with “I know more about _____________(fill in the blank) than anyone”. 

Witness:

        

Oh yes, and “I’m very smart”, “I’m a genius”. Apparently no one has ever told him that truly intelligent people almost never talk about their own intelligence - they possess confidence in their cognitive abilities -  and that only intellectually insecure people boast about their brainpower. He boldly states “facts” and figures, gives examples, tells stories as if plucking them out of thin air. So much so that people surmise he knows next to nothing about anything. 

This Just In (1/27/19):

Trump Invents 14 Million Additional “Illegal Aliens”

“We’re not sure how the president is sourcing his number and really wouldn’t want to speculate,” said David Ray, communications director for FAIR.

FAIR is a staunch supporter of Trump.

His “allergy to reading” (as one journalist put it) is acute and telling: Trump’s lack of knowledge with regard to any given topic has even prompted staunch supporters like Tucker Carlson to call him ignorant. Some (like David Packman) even call him functionally illiterate. 

On his aversion to reading PDBs (Presidential Daily Briefings):

"I don't have to be told — you know, I'm, like, a smart person," Trump said. "I don't have to be told the same thing and the same words every single day for the next eight years. It could be eight years — but eight years. I don't need that."

One person who interviewed him put it in frightening terms: “An existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul.” 

An empty mind accompanied by an empty heart. That may be a bit too harsh an analogy, but there are times when Trump seems to have a small conscience overshadowed by gigantic self worth. Or as one friend of mine put it: "elephantiasis of the ego." 

So how did this shell of a man come to be? 

"When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same. The temperament is not that different." 

Think of a rich, spoiled bully, totally uncontrollable: one whose father fostered his narcissism saying “everything he touches turns to gold” while pumping money into his son’s projects and bailing him out repeatedly out of failures. Think of a kid who thought studying anything was pointless, because he was already rich and knew that if he stuck with his father he would become richer. Think of a kid who developed a fantasy world where he would never apologize because he was so very entitled. And think of a kid-turned-teen-turned man who eschewed reading anything past a headline because reading anything was difficult, boring and a waste of time. 

And besides, anything worth knowing was on TV where money was king and news was encapsulated for his benefit. Sitting in front of a television instead of reading a book is for many Americans more enjoyable, but in Trump’s case, watching TV substituted for formal education. Attending schools like Wharton was a necessary nuisance: he had to go to classes for appearances sake, but gleaning anything from instructors and books was as useless as interacting  with classmates who were not in his class of "smart". One professor called Trump "the dumbest student I ever had." And some classmates recall him asking rather clueless questions in class. 

“I went to an Ivy League school. I’m very highly educated. I know words, I have the best words,” he said at a rally last December; Wharton, he said on Meet the Press, “is probably the hardest there is to get into,” adding, “Some of the great business minds in the world have gone to Wharton.”

"I know words. I have the best words." Statements like that have led Penn State to distance itself from Trump.

As for Trump's Wharton degree of Bachelor of Science in Economics, the man who told Larry King that before The Apprentice, he "didn't know what demographics were," may not have actually earned it - at least not in economics. Fred Trump's money may have helped him get out of  Wharton as well as into it. In the meantime, others may have earned cash for taking his tests and writing his term papers. 

A "very stable genius"?? Consider Randy Rainbow's hilarious take on that statement (see below). Such self indulgent over-the-top statements from Trump have invited, no, encouraged mockery. But encapsulated in his own clueless world, he doesn't see how ... or why. The same goes for the response to his address at the U.N. - "I wasn't expecting that."   Trump's development summed up: he has probably suffered from a rare form of learning disability which one might facetiously label PECD - Progressive Entitlement Cognitive Deficiency resulting in an aversion to reading and learning ... anything. PECD also causes disdain for people with higher intelligence while building up a feeling of superiority. In short: a person with PECD is apt to know nothing while bragging that he knows everything. Sounds snarky, but when it comes to Trump ...

Trump's brag about his performance on "The Apprentice" led producers who worked with him on the show to set the record straight: 

A TV producer who oversaw the first five seasons of President Trump's former reality television show “The Apprentice” says those working behind the scenes often “struggled to make Trump seem coherent.” 

“He wouldn’t read a script — he stumbled over the words and got the enunciation all wrong." 

“The Apprentice," helped pave Trump’s path to the presidency by ending a downward slope in his professional life and giving him the appearance of a tycoon.

“Most of us knew he was a fake,” Braun, who worked on six series of the show, told The New Yorker. “He had just gone through I don’t know how many bankruptcies. But we made him out to be the most important person in the world. It was like making the court jester the king.”

Braun also told Bill Maher Trump told him he should tell people he was #1 in the ratings even though he hadn't been #1 for five years: "Jon, you tell them, they'll believe it."

 Narcissism, Distrust and.. And Vulnerability

It has long been known that there are certain facets of Trump's life in which he switches to a fantasy level that is unthinkable to the rest us. This fantasy world developed in early stages when he thought he knew more than teachers. Later, when he left the real world of boring learning for the fantasy world that his ego had created, along with help from his father, he encapsulated himself - enshrined himself so to speak- in a world where he was always the winner and that he was a man with a greater destiny than anyone else, especially when it came to money and power. Conning people to go along with his bravado became easier: they didn't need details - they could get those from  underlings and no one questioned his sincerity. If his rich father said he was the "golden boy", they believed it. When Trump said something was "the best", it just had to be. After all, wasn't the real estate game just solid bullshit? 

