Book Review: ‘Where Tyranny Begins,’ by David Rohde by [[David Greenberg]]

Looks like a good overview book of DJT's policies with respect to erosion of democracy in America.

read article Sun 8/25/2024 7:01 PM

Finally, the Democrats Have Found Trump’s Achilles’ Heel: Ridicule Him by [[Michael Tomasky]]

confirming my thesis that Donald J. Trump is a Boggart and can be banished using some of the same techniques as taught in Harry Potter

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/climate/greenpeace-dakota-access-lawsuit-slapp.html

Though democrats in politics, the Biden family, and the media lied repeatedly before the election, Hunter Biden’s laptop was confirmed to be confirmed his.

This is relevant because it contained incriminating photos of Hunter Biden; as a result, Hunter Biden was tried and convicted on Federal gun charges.

There are still outstanding lawsuits relating to the contents of the laptop as of this writing.

Bill Penzey, Jr. knows this, and by suggesting that Americans were merely upset that Hunter had a computer is an attempt at gaslighting people, which is dishonest and manipulative.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/13/trump-musk-x-climate

Trump Media Quietly Enters Deal With a Republican Donor Who Could Benefit From a Second Trump Administration by [[Justin Elliott]], [[Robert Faturechi]] and [[Alex Mierjeski]]

When stocks can become called "meme stocks" they cease to have actual value.

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-media-truth-social-jedtec-james-davison-conflict-of-interest

What to Know About the Assassination Attempt on Trump by [[Michael Levenson]]

via Donald J. Trump on Truth Social

His grammar here just sounds "off" to me.

Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening.

really?

Trump, on Social Media, Describes Being ‘Shot With a Bullet’ in the Ear by [[Michael Gold]]

Project 2025

Dans, Paul, and Steven Groves, eds. Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise - Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project. The Heritage Foundation, 2023. https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf.

ᔥ[[Clive Thompson]] in @clive@saturation.social) (accessed:: 2024-07-04 10:20 AM)

I'm reading the entirety of the #project2025 book: https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf

The intro lays things out very clearly -- full-blown attacks on trans and queer folks of any stripe; utter dismissal of climate change; disdain for any form of expertise and education (wonderfully incoherent, given the sparkling pedigrees of the document's many authors); economic thinking that's equally incoherent, if not at times magically-realistic; christian nationalism; and incessant, self-pitying grievance politics

Jul 07, 2024, 10:03 · Edited Jul 07, 12:42

https://boffosocko.com/2016/09/30/complexity-isnt-a-vice-10-word-answers-and-doubletalk-in-election-2016/

Discussed as part of "storytelling vs. logic" at FoTL

for - podcast - Planet Critical - host - Rachel Donald - The Symbolic Species - Terrence Deacon

Interview - Terrence Deacon - Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley - https://anthropology.berkeley.edu/terrence-w-deacon

Donald Trump hat 20 Spitzenmanagern der amerikanischen Ölindustrie angeboten, für Wahlkampfspenden in Höhe von einer Milliarde Dollar alle Regulierungen der Biden-Administration, die die Förderung von Öl und Gas behindern, zu Beginn seiner Amtszeit außer Kraft zu setzen. Die Washington Post berichtet über das Treffen in Mar-a-Lago. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/09/trump-oil-ceo-donation

Bericht der Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/09/trump-oil-industry-campaign-money/l

The Guardian: Donald Trump hat Big-Oil Managern angeboten, klimapolitische Maßnahmen der Biden-Administration rückgängig zu machen, wenn sie seinen Wahlkampf mit einer Milliarde Dollar unterstützen. Einer Studie des Guardian zufolge können die Ölkonzerne von Trump vor allem 110 Milliaren Dollar Subventionen (u.a. Steuererleichterungen für neue fossile Projekte) erwarten, die die Biden-Regierung abschaffen will. Hintergrundartikel zu Lobbyisten im US-Ölgeschäft und aktuellen Konflikten<br /> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/16/donald-trump-big-oil-executives-alleged-deal-explainedlog

Ausführliche Artikel der taz über das fossil fuel crime file, eine von Greenpeace erstellte Liste von Verbrechen und zivilrechtlichen Vergehen derFfossilindustrie. Sie dient als Basis für juristische Aktionen. https://taz.de/Fossilindustrie-vor-Gericht/!5936699/

Graham, David A. “The Trump Two-Step.” The Atlantic, April 4, 2024. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/04/trump-two-step-bloodbath-2024-election/677966/.

