Trump Blindness Syndrome (TBS)

[wellwisher]

Does anyone remember the Russian Collusion delusion. That was when the Democrat leadership continuously lied to the America people over several years with constant misinformation about Trump. The journalist in the main stream media, were either stupid or part of the scam. I tend to think stupid people sucking up to power.

The same gang of con artists are at it again, lying to their base, about Trump and the hard reality. Their base appears to be suffering from abused spouse syndrome. They appear unable to deal with the truth of being used and abused, while still making up excuses for their continued abuse. The con artists are treating you like morons out of touch with reality.

That are being told that the terrible man Trump, makes their abusive spouse behave this way. It not theirs spouses fault for lying and abusing, If Trump goes away this will make it better. Keep telling yourself that. That will not change liars.

Nobody has been punished yet for the failed coup attempt by the corrupt Democrat leaders and their media and bureaucratic cronies; gang of liars. Is anyone aware that Mueller's team of lawyers wiped their cell phones to hide incriminating information about their corrupt handlers? There are rumblings in the air, of due justice beginning before the election. This anticipation is what is driving the current operation chaos and misinformation, by the Democrat lie machine. They are desparate.

The party of con artist can only stay out of jail, if they can win by any means, and make it all go away once in power. Is this what the abused spouses are hoping for? This will not change their dark natures, but will make them worse.

After Trump wins in a landslide, simply because Biden is not up for the hardest job in the world, and after the Republicans win the House and keep the Senate, the habitual liars will have their hands full because of investigations and indictments. Trump will have four years to meter out justice. The rats will turn on each other, and the Democrat party will need to hit system restore. This will bring the back in time as the party of fairness, and not the party of con artists and treachery.

 

[Stevicus]

I think we're talking past each other.

When you say "middle ground," this suggests to me that you're talking about both sides compromising on some issue or issues, but when I ask you to say what you mean, your replies seemed to be focused on something else.

Short version: I really don't know what you're trying to tell me, or how you would want the Democrats and Republicans to compromise to reach some middle ground (if that's even what you're talking about).

The point is, not everyone is necessarily "unreasonable," so there are some on both sides who may be able to compromise, focusing more on the well-being of the people, as opposed to pointless sniping back and forth.

Because it's not really about Trump. Trump will be gone soon enough, but there are still the same issues and problems affecting the country.

 

[Mindmaster]

I try to avoid feelings for politicians.
They're the mind killer.

I absolutely don't care about it either. Besides, if you are bothered by that you probably should be more bothered by the fact that Biden seems barely able to remember where he is half of the time. I don't even dislike Biden, I just think he should retire and the people around him are exploiting him. I've had relatives who've acted similar to him and they had issues... To me, it's just straight out elder abuse to make him run or even allow it.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Does anyone remember the Russian Collusion delusion. That was when the Democrat leadership continuously lied to the America people over several years with constant misinformation about Trump. The journalist in the main stream media, were either stupid or part of the scam. I tend to think stupid people sucking up to power.

The same gang of con artists are at it again, lying to their base, about Trump and the hard reality. Their base appears to be suffering from abused spouse syndrome. They appear unable to deal with the truth of being used and abused, while still making up excuses for their continued abuse. The con artists are treating you like morons out of touch with reality.

That are being told that the terrible man Trump, makes their abusive spouse behave this way. It not theirs spouses fault for lying and abusing, If Trump goes away this will make it better. Keep telling yourself that. That will not change liars.

Nobody has been punished yet for the failed coup attempt by the corrupt Democrat leaders and their media and bureaucratic cronies; gang of liars. Is anyone aware that Mueller's team of lawyers wiped their cell phones to hide incriminating information about their corrupt handlers? There are rumblings in the air, of due justice beginning before the election. This anticipation is what is driving the current operation chaos and misinformation, by the Democrat lie machine. They are desparate.

The party of con artist can only stay out of jail, if they can win by any means, and make it all go away once in power. Is this what the abused spouses are hoping for? This will not change their dark natures, but will make them worse.

After Trump wins in a landslide, simply because Biden is not up for the hardest job in the world, and after the Republicans win the House and keep the Senate, the habitual liars will have their hands full because of investigations and indictments. Trump will have four years to meter out justice. The rats will turn on each other, and the Democrat party will need to hit system restore. This will bring the back in time as the party of fairness, and not the party of con artists and treachery.

There’s a lot of nonsense in here.

Rather than go down this rabbit hole and derail the thread, perhaps I’ll just notice that you have not engaged with the OP topics of TBS, or the specific examples of TBS cited in this thread.