Trump as the Real Estate Boy Wonder aka Never too young to start peddling bullshit

It is significant that so many voters seemingly believed Trump’s I-Know-Everything narrative, especially after red flags were raised (like not releasing his tax returns). Watching the above video, it seems impossible to believe in such a braggart. Such egotism is usually put down quickly and permanently. Has the U.S. fallen for a hollow con man because it is hollow itself? Exceptionalism is, in itself, a form of narcissism. Or maybe, just maybe its education is complimentary to his disability: an education built on chyrons and  showmanship along with distrust of politicians and, more importantly, truly intelligent people.* To some, it may (flippantly) sound as if we're saying that half of America was home-schooled in a trailer park, but the lack of scrutiny in the American public is really a serious matter: once the dye is cast and they vote for someone like Trump, they have bought into the "America first/Make America Great Again" exceptionalism/narcissism and refuse to believe they made a mistake. Opposition to their decision is tantamount to treason. In other words, they lack the depth to believe in anything but the man who himself lacks depth.  

Just as some Americans distrust intelligence, so does Donald Trump. His administrative picks have depended on loyalty through flattery and monetary support, not experience and knowledge of the appointment's focus. Trump's  "gut instincts" about people involve cronyism because cronies are people who have proven their loyalty by donations in one form or another. They also involve the trappings of beauty no matter how skin deep. For example: Katrina Pierson. Here was a beautiful female who could spin, but not very well (remember her "novelty tradition" statement defending Trump's unwillingness to release his tax returns?). 

And it is this narcissism, this distrust of intelligence that lends itself to the kind of gullibility Russia preyed upon: the Moscow Project shows how early Russia had started to cultivate Trump, seizing upon his desire to develop business in Russia, funneling money-laundered loans to him when American financial institutions would not lend him a dime. Putin was wise to let Trump be Trump from the beginning and up through the campaign, all the while amassing payback and means of intimidation. Trump's inexperience and ignorance would serve him well. But Putin was surprised in how very ignorant and erratic Trump's narcissism made him. He knew Trump was ignorant, but not THAT ignorant ... and inept. Poor Putin, he had to keep reminding Trump how much he owed to Russia and how easy it would be for him (Putin) to pull the rug out from underneath everything. And how he, not Trump, controlled the world.

Putin makes Trump jealous ... and a bit intimidated

The secrets of Helsinki screamed "We OWN you!

An aside:

To get the latest full picture of Trump's long time involvement with Russia, read The Moscow Project. Yes, it's long and involved, but also thorough in it's analysis of the collusion, of all the operations and operators involved, of all the implications and possibilities. It also outlines a man who's vanity and ambition was used to the fullest extent by Russia. Putin had knowledge of all of Trump's "successes" and most certainly of his failures. After all, he was a top KGB officer (Lieutenant Colonel) when Trump made his foray into Russian business dealings. He knew of Trump's peccadilloes and vindictiveness and used them to add weight to his (Putin's) demands. "What does Putin have on Trump?" is one of  today's headlines proffered by Nancy Pelosi.

The Wasted Month

In the eyes of some aides and outside advisers, an entire fruitless month has passed that cannot be recouped, a waste of the most valuable asset a White House has: the President's attention and time.

A month ... for the entire country as well. A month of a temper tantrum resulting in lost jobs, no paychecks, almost catastrophic airport delays and terminal closures, market plunges and an approval rating on the skids. All by a man who could not consider the consequences against his need to keep his base happy and uphold his self image as a winner. A victim of his own vain fantasies and lack of regard for learning

The wall/shutdown situation and Trump's collapse against reality proved just how clueless Trump is about the rest of human nature outside of his inner world. He will, of course, take solace in the spin of some supporters:

"This is for three weeks," Trump adviser turned Fox analyst Sebastian Gorka told Dobbs. "As far as I'm concerned, this is a master stroke."

Trump can retreat into his fantasy world with supporters like these and leave only his hollow shell for the rest of the world. 

All together, Trump and his supporters may be the REAL CRISIS America faces today.  

A Last Word:

To some, ending this writing on a humorous note might lessen seriousness of Trump's lack of substance, but believe me when I say if we can't take a moment to laugh at Trump's disastrous treatment of the Presidency, we deserve it.

In a few short years, Randy Rainbow has become a YouTube internet sensation with over 250,000 subscribers waiting anxiously for his next take on the country's right-wing political hypocrites and scam artists. His articulate artistry and creativity can only be described as bi-products of genius - sort of like a concrete definition of what Trump thinks he is. And perhaps his best parody is a take on Trump's "very stable genius" tweet. 

Set to the song I am the very model of a modern major general from Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance, Rainbow's parody beautifully captures the absurdity of Trump's temperament and how much of the world sees him. Enjoy!

*One particular anecdote concerning Adlai Stevenson could be an example: Stevenson was considered an egghead" in his day and America was very suspicious about cerebral candidates who thought things over quietly and in depth. Once when Eleanor Roosevelt was campaigning, someone shouted "Stevenson's an ass!" and without missing a beat, Roosevelt said "...nevertheless" and continued speaking, lauding Stevenson.