Evidence supporting Trump's doubletalk: https://boffosocko.com/2016/09/30/complexity-isnt-a-vice-10-word-answers-and-doubletalk-in-election-2016/

ref: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/16/trump-bloodbath-biden-november-00147453

Some of the first part of the Trump Two-Step sounds like the idea of "Schrödinger's douchebag".

How Trump has Funded His $100 Million in Legal Bills by [[Molly Cook Escobar]], [[Albert Sun]], [[Shane Goldmacher]]

Opinion - Donald Trump and the ‘Dune’ Messiah Have Some Things in Common by [[David French]]

Trump’s Newest Venture? A $60 Bible. by [[Michael Gold]], [[Maggie Haberman]]

Opinion - Trump Is Financially Ruining the Republican Party by [[Michelle Cottle]]

Special Features of Trump’s Bible by [[Andrew Singleton]]

https://handwiki.org/wiki/Termial

How might this equate to the time at which Rome extended its citizen franchise to larger swaths of people and the attendant results which came about? particularly the shift towards an empire versus a republic?

These seem to have been happening in the case of America with Donald Trump attempting to become a modern day Julius Caesar. To whom is Trump indebted?

It would seem that people who spend too much time online experience more anxiety. Could it be that we've evolved to only be able to manage so many inputs and amounts of variety of those inputs? The experiencing of too much variety in our environments and the resultant anxiety may be a result of the limits of Ross Ashby's law of requisite variety within human systems.

This may also be why chaos machines like Donald Trump are effective at creating anxiety in a populace whose social systems are not designed to handle so many crazy ideas at once.

Implications for measurements of resilience?

• for: Deep Humanity, DH, Jessica Denson, David Rothkopf, ethno-nationalism
• summary
  • good interview with writer David RothKopf exploring the ethno-nationalist parallels between ethno-nationalist authoritarian leaders, in particular Trump and Netenyahu and the continuous attempt to subvert democracy. The discussion also explores the dangers of attempts to inject religion into government and the historical background and reason why the founders of the United States explicitly separated church from state.
  • it's important to understand all perspectives, and how people define "right" and "good" from their perspective
  • EVERYONE wants a good life, but these definitions may vary greatly. We need to map out the nuances
  • adjacency between
    • Trump
    • Israel-Hamas conflict and Benjamin Netenyahu

Ungenerous to take Alter to task for context which he might not have the background to comment upon.

Does Alter call it a "platitude" from it's historical context, or with respect to the modern context of Donald J. Trump and a wide variety of Republican Party members who are anything but Christian?

The threat of physical violence is silencing those in power even on the right. We're already at war except for the bullets.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/28/desantis-republicans-china-ccp/

While Donald J. Trump seemed to hold say over what was trending and the media was discussing, Philip Bump notices that Ron DeSantis seems to be trailing or perhaps riding the trends rather than leading them.

Is this because he's only tubthumping one or two at a time while Trump floats trial balloons regularly and is pushing half a dozen or more at time?

https://factba.se/trump/

Trump had a vlog?!?

• for: objectivism, materialism, question, question - materialism, question - objectivism, if a tree falls in the forest
• question
  • How would Donald respond to the question:
    • If a tree falls in the forest, does anyone hear?
    • Does he hold the same view as modern consensus of quantum physics?

• comment

• good observation, that's why I have always felt strange about the simulation hypothesis. If it's a simulation, it automatically assumes, there is something which is real and not a simulation.

  • See Donald Hoffman's Information theory and contention that we live in a simulation. Does it also come with the same implicit materialist assumption?
  • The nagging thing about the simulation theories is it is also a narrative that posits an unknowable reality beyond which we can never access - a rendition of the narrative that we only ever have access to the shadows in Plato's cave.

• reference

  • Donald Hoffman
    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQefdkl8PfY

• for: Donald Winnicott, human INTERbeing, human INTERbeCOMing, Deep Humanity, DH

• title: For Donald Winnicott, the psyche is not inside us but between us

• author: James Barnes date: May 18, 2020

• comment: insight

  • adjacency
    • between
      • Donald Winnicott
      • Deep Humanity concept of human INTERbeCOMing
    • adjacency relationship
      • when James Barnes wrote that Winnicott's psychoanalysis is based on a unitary conception of self and other,
        • that resonated deeply with me
        • due to my own spiritual journey in
          • non-duality as well as
          • Deep Humanity conception of human INTERbeCOMing
• source: early morning discussions
  • this morning, after deep discussion, my partner posted a picture of Donald Winnicott on my WhatsApp and I googled Donald Winnicott and found, read and resonated deeply with this article:
    • https://psyche.co/ideas/for-donald-winnicott-the-psyche-is-not-inside-us-but-between-us

• for: Winnicott, Freud, comparison, comparison - Winnicott - Freud, transitional space, Bardo, evolution
• paraphrase

• comparison: Winnicott, Freud

  • Winnicott had a strikingly different notion of the agent of psychological change than Freud.

