“Inject disinfectant?” Really? The man is totally insane, the US is heading for an unprecedented catastrophe with this moron in charge.
Quite likely. And the same rampant exceptionalism that leads the rest of U.S. officials to believe they can essentially act however they want with no consequences to the nation is likely to lead ordinary U.S. citizens to believe they won't be affected by that catastrophe. There is such overwhelming misplaced trust in the stability of the U.S. system that it will probably take a full-blown catastrophe to displace it. And even then, I predict political divisions will continue to squabble over whose fault it was. Tribalism will be the death of the United States as we know it.
It's quite amusing to watch Donald Trump's handlers and supporters try to spin this. "What the President meant to say, according to his lawyers..." Is Trumpsplaining already a word? And it's even more fun to watch Trump try to explain that he was only joking and to blame everything, as usual, on the liberal media. I wonder how long it will take for someone to trot out Dr. Phil and have him explain how you really can inject topical disinfectants.
Demonstrating yet again that he has little to no education, especially in scientific areas.
Which is quite likely why he ordered his schools not to release his grades. I recall interviews with his former teachers who said he did quite poorly. Scholastic achievement isn't for everyone, of course, but I would prefer a President who isn't overtly unintelligent.
My biggest worry is that, as with his repeated pushing of chloroquine-related "cures", people will try these ideas and either become seriously ill, or even die.
Yeah, I live in the land of snake oil salesmen. This bothers me extra. Back in March, when the President touted it as a miracle cure, the owner of a local chain of compounding pharmacies stockpiled millions of dollars worth of hydroxychloroquine. Then the bubble burst when the French study was discredited. Acting quickly, our state government did two things. First it passed a new law absolving medical practitioners of liability for the consequences of using non-FDA-approved medicines during medical emergencies. Then it arranged to purchase the pharmacy's entire stock of the drug using public funds, a deal ultimately worth $8 million. That way, our local Trump-trusting businessman isn't out the cost of a useless stockpile. And he compounded it with zinc, making it useless for treating auto-immune diseases. I'm sure other states have similar stories. For a state that wants to portray itself as the new Mecca for high-tech industry, Utah does a bang-up job of toeing an anti-cience, pro-Trump line. We're one of the states whose governors did not issue a statewide stay-at-home order. Contrary to the recommendations of health officials, he also reopened hospitals to elective surgery this week and is on course to reopen the state economy on May 1, as the President tried to mandate.
Here's a higher-altitude view. We're in the middle of a global pandemic, a hundred-year event. It's going to take the cooperative efforts of several disciplines to get us through this. Naturally, healthcare providers are the tip of the spear. It's encouraging and inspiring to see how dedicated some people can be in a crisis. It may take more superhuman effort from the health sciences sector to avoid catastrophe. But in addition to battling a highly contagious infection, these people have to expend extra effort to take down the offhand lies and bat-crap-crazy things that come out of the mouth of the President and his supporters. It's like fighting a serious grease fire in your kitchen with a toddler clinging to each leg.
But it gets worse. Imagine being one of the prominent trained professionals in the vicinity Trump. You accept that you have a responsibility to the public that transcends any one political leader or the party he represents. You realize that you're now in a position where exercising your responsibility has life-and-death consequences, possibly for many people who rely on you. But this President tolerates no dissent or contradiction. He allows no advice to be given without his endorsement. He has proven himself perfectly willing to remove anyone from their position for crossing him. So these professionals are in a one-and-done situation. They literally have to choose the hill they're going to die on in order to correct the President for the benefit of all Americans, because after that they will no longer be in an visible and effective position. After dispensing their one anti-Trump warning, they risk being replaced by some political lickspittle.
When he says "Nobody knows..." this is a tell. What he is really saying is "I just found out...."
I sent the video link to my friends who study linguistics and rhetorics. I'm interested what they have to say. One of the criticisms against Barack Obama was that his academic manner of address put some people off. And in politics, this is a problem. You can't really represent people or inspire them if you can't speak to them. I would look to Harry S Truman as an example of someone who can be both plain-spoken and an effective leader.
As for the point, I seen this before in the conspiracy parts of the forum. People just becoming aware of something seem always to assume that no one else knew about it and still doesn't. "You guys don't seem to know that there's radiation in space!" I think a lot of crackpot thinking proceeds from the assumption that the writer is a master of the subject and the reader can't possibly know more, even when the writer is clearly a novice.
I think it's beyond Dunning-Kruger. I think it's pure narcissism. He genuinely believes he's the best at everything, and the last four years have been example after example of how that isn't true. Even Dunning-Kruger isn't that strong.
His brain is turning into Swiss cheese as we watch, which is a good bit more unsettling and dangerous than plain old D-K.
It's all three, if you ask me. One can be narcissistic without being unskilled and unintelligent. Donald Trump is certainly narcissistic. The degree to which Dunning-Kruger can be displayed without narcissism is debatable. But he's clearly unskilled and unintelligent, and either unable or unwilling to recognize superior skill and knowledge in others. And I see what I interpret as signs of dementia. Notwithstanding our language expert's learned analysis, I think a lot of what the President says is just lurching from topic to topic as they pop into his head. Donald Trump has always rambled, but not nearly as incoherently as he's doing now.
But again, the problem isn't Trump, it's all the people who enable and support him, both in politics and the media.
There it is. As I wrote some days ago, I think now it's just a sort of political Stockholm syndrome. Or maybe the operatives in the GOP really do believe they can continue to spin everything as a series of hoaxes and blunders by their political rivals.
At some point we have to talk about that reality TV show pretending to be a news network -- Fox News. I've heard people who were, until recently, radical conservatives express the opinion that Fox News does more to influence the GOP base than the GOP does. The President's special relationship with that travesty probably doesn't help.
