Think part of the problem with describing Trump seriously is that no one actually seems to actually ever take his entire ideological outlook seriously, so absurdist means tend be be more effective at evoking political affect
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
The frustrating thing is how commonly supporters will write something off because of this, but then when he actually does it they turn around and say it's good actually.
It's not even the classic "it's not happening, and if it is it's a good thing". They dismiss it as bad before it actually happens!
Honestly and truly I believe the failute is people trying to *wildly overcomplicate Trump*. He is an id-driven bundle of impulses that seeks pleasure and avoids pain, *entirely independent of lofty shit like “reality”* and I’m so utterly exhausted with it all.
Speak for yourself. People moved to Mexico, Portugal, Canada etc the day he was elected, stopped spending money/put in a garden (me), etc. The reason we all remember "read my lips" is that most of the time, Presidents do what they say they will do (or try to).
He is absurd—but he's getting everything he ever wanted in his wildest, most aggravated fantasies. Universities and white shoe law firms who would not have given him the time of day are supplicating themselves at his feet. Eric Trump put it succinctly, "I've been watching this movie my entire life."
I mean part of the problem is he has no actual ideology and a lot of what he claims to believe shifts on a daily basis so sometimes it can be difficult to figure out which insane option is the one we should believe
tragically the winning move here is to find the thing that maximally aligns with "thing a bunch of insane libertarian Poasters from the mid-oughts believe about demolishing the world and replacing it with an anarcholibertarian cryptocurrency hellscape" and oh boy ppl def. find THAT believable
Yeah in general the correct answer when you’re dealing with 5 of his conflicting beliefs he’s spouted at various times is “pick whichever is the stupidest one”
Half of what he’s espousing being shit that Stephen Miller told him in the last 5 seconds isn’t helping, but also Miller is an idiot so it’s all kinda stupid in the grand scheme 😞
Trump believes his own nonsense, no matter how unserious it looks to other people and everyone needs to take that very seriously because Americans gave this person the most powerful position in the World and he is consolidating even more of that power for himself.
He’s not your weird uncle at Thanksgiving—he’s the President. Take him seriously, no matter how unhinged he sounds. Ignoring what he says is exactly how we ended up here.
He has unlimited objectives. He wants all the money, all the power, all the bowing preening sycophants.
The people who have not realized their way of life is on "death ground" have made a grave miscalculation thinking if they meet his demands today he will be satisfied.
No I think it’s definitely more the absurdity. Even with your example, the idea that Cosby was a prolific sexual predator seems absurd next to the front that was shown to the public. Which isn’t to say that celebrity doesn’t contribute, but I digress.
It’s like a real zombie at a Halloween party. All the people think it’s an awesome costume. It eats people brains and they think people are posing for selfies
to properly build a mental profile of a buffoon takes empathizing with a buffoon, and the buffoon people are trying this on is so buffoonish it causes pain and confusion.
I see it clearly, the abuse was hard for me to see in the beginning, I did not want to think I was being abused. Therapy helped open my eyes, now I can spot it easily and he is an abuser.
The magic and menace of Trump is that he means what he says. The media keeps trying to find some other explanation for his statements and parse his nonsense because it all seems too preposterous to be true, but nope-- that's the man. He is who he appears to be.
I think whether or not a statement is true is secondary to his thought process. It's about whether it feels emotionally right to his deeply vain and combative mind. He feels like he was cheated in 2020, and says so. Whether or not that happened isn't important-- he still means it.
The reality that a small, craven, stupid, petty bigot is the President is too terrifying to comprehend, so they have to believe he's playing inscrutable four-dimensional chess.
“The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood,
they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.” Or at least that’s what Hannah Arendt said anyway.
Comments
It's not even the classic "it's not happening, and if it is it's a good thing". They dismiss it as bad before it actually happens!
The people who have not realized their way of life is on "death ground" have made a grave miscalculation thinking if they meet his demands today he will be satisfied.
He will never be satisfied.
*these are conservatives after all, so there's always room for this stuff
Threaten tarriffs on this date. Bash the incoming doom repeatedly
Date comes: oh I think I'll just wait another month. See how benevolent I am?Here have a cookie
Next day: threaten. Hit bc of something unrelated. Threaten tarriffs again
Ask any abused person
(at least eventually....it's just that your brain can't wrap around the fact that it's our President doing it while the Colliseum cheers him on)
All he is capable of doing is saying yes or no to someone’s ask in exchange for what he wants. All he is, is transaction. There is no ideology.