    • Winnicott
      • His psychotherapeutic model was developmental, one that sees.
        • the therapeutic relationship and
        • the original parent-child relationship(s)
      • as analogous.
      • Thus, just as he saw the development of the child as being fundamentally tied
        • to the immediate, visceral relationship with the mother in the experiential unit.

    • psychotherapeutic change was all about the relationship between - client and - therapist.

      • This was later conceptualised as a shift
        • from a ‘one-person’ psychology
        • to a ‘two-person’ psychology.

    • Freud

      • Freud was focused on rational interventions from the outside
      • This gave way in Winnicott to a co-creative journey occurring in the area in between,
    • which was much more about who one was and what one did, than what one thought or said.
      • In his book Playing and Reality (1971),
    • Winnicott called the location of this experience ‘transitional space’,
      • alluding to its dynamic, insubstantial quality,
      • but also to its nature as a place of becoming.
    • It is, he said, a place we both
      • create and that
      • creates us
    • a paradox that we must accept and not try to resolve
    • where unformulated possibility replaces
      • fixed identities, and
      • experience is necessarily co-constructed.

• comment

  • Winnicott's transitional space is like
    • the Tibetan concept of the Bardo
    • the biological concept of evolution

• for: Donald Winnicott, quote, quote - Donald Winnicott, quote - human INTERbeing, human INTERbeing, human INTERbeCOMing, white - humans INTERbeCOMing, DH, Deep Humanity, altricial, mOTHER, non-duality

• quote: Donald Winnicott

  • There is no such thing as a baby … if you set out to describe a baby, you will find you are describing a baby and someone.

• comment

  • what Winnicott says here is the essence of:
    • the Deep Humanity concepts of
      • the individual / collective gestalt and
      • human INTERbeCOMing,
    • the Buddhist concepts of:
      • emptiness,
      • non-duality in the human realm,
      • Indra's net of jewels in the human realm and
      • Thich Nhat Hahn's INTERbeing
    • complexity

• for: human INTERbeCOMing, human INTERbeing, DH, Deep Humanity, Donald Winnicott

• quote

  • He (Donald Winnicott) largely circumvented the subject-object dualism inherent in the Freudian model of mind (which both the Ego-psychologists and the Kleinians subscribed to) and
    • espoused, or at least regularly insinuated, a fundamentally unitary conception of self and other.

• comment -The Deep Humanity definition of the individual / collective gestalt identifies the indivisible nature of the individual and collective.

  • It can also need called the ' self / other gestalt' and both are really another way to articulate non-duality in between members of the same species
  • a ' unitary conception of self and other' is yet another way to articulate this same thing

for: human INTERbeing, human INTERbeCOMing, DH, Deep Humanity

• for: quote, quote - meat eating, climate impact - meat eating, leverage point - meat eating, leverage demographic

• quote

  • On one hand, if it’s only 12% accounting for half the beef consumption,
    • you could make some big gains if you get those 12% on board
  • On the other hand,
    • those 12% may be most resistant to change
• author Donald Rose
• reference: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/17/3795

This seems apropos to the situation in which I view Donald J. Trump.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/opinion/jack-smith-trump-indictment.html

• Evangelical Christian Patriarchy
  • naturally gravitates to Donald Trump based on their own fear and persecution complex

• Evangelical Christian Patriarchy
  • naturally gravitates to Donald Trump based on their own fear and persecution complex

Billy Sammeth, the Manager Fired by Cher and Joan Rivers, Tells His Side of the Story by Kevin Sessums

The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump, No. IND-71543-23 (New York Supreme Court, County of New York March 31, 2023).

https://www.manhattanda.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Donald-J.-Trump-Indictment.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/03/30/nyregion/trump-indictment-news

• organized racism has always been there
• where there is a public figure that supports it (ie. Donald Trump),
• it grows larger
• and by the same token, when that figurehead is gone
• the movement dies down, but doesn't die
• it waits for the next public figurehead to relight the flame

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/30/us/politics/trump-tax-returns-takeaways.html

How is this sort of bloodsport similar/different to the news media coverage of Donald J. Trump in 2015/2016?