 

[Revoltingest]

I absolutely don't care about it either. Besides, if you are bothered by that you probably should be more bothered by the fact that Biden seems barely able to remember where he is half of the time. I don't even dislike Biden, I just think he should retire and the people around him are exploiting him. I've had relatives who've acted similar to him and they had issues... To me, it's just straight out elder abuse to make him run or even allow it.

He might even be a good President.
It's just that his record & state of mind
indicate a likelihood it'll be otherwise.
But would he be better than Trump?
I don't know. They're both mixed bags.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Here is another piece, worth examining through the lens of TBS. This WSJ Op-Ed by Peggy Noonan regarding the Ukraine scandal.

Trump’s Defenders Have no Defense

Witnesses were uneven, but even his closest allies don’t try to deny he did what he’s accused of doing.

Look, the case has been made. Almost everything in the impeachment hearings this week fleshed out and backed up the charge that President Trump muscled Ukraine for political gain. The pending question is what precisely the House and its Democratic majority will decide to include in the articles of impeachment, what statutes or standards they will assert the president violated.

What was said consistently undermined Mr. Trump’s case, but more deadly was what has never been said. In the two months since Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry was under way and the two weeks since the Intelligence Committee’s public hearings began, no one, even in the White House, has said anything like, “He wouldn’t do that!” or “That would be so unlike him.” His best friends know he would do it and it’s exactly like him.

The week’s hearings were not a seamless success for Democrats. On Tuesday they seemed to be losing the thread. But by Wednesday and Thursday it was restored.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman was not a persuasive witness and did not move the story forward, because in spite of the obvious patriotism reflected in his record he was annoying—smug and full of himself. He appeared in full dress uniform with three rows of ribbons. When Rep. Devin Nunes called him “Mr. Vindman,” he quickly corrected him: “Ranking Member, it’s Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, please.” Oh, snap. As he described his areas of authority at the National Security Council, he seemed to glisten with self-regard. You got the impression he saw himself as fully in charge of U.S. policy toward Ukraine. Asked if it was true that government offered to make him their defense minister he said “yes” with no apparent embarrassment. I don’t know about you but I don’t like it when a foreign government gets a sense of a U.S. military officer and concludes he might fit right in. (A Ukrainian official later said the job offer was a joke.)

Mr. Vindman—I’m sorry, Lt. Col. Vindman—self-valorized, as other witnesses have, and tugged in his opening statement on America’s heart strings by addressing his father, who brought his family from the Soviet Union 40 years ago: “Dad, . . . you made the right decision. . . . Do not worry, I will be fine for telling the truth.”

The committee has paid entirely too much attention to the witnesses’ emotions. “How did that make you feel?” “Without upsetting you too much, I’d like to show you the excerpts from the call . . .”

I am sure the questioners were told to take this tack by communications professionals who believe this is how you manipulate housewives. In fact a mother at home with a vacuum in one hand and a crying baby in the other would look at them, listen, and think: “You guys represent us to other countries? You gotta butch up.”

Later, as Col. Vindman returned to work, and clearly wanting to be seen, he posed grinning for photos in front of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

It is not only Donald Trump who suffers from Absence of Gravity.

On Wednesday Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, was both weirdly jolly and enormously effective in doing Mr. Trump damage. He followed the president’s orders; there was a quid pro quo; “everyone was in the loop, it was no secret“; Rudy Giuliani was the point man, with whom Mr. Sondland worked “at the express direction of the president.”

It was his third try at truthful sworn testimony and it was completely believable. It was kind of the ballgame. He seemed like a guy with nothing to lose, or maybe a guy who’d already lost much.

On Thursday Fiona Hill, the former White House Russia expert, was all business, a serious woman you don’t want to mess with. She reoriented things, warning that those who excuse or don’t wish to see Russian propaganda efforts against America, and targeting its elections, are missing the obvious. The suspicion of the president and his allies that Ukraine is the great culprit in the 2016 election is a “fictional narrative.” They are, in fact, bowing to disinformation Russia spreads to cover its tracks and confuse the American people and its political class. She dismissed the president’s operatives’ efforts to get Ukraine’s new president to investigate his country’s alleged meddling as a “domestic political errand.” She and other diplomats were “involved in national security, foreign policy,” and the interests of the operatives and the diplomats had “diverged.” She warned Mr. Sondland: “This is all going to blow up.”

Truer words.

What became obvious in the hearings was the sober testimony from respectable diplomats—not disgruntled staffers with nutty memoirs but people of stature who don’t ordinarily talk—about how the administration operates. It became clear in a new and public way that pretty much everyone around the president has been forced for three years to work around his poor judgment and unpredictability in order to do their jobs. He no doubt knows this and no doubt doesn’t care. Because he’s the boss, they’ll do it his way.

