Moron Don and Bob Corker: why the name game works

Donald Trump has the schoolyard bully’s talent for ranking people out. “Ranking out” was the term we used for putting down other kids back in Queens in 1960. One rank out phrase I recall sounds picturesque by the standards of these days: I’ll rank you so low you’ll play handball against the curb.

Trump brought the art of ranking people out to the national political stage with—

·               Low Energy Jeb Bush

·               Little Marco

·               Lyin’ Ted

·               Crooked Hillary

·               Little Rocket Man

·               Liddle’ Bob Corker

But the name Moron Don finally sticks to Donald Trump And, funny thing, Rex Tillerson used the phrase behind closed doors. Tillerson never intended the insult to fall upon Don’s ears. And especially didn’t plan for the rank-out to go viral and be heard by the ears of the world.

The key to a really good insult is its accuracy—and Moron Don fits Donald Trump surprisingly well.

Moron:

1. A person having an I.Q. of 50-69 and judged incapable of developing beyond a mental age of 8-12.

2. Informal any stupid person or a person lacking in good judgment.

Why does moron work so well for Mr. Trump. Well, there’s something loose and freewheeling about a moron. Moron Don rolls along—put your hands in the air, like you just don’t care. Don doesn’t care but he is sensitive about native intelligence. Donald Trump may be the master of street smarts but he’s no Henry Kissinger when it comes to world history or in the arena of books smarts.

But Bob Corker, the senator from Tennessee, comes along just in time. Corker, like Superman, steps into the void and leaps tall building. Corker, a voice of reason and courage, hurtles into the ball of confusion with no fear of Trump the schoolyard bully. Maybe it’s all about the name—corker!

Corker:

1.   a person who thing or thing that corks.

2.   Slang someone of astonishing talent or excellent quality.

Let’s just hope that Bob Corker keeps corking along…

The Talented Mr. Trump….according to Scott Adams

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2016/03/21/donald-trump-will-win-in-a-landslide-the-mind-behind-dilbert-explains-why/?utm_term=.3518dc00b78c

                                                                                                            

The 800 pound gorilla on the TV screen… we cannot get the name Trump off her lips Recently I read a Washington Post article on Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist, from March 21, 2016, way before before Election Day. Adams brilliantly outlined the reasons for his prediction that Donald Trump would win the presidency.

Much of this blog comes directly from the Washington Post article by Michael Cavna. See the link above. The ideas come from Scott Adams, almost verbatim.

(I apologize in advance for any failure to include quotation marks. Scott Adams’ insights make the entire basis for this blog entry.)

We should all be listening to Scott Adams. Adams predicted Trump beating Clinton easily, playing Hillary like a fiddle much as he had with his primary competitors. Adams must know something none of the rest of us knew, including Nate Silver. We should be beating down Scott Adams door to learn the reasons behind Trumps victory…to learn the lessons of modern presidential politics in the electronic age!

Adams states that Trump, a master of psychology, understands a basic fact of human behavior—we are all irrational beings. We like to think of ourselves as fact-based. We are not. We are emotion-based. Trump realized this, created his own facts if necessary but mainly avoided facts altogether. Trump found the hot-button issues, immigration being a big one, and began to fill stadiums with enthusiastic crowds.

Scott Adams, thankfully, has taken the time to figure out the rhetorical style of Donald Trump. Behind Trump’s rhetoric lays a campaign strategy and an understanding of human psychology.

• Trump loves to win and crush the competition.

• Trump has a great mastery of human psychology. Adams believes this skill—psychology-- is the most important and only skill needed to win the presidency.

• Trump knows that human beings are ruled by emotion, not the facts.

• Trump has amazing powers of persuasion.

Adams likens Trump’s mastery of persuasion to the power a hypnotist maintains over a subject. Humans are irrational beings. Adams himself had to gain an awareness of human irrationality to become a successful cartoonist. Bill Keane of Family Circus instructed Adams to stop writing for himself. Adams changed his subject to the workplace, and the demands and inhumanity of the corporate work environment. Trump connected to a similar sort of invisible "suffering" and connected to people "on an emotional level."