The similarities over creating engagement within a capitalistic framing along with the need to only garner at least a minimum amount of audience to support the enterprise seem to be at play.

Compare/contrast this with the NBAs conundrum with the politics of entering the market in China.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/01/us/politics/trump-special-master.html

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/19/business/twitter-musk-trump-reinstate/index.html

That's it. I'm done.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/michael-flynn-maga-christian-trump/671852/

laudator temporis acti translates as "a praiser of times past"

Calls to mind:

Multa senem circumveniunt incommoda, vel quod quaerit et inventis miser abstinet ac timet uti, vel quod res omnis timide gelideque ministrat, dilator, spe longus, iners avidusque futuri, difficilis, querulus, laudator temporis acti se puero, castigator censorque minorum. —Horace's Ars Poetica (line 173)

Many ills encompass an old man, whether because he seeks gain, and then miserably holds aloof from his store and fears to use it, or because, in all that he does, he lacks fire and courage, is dilatory and slow to form hopes, is sluggish and greedy of a longer life, peevish, surly, given to praising the days he spent as a boy, and to reproving and condemning the young. (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough)

In Horace's version he's talking about a old curmudgeon and the phrase often has a pejorative tinge. It generally is used to mean someone who defends earlier periods of history ("the good old days") usually prior to their own lives and which they haven't directly experienced, as better than the present.

Compare this with the sentiment behind Donald J. Trump's "Make America Great Again". - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_America_Great_Again

The end of the passage also has historical precedent and hints of "You kids get off my lawn!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_kids_get_off_my_lawn!

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/06/politics/joe-biden-donald-trump-maga-republican/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/31/us/politics/trump-mar-a-lago-documents.html

Summers, J. (2021). Little Difference In Vaccine Hesitancy Among White And Black Americans, Poll Finds. NPR.Org. Retrieved March 17, 2021, from https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/03/12/976172586/little-difference-in-vaccine-hesitancy-among-white-and-black-americans-poll-find

Cox, D. A. (n.d.). Social isolation and community disconnection are not spurring conspiracy theories. American Enterprise Institute - AEI. Retrieved March 8, 2021, from https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/social-isolation-and-community-disconnection-are-not-spurring-conspiracy-theories/

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/26/us/trump-search-affidavit-release.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

Allosso is using "both sides" in a broadly journalistic fashion the way it had traditionally meant in the mid to late 21st century until Donald J. Trump's overtly racist comment on Aug. 15, 2017 "you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides." following the Charlottesville, VA protests.

Perhaps it might be useful if people quit using the "both sides" as if there were only two perspectives on an issue (for or against), when in reality there is often a spectrum of thoughts and feelings, not all mutually exclusive, about issues?

!- definition : good enough * From Donald Winnicot, a parent who is "good enough" is actually healthier for the child than the standard "ideal" parent. * A "good enough" parent does not force the child to choose between two aspects of wellbeing, both of which are necessary.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/13/significance-new-steve-bannon-tape/

Did he just predict or was he tactically planning this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC3_VFFJlSY

One starts education with where the student is. But mustn't we also inventory what tools and attitudes the student brings? What tools beyond basic literacy do they have? (Usually we presume literacy, but rarely go beyond this and the lack of literacy is too often viewed as failure, particularly as students get older.) Do they have motion, orality, song, visualization, memory? How can we focus on also utilizing these tools and modalities for learning.

Link to the idea that Donald Trump, a person who managed to function as a business owner and president of the United States, was less than literate, yet still managed to function in modern life as an example. In fact, perhaps his focus on oral modes of communication, and the blurrable lines in oral communicative meaning (see [[technobabble]]) was a major strength in his communication style as a means of rising to power?

Just as the populace has lost non-literacy based learning and teaching techniques so that we now consider the illiterate dumb, stupid, or lesser than, Western culture has done this en masse for entire populations and cultures.

Even well-meaning educators in the edtech space that are trying to now center care and well-being are completely missing this piece of the picture. There are much older and specifically non-literate teaching methods that we have lost in our educational toolbelts that would seem wholly odd and out of place in a modern college classroom. How can we center these "missing tools" as educational technology in a modern age? How might we frame Indigenous pedagogical methods as part of the emerging third archive?

