Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

I post this essay with two additional links to secondary essays—more difficult than our usual literary standard here, but well worth the efforts of the more thoughtful posters—and I post this as the Final Word on Donald Trump and his methodology. I use that “Final Word” aware that the FBI has been investigating whether Trump is legally an asset of Vladimir Putin (he certainly is, and no one can deny it!) and that Trump’s actual Final Word may not be too far in the future. Remember, the FBI has massive sources he rest of us lack, and clarity and guilt will someday be displayed for all to see. Thank FATE and JUSTICE for that!

Remember that while we have witnessed Trump following Putin’a desires in attacks on NATO and the G-Seven, lending himself to the opportunity to abandon South Korea (as Putin wishes) and validating Putin’s attacks on Ukraine and possible future attacks pending, and his justifying other Putin moves as a sort of President Of The United States in charge of Public Relations For Vladimir Putin And His Actions, Donald Trump is a man unknown to Truth, a stranger to it, and in fact a man who ignores it as a meaningless complication unworthy of notice and an actual detriment to profit, unlimited confused action and Corruption in general.

As Michael Cohen was Donald Trump’s “fixer,” Donald Trump is Vladimir Putin’s public voice within the USA, his Fixer, using all public resources, prestige, and Ominous Authority of the US Presidency.

Read below wearing mental rubber gloves, and be prepared to watch truth sprout before your eyes, lighted by philosophical inquiry, ruthless examination, and clear and careful examination.

Be prepared to be bruised and enlightened, and to fear.


Donald Trump Just Cannot Help It

The Reichstag fire was at least a fire. Here, there is smoke and mirrors.

By Roger Cohen
Opinion Columnist
Jan. 11,2019

Watching the Trump show from the distance afforded by my brief leave of absence has been like watching a frenzy of ants. It’s hypnotic, in part because it appears devoid of meaning. Keep your eye on the bouncing ball, goes the adage. But what if the ball is a blur?

When Trump was in business, his shtick was stiffing contractors. If confronted, he would try some bombast and storm out of meetings, as he did the other day with congressional leaders, ending talks on the partial government shutdown caused by a crisis he has manufactured. His shtick now is stiffing all Americans. The technique is the same: Keep reality at a distance through hyperactive fakery.

I have been fascinated by Trump’s compulsion. Like birds feasting on mangled flesh in the middle of the road, he cannot help it. Like travelers beset with reflex gluttony in airline lounges, he cannot help it. Like the sulking child denied a video, he cannot help it.

Like the dog that returns to its vomit, he cannot help it. Like a puppet on a string, he cannot help it. Like the scorpion that stings the frog ferrying it across the torrent, he cannot help it. It’s his nature, you see.

A manufactured crisis, I said. It’s worth recalling the 5,200 troops ordered to the southern border before the midterm elections to confront the “caravan of migrants.” This was an exercise in manipulative illusion.

Monthly crossings over the southern border have declined in recent years. The number of migrants apprehended has also fallen over the past decade, with a recent tick upward. There is no humanitarian crisis, just as not a single mile of additional wall has been built since Trump took office. But absent this noise, what does reality offer the president? Robert Mueller, Nancy Pelosi and Michael Cohen, the specters of his insomnia.

One of the books I read while away included Harry G. Frankfurt’s seminal essay, “On Bullshit.” http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_-_on_bullshit.pdf Here I must excuse myself with readers who may find the bull word offensive. Please look away from the rest of this column. There really is no alternative to it, for Donald Trump is the Michelangelo of bullshit artists.
The essential distinction that Frankfurt, a professor of philosophy emeritus at Princeton University, makes is between lies and bull. As he writes, “It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.”

It is a habit “unconstrained by a concern with truth” whose essence is “not of falsity but of fakery.” The addict of bull “does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.” He is “trying to get away with something.” His “focus is panoramic rather than particular,” and he shuns “the more austere and rigorous demands of lying.”

Frankfurt’s conclusion may be read as an ominous verdict on this president. The bull merchant “does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.”

It has been said that Trump’s extraordinary election victory owed much to his intuitions about the anger in the heartland. There is some truth in this. But his essential intuition was into the readiness of Americans, suspended between the real and the virtual, for a post-truth presidency.

Quinta Jurecic, in an important essay https://www.lawfareblog.com/bullshit-and-oath-office-lol-nothing-matters-presidency for the Lawfare Blog, set out the dangers inherent in this shift before Trump took office. In the essay, “On Bullshit and the Oath of Office: The ‘LOL Nothing Matters’ Presidency,” she cited Frankfurt and argued that Trump’s “foundational disrespect for meaning and consequence” — that is to say, for reality and the very concept of law — would make it “impossible for Donald Trump to faithfully execute the laws of this nation and the duties of the oath of office and to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.”