Trump became the most interesting by a fearless approach. Adams said Trump “can always be the most interesting story if he has nothing to fear and nothing to lose.” Bolstered by a no-fear, nothing-to-lose perspective Trump could employ language in a way never seen before on the political stage. The audiences loved Trump’s rhetorical style. He spoke directly to them, like a comedian. The fans felt Trump sounded “like one of us”—. Trump became that microphone. He painted word pictures—Low Energy Jeb, Lyin’ Ted, Little Marco, Lyin’ Ted and Crooked Hillary—insulting nicknames that knocked down his adversaries one-by-one.

Adams did and said whatever was necessary to strengthen his ties to conservatives. Adams believes Trump, if he so desired, had the ability to run as a Democrat, and could have found the hot-button issues to appeal to liberal-minded voters.

Adams compares Trump’s ability to warp reality to his own needs to Steve Jobs, the Apple creator, and his reputation for inventing new realities through force of will. Trump’s new reality, I am one of you heartland Americans… based on emotion, grew from a brilliant campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.” From this cornerstone he went all out with his sales pitch to the conservative voter.

Trump’s manufactured reality led the building of a new identity—the onetime New York City socialite, braggart, multi-bankrupted billionaire became a friend to the truck driver, factory worker, flyover state mom, and unemployed coal miner. Adams explains it best, before Election Day:

“Trump is well on his way to owning the identities of American, Alpha Males, and Women Who Like Alpha Males. Clinton is well on her way to owning the identities of angry women, beta males, immigrants, and disenfranchised minorities.

“If this were poker, which hand looks stronger to you for a national election?”

Cut to post-election. Donald Trump is President. His critics seethe with anger at the ineptitude of the Trump administration. Meanwhile, Scott Adams has become a big Trump supporter. I disagree with his position. I wish Donald had stuck to building golf courses.

Meanwhile, about a week ago CNN promoted an upcoming program “How Trump Won”… produced by Fareed Zakaria. I’m not sure the show has aired or pulled from the schedule. If the CNN special does not include air time with Scott Adams… I remain a skeptic. Adams may be the one man in America who can tell us—What Happened. *

*Apologies to Hillary Clinton. Her similarly titled book on the election— What Happened – is due out any day. I’m not sure she knows.

Trump is Hermes (the shape shifter)

Hermes is Trump... Hermes is the second youngest of the Greek gods. Dionysos, god of wine and partying, is the youngest. Donald Trump is a teetotaler. Doesn't seem like a party animal. Not a Dionysian, Trump is Hermes.

Hermes is considered a god of transitions and boundaries. He is described as quick and cunning, moving freely between the worlds of the mortal and divine. "He is an emissary and messenger of the gods, an intercessor between mortals and the divine, and conductor of souls into the after-life."

Trump has become an intercessor between physical reality and electronic or virtual reality. He has turned facts and truth into a game. His wild ravings change direction constantly and twitter rantings create a universe of their own. He alone manages that electronic universe  from atop his Trump Tower. He works with only a small phone in his hand, texting out unsettling versions of reality while the media, his followers, and his enemies, hang on every tweet.  Trump is the master of rhetoric and crosser of boundaries.

"In some myths, Hermes is a trickster and outwits other gods for his own satisfaction or for the sake of humankind."

Trump has proven himself to be the master trickster, portraying himself as a patriot while paying no taxes, calls himself a friend to the little man, but steals money from the little man through gambling casinos, phony Trump University, etc.. Trump lacks real friends. He prefers not to have physical contact with other people, certainly not the hoi polloi, the common people. Watch how awkward his physical movements become when he stands in close proximity to anybody, other than his wife and children.

Hermes' attributes and symbols include the herms, the herms is a statue of just the head and genitals... Trump brags about his genitals...  the rooster,  Trump strives to be the rooster in the henhouse, the tortoise (Trump is a hard-skinned animal), satchel or pouch  and Trump carries a money bag with his constant references to his wealth, winged sandals (Trump prefers wingtips, the shoes of the businessman), and winged cap. Trump wears a crazy wig of orange hair with wings flying off in every direction. 

"Hermes has been viewed as the protector and patron of herdsmen, thieves, oratory and wit, literature and poetry, athletics and sports, invention and trade roads, boundaries and travelers." 

Trump has a fondness for thieves and conmen-- a rogues gallery of characters like Rudy Guiliani and Chris Christie, the vainglorious David Petraeus, etc.. As for sports, Trump has been involved with boxing, at his failed casinos, and the United States Football League (USFL). Trump has an undeniable talent for oratory-- he used words to rise like a Phoenix from the ashes-- tripping up the likes of Jeb Bush... low energy.... Ted Cruz... Lying' Ted.... and Hillary Clinton... Crooked Hillary with his witty and effective use of language.