But we saw how damaging this is, how ultimately destructive, not only to coherence and respectability but to the president himself.

After Thursday’s hearings I felt some free-floating sympathy for high Trump appointees who joined early. You can say they knew what they signed up for, but it’s human to have hope, and they surely had it when they came aboard. They were no doubt ambitious—they wanted a big job—but they probably wanted to do good, too. They were optimistic—“How bad can it be?” And there would have been vanity—“I can handle him.” But they couldn’t. He not only doesn’t know where the line is; he has never wanted to know, so he can cross it with impunity, without consciousness of a bad act or one that might put him in danger. They were no match for his unpredictability and resentments, which at any moment could undo anything.

As to impeachment itself, the case has been so clearly made you wonder what exactly the Senate will be left doing. How will they hold a lengthy trial with a case this clear? Who exactly will be the president’s witnesses, those who’d testify he didn’t do what he appears to have done, and would never do it?

Procedures, rules and definitions aren’t fully worked out in the Senate. But we are approaching December and the clock is ticking. A full-blown trial on charges most everyone will believe are true, and with an election in less than a year, will seem absurd to all but diehards and do the country no good.

So the reasonable guess is Republican senators will call to let the people decide. In a divided country this is the right call. But they should take seriously the idea of censuring him for abuse of power. Mr. Trump would be the first president to be censured since Andrew Jackson, to whom his theorists have always compared him. In the end he will probably be proud of a tightening of the connection.

Source: Opinion | Trump’s Defenders Have No Defense

So, which tools in the TBS toolkit do you see at work in this article?

I applaud Ms. Noonan for admitting the obvious in light of the damning testimony from Gordon Sondland, and others. Trump did it, and we all know he did it.

But, notice how even though she admits “Trump muscled Ukraine for political gain”, and that ought to be a profoundly outrageous thing for a President to do, this really isn’t an article condemning him for this offense.

It’s more an article sheepishly admitting it for two paragraphs. Then she quickly moves on, and spends many more paragraphs critiquing witnesses like Lt. Col. Vindman. Peggy sees fit to call Vindman “smug”, etc. No such unkind words for Donald Trump, though - America’s smuggest boy.

So even here, when the WSJ sees fit to acknowledge the reality of Trump, at every opportunity they play it down.

Vindman, who did nothing wrong, gets called “smug”.

Trump’s advisors are characterized as hapless do-gooders who did their best.

The Senate and the impeachment trial is a confusing thing - with the case proved, what is left to do? Being outraged at Trump and no longer supporting him is not an option she seems to have contemplated. The case has been proved, so she’s left with quite a conundrum about what to do next.

But Donald Trump, strangely - the central villain of this whole saga - doesn’t figure all that much in this article. His shenanigans are just taken for granted with a shrug. “Look, the case has been made.” Given that admission, the lack of outrage or critique of the President is notable. I think Ms. Noonan knows Trump is a clown, but also knows she has a very Trump-friendly audience. In crafting her article this way, she is giving them as much air cover as possible, under the circumstances.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

The point is, not everyone is necessarily "unreasonable," so there are some on both sides who may be able to compromise, focusing more on the well-being of the people, as opposed to pointless sniping back and forth.

An approach that was focused on the well-being of the people would look very different from - and probably very far to the left of - anything on the current Republican/Democrat spectrum.

... and I'd say that anyone who supports unreasonable things - like the current Republican platform and administration - is being unreasonable by definition. Maybe getting to know them will help our understanding of what caused them to be unreasonable, but this understanding won't suddenly make, say, denial of basic human rights a reasonable thing to do, even if we understood what motivated a person to deny them.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Guess who said the following, and in what context?

“You don’t want us to panic? How about I don’t want us to die! Tell us the truth for once!”

This was Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro, in October 2014, going into almost fact-free hysterics over Obama’s response to Ebola. Watch her anger-filled, unhinged diatribe here:

Watching this is like what I imagine George Orwell was trying to capture with the two minutes of hate in 1984. Except she’s frothing at the mouth for nearly seven minutes.

Just to level set: in 2014, there were eleven cases of Ebola in the US and two people died.

Now watch Jeanine Pirro in March 2020, equally unhinged, but this time showering praise on the administration and demonizing their enemies for exaggerating the threat, like a North Korean state news reporter.

Kind of astonishing, isn’t it?

Remember: Fox News is America’s most watched prime time news network.

So which attributes of Trump Blindness Syndrome are on display here?

- Selective outrage. That’s a BIG one here since outrage - at something - appears to be Jeanine Pirro’s favorite emotion.

This is like a case study in selective outrage.

Anything else?