Critics often use sarcasm and satire to expose the stupidity of a public figure. The Joel Heller cartoon below is sarcastic satire. The Dana Milbank which follows is satiric sarcasm. Donald Trump wouldn't recognize either of them if they bit him in the ass.
President Donald Trump listens to a question as he speaks about the coronavirus in the Rose Garden of the White House, Monday, April 27, 2020, in Washington. (Alex Brandon)
Your president is so funny.
How funny is he?
President Trump is so funny that after he speculated at a White House briefing that ingesting disinfectants could cure covid-19, the Maryland governor said that hundreds of people called a state hotline asking whether they should drink bleach!
That’s almost as funny as the time Trump told everybody to take chloroquine to stop the coronavirus — because “what have you got to lose?” — and a guy in Arizona died because he ate fish-tank cleaner containing chloroquine.
Hilarious!
One of the many benefits of the pandemic is to be reminded how amazingly humorous the president is. He has the best jokes! But because he’s a very subtle comic genius, his wit, sadly, is frequently lost on others.
When he said he had asked federal scientists to study whether household disinfectants could be taken internally to fight the virus, he later explained “I was asking a sarcastic, and a very sarcastic, question to the reporters in the room about disinfectant on the inside.”
Without a hint of sarcasm, I say: I am currently doubling over and slapping my knee.
In conventional usage, sarcasm, from the Greek “sarkasmos,” or sneer, means to use irony in a cutting way — often enthusiastically stating the opposite of what one means. But like all pioneers in the field of comedy, Trump has shifted the boundaries so that “sarcastic” means, roughly, “a term applied retroactively to something I wish I hadn’t said.”
For example, when Trump asked Vladimir Putin’s help in 2016 hacking Hillary Clinton’s email (“Russia, if you’re listening . . .”) his joke was so nuanced that nobody knew it was a joke until Trump disclosed it much later. “I made the statement quoted in Question II(d) in jest and sarcastically,” he (or his lawyers) declared in his written deposition to special counsel Robert Mueller.
What a cutup!
Likewise, Trump said during the 2016 campaign that “I love WikiLeaks” because it released Democrats’ emails. But he was so bone dry that we did not learn until three years later that Trump had been joking — and then only from his press secretary.
Likewise, his deadpan wit went over everybody’s head when he announced: “We’re building a wall on the border in New Mexico and we’re building a wall in Colorado!” Calling Colorado a border state, he subsequently informed us, was done “kiddingly.” Upon learning this, I enjoyed a retroactive-but-hearty LOL.
Because there is no statute of limitations under Trump’s definition of sarcasm, it would be natural for his predecessors to proclaim, ex post facto, that key mistakes of their presidencies were also humorous exercises:
Barack Obama’s claim that “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”? Medical sarcasm.
George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” moment on the aircraft carrier? Military sarcasm.
Before long, descendants of Neville Chamberlain will make the case that “peace for our time” was misunderstood cynicism.
But Trump’s sarcasm is so cleverly inscrutable it fools even him. Of his claim that Obama was the “founder” of the Islamic State, Trump said, “obviously, I’m being sarcastic . . . but not that sarcastic.”
The rubes in the fake news media have repeatedly missed the joke when the droll Trump said he could get away with shooting somebody on Fifth Avenue, proposed “Second Amendment people” stop Hillary Clinton, said Americans should “sit up at attention” for him, mused about being “president for life” and serving “at least for 10 or 14 years,” called Democrats “treasonous” for not applauding his State of the Union address, encouraged police brutality, applauded a congressman’s assault on a reporter and offered to pardon aides who break laws.
It was all, he and aides later asserted, in jest. False claims by Trump University? Sarcastic. That day he looked heavenward and called himself “the chosen one,” after sharing a tweet proclaiming him “the King of Israel” and “the second coming of God”?
“I was kidding, being sarcastic,” Trump said — later.
After he expressed disappointment in 2016 that his speech on the Mall was not as well-attended as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 March on Washington, he later clarified that “everybody knew I was being sarcastic.”
And the president has inspired imitators. The new White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, told the New York Post over the weekend that Trump works so much that “the biggest concern I have” is making sure Trump “gets some time to get a quick bite to eat.”
Trump working so hard he can’t find time to eat? Now that’s funny.
I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful, one hundred percent! –Horton the Elephant, in Horton Hatches The Egg
Note: Horton's faithfulness standard does not apply Republican elephants.
I know you believe you understand what you think I said but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. –Professor Irwin Corey, The World's Foremost Authority
Note: Irwin Corey (1914 - 2017) was an actor and comedian.
Fuck off, losers! I'll say anything I damn well please, and you'll like it. –Donald J. Trump
Note: Mr. Trump is a sociopathic narcissist and an inveterate liar.