Hermes is called Mercury in the Roman pantheon. Have you seen the elusive movement of mercury, a substance neither solid nor liquid, shifting constantly, impossible to grab, dissipating and re-forming but always impossible to grasp. Trump is Mercury.

The Hymn to Hermes invokes him as the one "of many shifts (polytropos), blandly cunning, a robber, a cattle driver, a bringer of dreams, a watcher by night, a thief at the gates, one who was soon to show forth wonderful deeds among the deathless gods." 

Trump is the shape shifter supreme.

How We Got Into Vietnam (David Halberstam)

Finished "The Best and The Brightest" book by Halberstam on Vietnam. I'm glad I got to the end. He talks about LBJ's failed decision-making on Vietnam. LBJ looked to the past and the Cold War to try and understand Vietnam:

"The forces at work in the fifties were very real to him. If Jack Kennedy was a man who knew more about where the sixties were headed but whose intellect preceded his courage, who stepped forward gingerly, then Johnson was more a man of the past. He reacted to what he thought the country was; the country which twice defeated Stevenson for the Presidency, where the powerful people on the Hill seemed primarily to be hawks, where the dominant figures of journalism were proud survivors of the worst of the Cold War, and where American universities had also given willingly, too willingly in fact, of their talent and support to the Cold War." (p. 592)

And here is how LBJ got us so deeply involved in the war, using his astute political skills, for subtly escalating the War, while missing the boat on the sixties revolution brewing and about to explode:

"That would all come later: perhaps another politician might have sensed it, if not clearly identifying the change. But Lyndon Johnson did not sense it, rather he sensed that he had position on everybody else, he had control of the center, he had moved all opponents to the extreme. He had handled the Congress, signed it on without really signing it on: he had handled the press by slicing the salami so thin that they are never able to pin him down, and he handled Ho by making it seem as if Ho were attacking him at Tonkin. He was using force but using it discreetly, and he was also handling the military. They were moving toward war, but in such imperceptible degrees that neither the Congress nor the press could ever show a quantum jump. All the decisions were being cleverly hidden; he as cutting it thin to hold off the opposition." (p. 593)

This poses some interesting questions for me on how public policy lurches forward-- often based on the prevailing, conventional wisdom, based on the leader's beliefs about his peers and what they will find acceptable, as rational behavior. Of course, our Vietnam policy does not appear rational in retrospect, but LBJ operated within the paradigm he knew and had experienced.

What do we believe now-- based on a present-day conventional wisdom that is actually totally inaccurate and misplaced? People think we need to get industry back to America? Is there any likelihood of that? How might our energies and resources be used to improve the situation in our country? I'm sure there is much confusion on the subject, and some of our unlikely Presidential candidates (Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders) have risen because of confusion around where the country should be heading. Not sure any of the candidates has proposed anything of substance. Mainly its emotion-- Make America Great Again, Stop the 1%....  Obama has kept a cool head. He didn't come out with a "New Deal" or anything on a grand scale. I doubt there would have been support for that kind of thing in this environment. The candidates kind of imply that they will achieve something on a grand scale. That seems unlikely.

TV Candidates beware--earnestness is fatal

TV demands sophistication and insouciance.

Words of advice for Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and company...

Way back in 1968, Marshall McLuhan explained that TV candidates must understand "the contemporary interface of all cultures" and should not "be deluded into any earnest regard for any one of them." 

The wise candidate shows insouciance (indifference) as a survival technique. Jeb Bush serves as a cautionary tale for wanting the job too much.

McLuhan warns against  getting in a huff about the immorality of it all... "The new changes are not moral but technological." 

Saturday Evening Post (August 10, 1968)      

All of the Candidates are Asleep         

By: Marshall McLuhan


Why should TV demand sophistication and insouciance? Simply because it is a depth medium for which earnestness is fatal. Depth requires perception on   many levels, and, therefore, an absence of single       purpose or direction. An all-at-once world, fashioned by electric information, demands a candidate full  of puns and expected nuances. Such a man is one     who knows so much about the contemporary interface of all cultures that he cannot possibly be deluded  into any earnest regard for any of them. The new       changes are not moral but technological.