No words. From slate "Trump's Contagious Delusions"

[NRaleighLiberal]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/07/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-helsinki-summit-the-president-cannot-reconcile-reality-with-his-own-truth.html?via=homepage_taps_top

No matter how much he twists and untwists his version of reality, his supporters are happy to embrace it.

Double Decker Narcissism

Donald Trump’s supporters believe the guy who believes only what he wants to believe.
By DAHLIA LITHWICK

JULY 19, 20182:31 PM

The New York Times’ Wednesday story revealing Donald Trump was fully and meticulously briefed before his inauguration about direct Russian interference in the 2016 election solves the mystery once and for all: Trump simply cannot permit his own brain to accept any evidence that he didn’t win the presidency by millions of votes. That’s it. No matter how many Russian emails and texts the nation’s intelligence apparatus show him, no matter how many times he is reminded of what is incontrovertibly true, Trump’s mind cannot reconcile reality with his own truth: that he is the most beloved and cherished leader in American history. Even when he was forced to walk back his Helsinki comments about trusting Russia more than his own intelligence agencies, in a performance arguably more horrifying than the original press conference with Vladimir Putin, Trump couldn’t manage to stay on message. Within hours of his clarification, he had reverted back to “no” when asked whether Russia was still targeting the United States.

This isn’t an intelligence problem or even a political problem. It’s an epistemological problem. This president is never going to allow himself to believe something that is abhorrent to him, and he will therefore dismiss, deflect, and contradict any information that doesn’t confirm his pre-existing beliefs. Whether or not he’s ever directly conspired with Russia, whether or not the Russians have something on him, Trump’s mental health requires him to reject even flawlessly sourced facts that he cannot integrate into his worldview. The most important conclusion we can draw from the past week’s events is that even his own aides have given up on trying to persuade him of the truth. Or as Sen. John Thune glumly conceded, regarding Trump’s walk-back, “I guess it’s probably the best we’re going to be able to get.” His reality is a fixed point. We either work around him, like Thune, or devote useless energy to trying to dissuade him.

Donald Trump believes only what he wants to believe. Although Washington Republicans will surely continue to craft their workarounds, nobody can deny any longer that Trump is willing to destabilize decades-old geopolitical alliances and undermine American national security, doing so chiefly in service of his own delusions. History books will someday have to note that American democracy died largely as a result of one man’s terminal case of confirmation bias.

But here’s the catch. Trump’s refusal to countenance any reality that doesn’t map on to the movie kicking around inside his brain isn’t an affliction that’s limited to Trump. It’s perfectly mirrored in the devotion of the Trump loyalists who suffer from precisely the same disorder. The president’s inability to differentiate between reality and what he wants to be true is the reason his staunchest supporters see him as the patron saint of choose-your-own-ending geopolitics. The bulk of unyielding Trump fans don’t want or need a coherent narrative. Trump’s performance in Helsinki on Monday was heroic because Russia is not the enemy, the “deep state” is. Trump’s walk-back in Washington the next day was heroic because he was man enough to concede that he misspoke and Russia is again the enemy and we trust our national intelligence apparatus. And Trump’s walk-back of his walk-back is also heroic because … Russia is not the enemy, the “deep state” is. Yeah, that’s the ticket. It’s like Build-A-Bear, but for truth.


snip - read the rest at the link above

long but good article and mind bendingly depressing - IT IS A CULT!

[pansypoo53219]

1. "i am a superior being + everybody loves me". king of delusion.

[teach1st]

2. Here's the link

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/07/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-helsinki-summit-the-president-cannot-reconcile-reality-with-his-own-truth.html

[NRaleighLiberal]

4. THANKS! edited to add the link - multitasking as usual!

[C_U_L8R]

3. Now, that's a derangement syndrome

[Scurrilous]

5. K&R

[EndGOPPropaganda]

6. No. Rightwing media created this. Not Trump

30 years of lies from Fox and Limbaugh and Cato and Heritage and Breitbart and WSJ Ed page created this.

Not Trump.

Rightwing propaganda told America that Hillary and Democrats are evil. That’s why 20% of America thinks Putin is better than Dems. Because Limbaugh reaches 18% of Americans weekly and has been lying to them for THIRTY YEARS. Lots of those listeners have been listening to his lies for their WHOLE LIVES.


The rightwing propaganda machine was built by GOP billionaires to get votes for tax cuts.
And it created the conditions for Trump. Trump didn’t build this. Rupert Murdoch and Rush Limbaugh and the Koches and Bob Mercer built this.

[Garrett78]

11. I think it goes back further than that.

The white backlash to the Civil Rights Movement and Nixon's Southern Strategy and Reagan's intense dog whistling helped make the rise of Trump (or someone like him) almost inevitable.

But, yes, right wing media has played an enormous role in the rise of Trump.

[EndGOPPropaganda]

12. Yes.

The birth event was LBJ kicking the racists out of the Democratic Party with the Civil Rights Act.

We went from a GOP coalition of rich people plus the educated and socially liberal, to a coalition of rich people and racists and Christians.

Oligarchs plus identity politics is a recipe for disaster.


(Piketty has written some good stuff on this.)

[John Fante]

7. Trump supporters want Muslim bans, Mexico-funded walls,

obedient NFL players, and traumatized brown people at the border.

BIGOTRY BIGOTRY and more BIGOTRY. That is Trump's charisma, his charm, his appeal - and as far as his supporters are concerned, it more than makes up for his numerous shortcomings. As long as he continues to follow through on his bigoted policies, Trump will always have GOP support in the high 80s. They couldn't care less that he is weak, lazy, crooked, hypocritical, and incoherent. He is deplorable, and so are they.

[EndGOPPropaganda]

13. But the number of GOP voters will shrink

[Garrett78]

8. I'm not convinced of Trump's cognitive dissonance.

I'm not convinced that "Trump’s mind cannot reconcile reality with his own truth."

That might be true. But it may also be true that he's simply obfuscating, because he doesn't want others to accept that he's compromised, that he's weak, that he's illegitimate.

[gulliver]

9. I don't think Trump believes it. He's simply concocting it all, like a TV showrunner.

His audience accepts what he says not because they believe it, but because it allows them to do something they want to do (or not do something they don't want to do...or both).

[The Genealogist]

10. I don't know what is wrong with him, exactly

I don't know whether it is what this writer says, or one of a dozen or more other things that is wrong with him. Doesn't matter exactly. He is destroying this country right before our eyes. THAT is what matters.

Ultimately, whether the house burned down because of faulty wiring, an arsonist's moltov cocktail, or a kid playing with matches, it is still a burned down house.