On his first day in office, President Trump not only revoked the security clearance of his former National Security Adviser John Bolton, but also his U.S. Secret Service protection.
This was not the first time Trump had stripped the advisor turned critic of the Secret Service detail. In September 2019, after Trump ousted Bolton from his position, he suspended the protection within hours. Bolton was subsequently granted security by former President Joe Biden.
The signatories of the letter wrote that they didn’t know whether the emails were authentic or not but that their emergence has “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
But Trump’s director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe — also his current pick to lead the CIA — contradicted that assessment by saying there was no intelligence to support the idea that Russia had anything to do with Hunter Biden’s laptop. The FBI, which was conducting its own criminal investigations into the younger Biden, seemed to back up Ratcliffe’s statement by telling Congress in a letter it had nothing to add to what he had said.
Donald Trump’s shake-up of America’s Intelligence and National Security Communities bodes ill for response to threats to American Democracy–but that would seem to be the point. He has been consistent in his passions, foremost the elimination of the American Election Process–for once, he appears to have said exactly what he meant. The retelling of “The Snake“–one might expect some MAGA to have known what he was when they voted for him . . . or colluded with his “Stop The Steal” big lie. The electric battery or shark question: those might be for the drug dealers whose money his operations haven’t been laundering. And the references to Hannibal the Cannibal from The Silence of the Lambs . . . . Think about that. He sells fear through fabrication — the 2020 election hadn’t been stolen, full stop — and xenophobia through exaggeration . . . perhaps telling more about himself than any true state of affairs.
Now as President Trump, he has targeted our most critical government services in law enforcement and justice and national security, especially the Intelligence Community (IC) though which American Military and State Department leaders may see both present situations and future real threats.
Badgering Trumpian insults to intelligence take their toll on X as may the wayward convictions of the nation’s far white right bigots and “Christian” nationalist zealots so far sunk in their Weltanschauung as to have imprisoned themselves in archaic principles discarded by the nobility of Europe–and of the American South–centuries ago–reference: Thirty Years War, Peace of Westphalia, American Civil War. After all that . . . the latest Ketaminic Sieg Heil salute to Adolph Hitler and remnant white supremacists worldwide:
Trump is an undisputed poster boy for narcissism. He demonstrates in pure form every single symptom described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) criteria for narcissistic personality disorder, which I wrote in 1978. But lots of successful people are extremely narcissistic without being mentally ill — think most celebrities, many politicians, and a fair percentage of writers, artists, lawyers, doctors, and professors. To qualify for narcissistic personality disorder, an individual’s selfish, unempathetic preening must be accompanied by significant distress or impairment. Trump certainly causes severe distress and impairment in others, but his narcissism doesn’t seem to affect him that way.
On X, I’ve asserted the following for guidance: “delusional, grandiose, messianic ideation absent of normal boundaries and limits, i.e., the parameters of normal conscience.” If that’s not part of the DSM, I’d think the volume inadequate for addressing “Malignant Narcissism”, for every related–and above bolded term–may be searched on the web. Also as regards the narcissism of the healthy, the better natured and reparative in character may deserve or have earned a positive regard for the egoism inseparable from their own quest or struggle for success, i.e., the presence of a reparative narcissism along the lines of Maslow’s healthy competence-seeking behavior and self-esteem. When we’re good–or in the vicinity of excellence in our arts and professions–we many not need the limitless public adoration and validation that defines “Narcissistic Supply” and the neediness of the malign.
For additional curiosity related to Donald Trump’s persistent character, one may have a look into “Sociopathy“. Also worth a gander: “Anomie“; and on the other and brighter side of mental health appreciation, evaluation, and judgment–“Abraham Maslow“; “Positive Psychology“.
Has the United States of America been infiltrated, invaded, overpowered by elements either foreign to it, foreign to its character. or in fact opposed to its American Constitutional ideals and intentions?
American Character and Integrity Matter — Truth Matters
Down every avenue of honest nonpartisan inquiry, one finds President Trump a traitor to the United States of America, a convicted felon who has only evaded trials involving American identity and American national security as indicated by indictments for election interference, classified documents abuse, and attempted election fixing, and yet, as of yesterday, he has once again been handed the immense power of the American Presidency. Now comes a new question: have American governments and more brave and earnest American politicians as well as America’s most spirited artists, community leaders, journalists, investigators–all of whom may prefer American truth to American bullshit–the power to defend American Democracy against an apparent usurper and a tyranny of the “majority”? And Trump is a so-called “American President” who has made this bald promise in effect to all Americans: “It’ll be fixed. It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore my beautiful Christians . . . in four years you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote” (YouTube video, Turning Point Action, July 27, 2024).
American Community
Americans should be American in spirit as well as by geopolitical fact, but what an “American” is today appears questionable. Gone: an all-white polity; forgotten: E Pluribus Unum. The latest generations of American Natives and Native Americans may all claim to have been born in the United States of America, and whether happy with that or not . . . that’s just a fact of life. Whoever we are, we are all here. And perhaps now we need a New American Community, one that affirms its ethics, morals, principles, and values–and some of that may need updating and redefinition to suit the full complement of the nation–and one that rejects the racist and religious wet dreams best laid to rest in some dimming recollection of archaic medieval attitudes, beliefs, and practices.
We are Americans, and our power is not all white, nor need it ever be so again. There is no “Great Replacement” . . . .
Ol’ Whitey–and everyone else–“got around”.
So while we Americans think about who we are NOW and what we should be and mean to be–and not what may be engineered and forced on us by coercion, fraud, and force or the MAGAdumb–well, that has been the character of our Convicted Felon in Chief–we might have to accept a little bit of Moscow’s white nationalist crap at the top of what really has been a long dismissed and lost–and good riddance–America.
X Social Network
Countless hours, posts in the thousands (probably–too many for me to count)–for what? A conversation in public; trolling ladies with barely an X-presence; trolling fakes probably making up lists suited to their own derangement; a great lot of follows–really: the best notables in diplomacy and political science and related fields (most don’t know me, but I’m proud to have come to know of them)–and a pretty good base (still under one thousand) of followers–and God bless each and everything one of them. Apart from that “action”, lol, I live alone in a library. Earnest live and evolving conversations seem few to nil and far between or not expected at all.
BackChannels 