Link to: - educational article by Tyson Yunkaporta about medical school songlines - Scott Young article "You should pay for Tutors"

aside on serendipity

As I was writing this note I had a toaster pop up notification in my email client with the arrival of an email by Scott Young with the title "You should pay for Tutors" which prompted me to add a link to this note. It reminds me of a related idea that Indigenous cultures likely used information and knowledge transfer as a means of payment (Lynne Kelly, Knowledge and Power). I have commented previously on the serendipity of things like auto correct or sparks of ideas while reading as a means of interlinking knowledge, but I don't recall experiencing this sort of serendipity leading to combinatorial creativity as a means of linking ideas,

https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/patrick-henry-virginia-ratifying-convention-va/

While gerrymandering isn't brought up explicitly here, the underlying principles are railed against heavily.

Some interesting things applicable to the rise of Donald J. Trump hiding in here.

Interesting to read this in its historical context versus our present context. So much can be read into his words from our current context, while others can extract dramatically different views--particularly by Constitutional originalists.

Imitation can potentially help one become more empathetic.

Is there a relationship between this effect and one's mirror neurons?

Donald J. Trump is well known for is sad impersonation of impaired and disabled people. Obviously he has no empathy for them and it's unlikely that his re-enactments will create empathy for him. Is this a result of a neurological deficit on his part?

Hicks, Brian M., D. Angus Clark, Catherine Vitro, Elizabeth Johnson, Hannah A. Roberts, Carter Sherman, and Mary M. Heitzeg. ‘Politics Can Be Bad for Your Health: Trumpism and COVID-19 Outcomes’. PsyArXiv, 17 February 2022. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/apuym.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/24/virginia-thomas-mark-meadows-texts/

When presented with problems people are prone to gesture more with the increasing challenges of those problems. The more ways there are to solve a particular problem, the more gesturing one is likely to do.

What sort of analysis could one do on politicians who gesture their speech with relation to this? For someone like Donald J. Trump who floats balloons (ideas--cross reference George Lakoff) in his speeches, is he actively gesturing in an increased manner as he's puzzling out what is working for an audience and what isn't? Does the gesturing decrease as he settles on the potential answers?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/roger-stone-documentary-capitol-riot-trump-election/

In modern literate contexts, it is easier to establish doubletalk in oral contexts than it is in written contexts as the written is more easily reviewed for clarity and concreteness. Verbal ticks like "you know what I mean", "it's easy to see/show", and other versions of similar hand-waving arguments that indicate gaps in thinking and arguments are far easier to identify in writing than they are in speech where social pressure may cause the audience to agree without actually following the thread of the argument. Writing certainly allows for timeshiting, but it explicitly also expands time frames for grasping and understanding a full argument in a way not commonly seen in oral settings.

Note that this may not be the case in primarily oral cultures which may take specific steps to mitigate these patterns.

Link this to the anthropology example from Scott M. Lacy of the (Malian?) tribe that made group decisions by repeating a statement from the lowest to the highest and back again to ensure understanding and agreement.

This difference in communication between oral and literate is one which leaders can take advantage of in leading their followers astray. An example is Donald Trump who actively eschewed written communication or even reading in general in favor of oral and highly emotional speech. This generally freed him from the need to make coherent and useful arguments.

Ryfe and Kemmelmeier not only show that this development goes much further back into the past and first appeared in newspapers (the quotes of politicians got almost halved between 1892 and 1968), but also posed the question if this can maybe also be seen as a form of increased professionalism of the media as they do not just let politicians talk as they wish (Ryfe and Kemmelmeier 2011). Craig Fehrman also pointed out the irony in the reception of this rather nuanced study – it was itself reduced to a soundbite in the media (Fehrman 2011).

Soundbites have decreased in length over time.

What effects are driving this? What are the knock on effects? What effect does this have on the ability for doubletalk to take hold? Is it easier for doubletalk and additional meanings to attach to soundbites when they're shorter? (It would seem so.) At what point to they hit a minimum?

What is the effect of potential memes which hold additional meaning of driving this soundbite culture?

Example: "Lock her up" as a soundbite with memetic meaning from the Trump 2016 campaign in reference to Hilary Clinton.

