tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post345831664756055862..comments2024-03-26T06:17:49.527-07:00Comments on Had Enough Therapy?: Ruth Bader Ginsberg's NormlessnessStuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-81343774244000327392016-07-18T02:53:40.135-07:002016-07-18T02:53:40.135-07:00Trump really is a complete faker. His ghostwriter ...Trump really is a complete faker. His ghostwriter tells all!<br /><br />We don't need Supreme Court Justices to trash talk Trump. We just need people close to Trump over the years to disavow him.<br /><br />Normlessness would seem to be the least of our problem. The ultimate failure is the inability to tell the difference between fact and fiction, and everyone who vows to vote for Trump has this disease, even if we're all dumber for every second we try to fact check anything he says. There's nothing left when the emotional manipulation is lifted.<br /><br />Good luck Cleveland! Don't be naughty, but laugh if you dare, the clowns are coming to town.<br /><br />http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all<br />---<br />Trump, facing a crowd that had gathered in the lobby of Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue, laid out his qualifications, saying, “We need a leader that wrote ‘The Art of the Deal.’ ” If that was so, Schwartz thought, then he, not Trump, should be running. Schwartz dashed off a tweet: “Many thanks Donald Trump for suggesting I run for President, based on the fact that I wrote ‘The Art of the Deal.’ ”<br /><br />Schwartz had ghostwritten Trump’s 1987 breakthrough memoir, earning a joint byline on the cover, half of the book’s five-hundred-thousand-dollar advance, and half of the royalties.<br />...<br />While working on “The Art of the Deal,” Schwartz kept a journal in which he expressed his amazement at Trump’s personality, writing that Trump seemed driven entirely by a need for public attention. “All he is is ‘stomp, stomp, stomp’—recognition from outside, bigger, more, a whole series of things that go nowhere in particular,” he observed, on October 21, 1986. But, as he noted in the journal a few days later, “the book will be far more successful if Trump is a sympathetic character—even weirdly sympathetic—than if he is just hateful or, worse yet, a one-dimensional blowhard.”<br /><br />Eavesdropping solved the interview problem, but it presented a new one. After hearing Trump’s discussions about business on the phone, Schwartz asked him brief follow-up questions. He then tried to amplify the material he got from Trump by calling others involved in the deals. But their accounts often directly conflicted with Trump’s. “Lying is second nature to him,” Schwartz said. “More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.”<br />...<br />When Schwartz began writing “The Art of the Deal,” he realized that he needed to put an acceptable face on Trump’s loose relationship with the truth. So he concocted an artful euphemism. Writing in Trump’s voice, he explained to the reader, “I play to people’s fantasies. . . . People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and it’s a very effective form of promotion.” Schwartz now disavows the passage. “Deceit,” he told me, is never “innocent.” He added, “ ‘Truthful hyperbole’ is a contradiction in terms. It’s a way of saying, ‘It’s a lie, but who cares?’ ” Trump, he said, loved the phrase.<br />---<br /><br />Ares Olympushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726811306826601686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-41090518894920102672016-07-17T13:11:00.727-07:002016-07-17T13:11:00.727-07:00To be fair, she did apologize, not to Trump of cou...To be fair, she did apologize, not to Trump of course, but for expressing opinions on Trump's poor character.<br /><br />http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/14/politics/ruth-bader-ginsburg-i-regret-making-donald-trump-remarks/index.html<br />---<br />"On reflection, my recent remarks in response to press inquiries were ill-advised and I regret making them," Ginsburg said in a statement. "Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office. In the future I will be more circumspect."<br /><br />Hours after releasing the statement Ginsburg talked exclusively to NPR's Nina Totenberg, and expanded upon her statement. She called her comments "incautious." <br /><br />"I did something I should not have done," she added. "It's over and done with and I don't want to discuss it anymore."<br />....<br />Ginsburg's remarks to CNN as well as to the Associated Press and The New York Times created a highly unusual week at the Supreme Court. Not only was it unprecedented for a member of the current court to delve so deeply into a presidential campaign, but a statement expressing regret is also quite rare.<br /><br />"He is a faker," she told CNN, going point by point, as if presenting a legal brief. "He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. ... How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that."<br />---<br /><br />What's problematic to me is that her rather mild critiisms should not surprise anyone, and Trump's supporters are surely proud of Trump's inconsistencies. You could even say his supporters are shameless in their support for his shamelessness.<br /><br />Stuart talked about thus:<br />http://stuartschneiderman.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-penis-of-donald.html<br />------<br />When it comes to Trump’s shamelessness, Klein is on the mark:<br /><br />Trump's other gift — the one that gets less attention but is perhaps more important — is his complete lack of shame. It's easy to underestimate how important shame is in American politics. But shame is our most powerful restraint on politicians who would find success through demagoguery. Most people feel shame when they're exposed as liars, when they're seen as uninformed, when their behavior is thought cruel, when respected figures in their party condemn their actions, when experts dismiss their proposals, when they are mocked and booed and protested.<br /><br />Trump doesn't. He has the reality television star's ability to operate entirely without shame, and that permits him to operate entirely without restraint. It is the single scariest facet of his personality. It is the one that allows him to go where others won't, to say what others can't, to do what others wouldn't.<br /><br />Trump lives by the reality television trope that he's not here to make friends. But the reason reality television villains always say they're not there to make friends is because it sets them apart, makes them unpredictable and fun to watch. "I'm not here to make friends" is another way of saying, "I'm not bound by the social conventions of normal people." The rest of us are here to make friends, and it makes us boring, gentle, kind.<br />-----<br /><br />Trump's populism may be the ultimate expression of Normlessness. You never know what he's going to do or say next, whether defending Planned Parenthood for helping women or offering to default on the national debt for leverage against retirees who decided to purchase safe treasury notes to avoid market volitility, the suckers!<br /><br />At least we've been warned, and no one could claim innocence who votes for Trump. Ares Olympushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726811306826601686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-66809969382249459952016-07-17T10:46:35.840-07:002016-07-17T10:46:35.840-07:00Normophobia favors the New Normal.Normophobia favors the New Normal.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com