The president’s apparent readiness to “do national emergency,” as he put it, over a manufactured border crisis amounts to a perfect illustration of this danger. The Reichstag fire was at least a fire. Here there is only smoke and mirrors.

I would add one element to the reflections of Frankfurt and Jurecic on bull. There may be something amusing, or at least innocuous, about the bullshit artists encountered in a lifetime. They may be waved away. But in Trump the element of sadistic cruelty in his personality (mocking the disabled, for example), and the sheer gall of his fakery, make of him a malignant, rather than a benign, bullshit artist. He happens to occupy the world’s most powerful office.

Trump cannot help himself, I said. He can’t and won’t. But as citizens, “we have a duty to insist that words have meaning,” as Jurecic writes. If they don’t, neither does the Republic. That’s what the ants told me as I gazed at them, troubled and fixated.


Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.


Roger Cohen has been a columnist for The Times since 2009. His columns appear Wednesday and Saturday. He joined The Times in 1990, and has served as a foreign correspondent and foreign editor. @NYTimesCohen



https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/opinion/donald-trump-illegal-immigration-border-wall.html

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

ROFLMAO!

EyeSawYou

LOL Still going with the usual conspiracy BS eh? Dude take your meds or have your Psychiatrist up the dose.

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Why don’t you just quit replying. I know your meager efforts are taxing to you and such nothingness must tire you, not to say embarrass you, and it’s a bother for me skipping over your effort whenever you post.

Admit vacuity and refrain—ask someone to explain that to you.

I look forward to not hearing from you.....

Kraken Loc: Barry's Bay

You are throwing too much truth out at one time, the far right here can't except it even in small bites. Then they just wash it down with kool-aide which destroys any good it might have done.

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Yes....

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

“It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.”

It is a habit “unconstrained by a concern with truth” whose essence is “not of falsity but of fakery.” The addict of bull “does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.” He is “trying to get away with something.” His “focus is panoramic rather than particular,” and he shuns “the more austere and rigorous demands of lying.”

Frankfurt’s conclusion may be read as an ominous verdict on this president. The bull merchant “does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.”


On the surface, that describes very well Trump's disregard for the truth. He has no respect for the truth, so lying is natural, and without thought.

Most of his supporters would not be bothered with giving this explanation any consideration, and without thought will dismiss it.

As said, it is too much to think about for them.

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Excellent response! At least there’s hope for 2 or 3 on this site.

EyeSawYou

Why don't you just quit posting BS conspiracy theories for once and I will stop responding to your BS nonsense opinion pieces? Why not refrain from making judgments prematurely before Mueller is even finished with his investigation, are you somehow privy to inside information from fake news entities such as the NYT and WashingtonCompost that the rest of us isn't?

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

I have a special source: Donald J. Trump.

I saw him adopt every fantasy that Putin dreams about, attacking NATO and G-seven, accepting and advocating Putin’s atrocities in Ukraine, justifying murder in Saudi Arabia, discussing maybe abandoning South Korea, doing public relations for Putin, on and on and on; Putin was terrified of Hillary getting elected, so he got trump elected instead...unbelievable success. Putin took over the the US, And Nobody Noticed!

I know, after a hard day on the tractor, you have a difficult time accepting this—and you stlll haven’t fed the hogs yet.

And there you sit, burning your boots on the wood stove at the bullshitter’s table in the general store, spitting tobacco juice into a beer can and accepting Donald Trump as your man.

Any thoughtful person watching trump for 2-3 month is would know all there is to know about trump and his loyalties, and now the FBI knows it, too. And they know a million things you and I don’t know; I can’t wait for them to speak.

Otherwise, we no longer have a country.

Kraken Loc: Barry's Bay

It is so damn obvious a blind man could see that yet they still deny it and defend this traitor.

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

But if we see this much, how much more does the FBI know? And what are they going to do about it?

And when?

Kraken Loc: Barry's Bay

cadet bone head spurs is in for a s@$t storm

Texcaster Loc: Queensland

Thanks for the links.

“It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction." - Harry G. Frankfurt’s seminal essay, “On Bullshit.”

Shutterbug1697 Loc: Northeast

Why don't you quit while your idol is still roaming free?

It won't be long before he's indicted and behind bars.

If trump is found to have turned into a foreign agent for Russia, and it's sure looking that way right now, there will be no plea deal.

Traitors don't get sweat heart deals!

The question will be how far into the trump administration the Russians infiltrated, and how many others were unwittingly compromised and became agents for Russia?

There are several members of the GOP in Congress that are also showing signs of having been compromised by Russia. McConnell, Graham, and Nunes are just a few GOP names that come to mind!