Andersen, K. (2022, January 25). The Anti-vaccine Right Brought Human Sacrifice to America. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/human-sacrifice-ritual-mass-vaccination/621355/

Rousseau was perfectly describing the intelligence and politics of Donald J. Trump when he described creatures which are like humans, but are "rushing headlong for their own chains". Trump was able to govern, but completely lacked the ability to imagine the consequences of any of his actions.

Not sure what name Rousseau gave these creatures. Which book was this in? Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men?

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/10/trump-lawyer-pence-biden-524088

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2021/10/trumps-new-social-media-platform-found-using-mastodon-code/

https://danallosso.substack.com/p/help-me-find-world-history-textbooks

Dan Allosso is curious to look at the history of how history is taught.

The history of teaching history is a fascinating topic and is an interesting way for cultural anthropologists to look at how we look at ourselves as well as to reveal subtle ideas about who we want to become.

This is particularly interesting with respect to teaching cultural identity and its relationship to nationalism.

One could look at the history of Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War to see how the South continued its cultural split from the North (or in more subtle subsections from Colin Woodard's American Nations thesis) to see how this has played out. This could also be compared to the current culture wars taking place with the rise of nationalism within the American political right and the Southern evangelicals which has come to a fervor with the rise of Donald J. Trump.

Other examples are the major shifts in nationalism after the "long 19th century" which resulted in World War I and World War II and Germany's national identity post WWII.

Atlanta is a film by Donald glover

"Very fine" is a dog whistle statement here created by Donald J. Trump and indicates his approval of white power. See also:

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/08/very-fine-people-charlottesville-who-were-they-2/
• https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/apr/26/context-trumps-very-fine-people-both-sides-remarks/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmaZR8E12bs

This is a painful burn by the writer Alex Beam.

Perhaps worth modifying for Donald J. Trump?

From the perspective of the American experiment and the evolution of democracy, Donald J. Trump was a dead white male who had the bad luck to still be alive."

Tangential to my particular study, but consider the idea of Donald Trump as being an imitator within this framing. He would frequently float ideas at rallies (cf. George Lakoff) to see what would get a rise from the crowed and riff off of that. In some sense he's not leading, yet imitating the mobs.

Trumps margin.

How can this gap be closed in the future?

Re: Sarah Palin

I can definitely see his point here about the rise of (white) populism here in America which pre-figured Trump.

Ha! This is almost exactly what I expected it to be about.

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Alan Jacobs</span> in re-setting my mental clock – Snakes and Ladders (<time class='dt-published'>07/01/2021 14:58:05</time>)</cite></small>

Is Donald Trump a form of nominative determinism?

Let's hope that the answer is a resounding "NO!"

Apparently he's invented the idea of a microblog? And he's got a /desk page?

What comes next?

But let's be honest, he was posting these short status updates like this just a few days after he got kicked off of Twitter. He's just got a slightly better UI now.

Oh, FFS!

Donald Trump invents blogging.<br><br> https://t.co/Wl06PnekU7

— Theo Priestley (@tprstly) May 4, 2021

Benjy Renton on Twitter: “For those who are wondering: There is a slight association (r = 0.34) between the percentage a county voted for Trump in 2020 and estimated hesitancy levels. As @JReinerMD mentioned, GOP state, county and local levels need to do their part to promote vaccination. Https://t.co/ZY2lUqHgLd” / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved April 28, 2021, from https://twitter.com/bhrenton/status/1382330404586274817

Emails show Trump officials celebrate efforts to change CDC reports on coronavirus—The Washington Post. (n.d.). Retrieved April 12, 2021, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/04/09/cdc-covid-political-interference/

hugely used in context

Apparently Donald Trumpisms are leaking into broader society, though even here it seems to be used ironically, thus also making fun of Trump himself.

Jeff Mason. (2021, March 15). .@POTUS says local doctors would be more effective at getting the message across about vaccines to Trump supporters than the former president would be [Tweet]. @jeffmason1. https://twitter.com/jeffmason1/status/1371524627067981830

Looi, Mun-Keat. ‘The Covid-19 Yearbook: World Leaders Edition’. BMJ 371 (16 December 2020): m4728. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m4728.

Brian Stelter. ‘One Year Ago Tonight, in Front of Millions of Loyal Viewers, Fox’s @SeanHannity Accused the Media of “Scaring the Living Hell out of People” about the Coronavirus and Said “I See It, Again, as like, Let’s Bludgeon Trump with This New Hoax.”’ Tweet. @brianstelter (blog), 10 March 2021. https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1369460806367199232.