I continue to only catch most news about the impeachment proceedings
largely by accident. I don't read those articles at Maggie's and even
at Grim's I skip most of those, even though I usually read everything
there. I see the headlines. Occasionally I will follow up with one. I
also have little temptation to read any more opinions on what drives
Trump or what his personality is. I think it has all been said. I
decided today that I would try to come up with something new myself,
just to provide value-added for my friends.
Donald Trump is a lot like a
manic. Lots of politicians are, good ones and bad ones. Manics have
an uncanny ability to find the insult that irritates you most and puts
you back on your heels. They are overconfident, but if they keep it
just under control they can make it work for them - and for you, as
manics have been both the best and the worst leaders in wartime or other
crises. When they lie, it is usually bullshit, exaggeration, and
bluster more than calculation or sociopathy. They remember some things
in surprising detail and forget others in moments. They are very good at
talking themselves out of corners. They are genuinely interested in
others and like them, though they can turn and hold grudges as well.
Bill Clinton was a lot like that.
I would have a better feel for whether my guess is true if I hung around with him for a couple of hours.
9 comments:
I met 43 once while he was still governor of Texas. The man had the uncanny ability to look you in the eye and make you feel as though you were the absolute center of his universe. I'm never encountered that effect since, but I suspect Trump has that ability in spades.
This seems spot on. Bob said to me the other day that “The problem with Trump is that he won’t stop talking” and that’s just about a perfect summation of how he gets himself into, out of, and then back into scrapes.
Trump is an East Coast, Big City type. I grew up in Boston surrounded by them, and absorbed quite a bit of it. They are in-your-face, bombastic, high-energy and often quite creative and entertaining. They make good stand-up comics. They can be a royal pain. They do get into feuds.
When I first came to Ohio to join the OSU faculty in '72, I had a lot of adjusting to do. Midwesterners really don't like East Coast Big City. Of course, they have their own passive-aggressive ways to irritate people.
"When they lie, it is usually bullshit, exaggeration, and bluster more than calculation or sociopathy."
Your description fits really well with the former manager of a department I dealt with extensively at work for many years. Didn't like him, (don't like Trump), but was able to work with him.
Perhaps my hyperbole detector is over-calibrated as a result, and this experience is why I get so frustrated with some of the accusations of "lying" against Trump – if we both know that what (X) said was hyperbole, but I describe it to you as a "lie", who is being more deceitful, (X) the manic individual? Or me?
roadgeek, I have heard the same about Bill Clinton.
sykes.1 - and I think that is even more pronounced in New York than other cities.
Unknown - good last point. Exaggerating how much someone is lying is also lying, and comparing one type versus the other isn't necessary, only awareness that one has to place a discount on the truth of both.
Ironically I am also trying to limit engagement with this, in order not to miss important things happening in the background. You won’t come under criticism from me for ignoring it as much as possible. I’m trying to give it not more than ~30m a day of my attention.
There’s a lot more afoot, nearly all of it of greater real importance. People want to discuss this, though, so there’s a space for doing so.
"It doesn't matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice". ~ Deng Xiaoping
I think there is another thing about Trump that explains a lot of the hostility toward him.
Trump is an intuitive, pattern-recognizing thinker. Most academics and bureaucrats, and apparently now a lot of journalists, are top-down deductive/sequential thinkers who have a strong need to fit things into whatever pattern they have learned. (Also true of many MBAs, for whom the position of a business on the Boston Consulting Group grid is more 'real' than the actual business itself)
I am a better deductive/sequential thinker than Trump is, but I have enough of the intuitive and pattern-recognizing mode to recognize what he is doing and what the value of it is.
One of the values of a philosophy degree lies in learning many different theoretical frameworks, which often oppose one another. Even if you are a deductive/sequential thinker, then, you at least can run the traps several different ways and compare the results.
That said, there can be value in intuition.
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