The preceding is a distillation of the essence of his standard message to anyone who dares to question his Tweets and pronouncements.
Unfortunately for America, the Con Man and Real Estate Tycoon in the White House has made the first rule of business the first rule of his presidency.
On every issue facing the country, Donald Trump talks out of both sides of his mouth. His pronouncements are not statements of policies designed to lead the country. They are positioning statements that allow him to claim victory if things go well and blame others if they go awry.
To Donald Trump Location, Location, Location means placing Donald Trump as far away from accountability as possible while tossing hatred-laced red meat to his brainwashed base.
Want proof? Click the link below and read the article.
1. Monopolize talk radio for over thirty years broadcasting a constant stream of propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies. 2. Dumb down the population by attacking public education at the national, state, and local level, claiming it wastes taxpayer dollars. 3. Suppress the vote at all levels of government everywhere your party has control. 4. Proclaim your party's love of country, religion, and family values and claim that your opponents hate them. Clutching the Bible and standing next to your silent, Stepford wife, express deep remorse when your actions make a mockery of your words. 5. Promise prosperity while undermining all attempts to expand access to economic opportunity. 6. Rail against judicial activism when your party is out of power but stack the federal courts with party ideologues when in power. 7. Pass a minuscule tax cut for the middle class every few years. Did I miss anything?
There's handwriting on the wall of the Wisconsin statehouse. Republicans like to claim the Bible as their personal property. The results of the recent special election in which they forced Wisconsin voters to go to the polls and risk infection by the coronavirus, with the blessing of a rigged U. S. Supreme Court, suggests that they may want to check out the book of Daniel.
BIBLE
the writing on the wall, interpreted by Daniel to mean that God had weighed Belshazzar and his kingdom, had found them wanting, and would destroy them: Dan. 5:25
Funeral home workers put on protective gear to retrieve a body from a refrigerated truck outside of a Brooklyn hospital in early April. As of Sunday, the U.S. reported the most coronavirus deaths in the world, surpassing Italy. Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images
The death toll in the United States from the coronavirus has surpassed Italy's, putting America at No. 1 worldwide for the number of people killed by the strain.
The following is a response to two words in the headline above. It is not an analysis of the article.
About Him
Every newborn begins life thinking it is the center of the universe. That is natural, given that we all encounter otherness through our senses and slowly integrate those alien encounters into our developing image of the world. For most people, the inward flow of sensations from outside of the self elicits a reciprocal flow of affinity from within the self toward the otherness. As we become aware of the world around us and develop meaningful relationships with what we encounter, most of us reject the infantile, center-of-the-universe model of reality and see ourselves as part of a greater whole.
Narcissists, in contrast, cling to the infantile, center-of-the-universe world view and function as emotional black holes. Their interactions with the external world become transactional, one-directional efforts designed to force otherness into submitting to and supporting the frightened infant at the center of the universe.
About Us
Donald Trump has shown himself to be precisely such a frightened child. This is what makes him unfit to occupy the Oval Office. This is what should motivate every thinking voter to deny him reelection in November and to vote against those who have used his need for fawning approval to stack the courts, to amass personal power and wealth, and to undermine the rule of law.
The Cartoon Is Funny; The Accompanying Message Is Not
I thought long and hard before publishing this post, but I sincerely believe it is something that needs to be contemplated as a possible consequence of or as collateral damage in our new reality.
Thanks to his refusal to follow the advice of the medical professionals to issue a stay at home order instead of a suggestion, Trump supporters continue to gather in large groups while those with functioning brains attempt to self quarantine as much as possible.
I know this sounds callous, and certainly I do not want anyone to contract COVID-19 and die, but it appears likely that a disproportionate number of deaths among right-wing zealots and their power-hungry, money-grubbing leaders, be they political or religious, may be the only effective means of stemming the tide of ignorance that has swept across America and seized control of the reins of government.
If you are waiting for Donald Trump to become something other than the deluded narcissist that he undoubtedly is and thence to provide actual leadership in the face of a global pandemic, you will wait and do nothing just like the characters in Samuel Beckett's 1955 Theater of the Absurd play.
Waiting for Godot
From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary EnglishWaiting for God‧ot /ˌweɪtɪŋ fə ˈɡɒdəʊ $ -fər ˈɡɑː-/(1955) a play by the Irishwriter Samuel Beckett about two men, Vladimir and Estragon, waiting for a third man, Godot, who never comes. The play is a typicalexample of the Theatre of the Absurd, and people use the phrase ‘waiting for Godot’ to describe a situation where they are waiting for something to happen, but it probably never will.
In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their own ability. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability.
President Donald Trump reacts as he looks at the front page of a newspaper with a headline that reads "Trump acquitted" at the 68th annual National Prayer Breakfast, at the Washington Hilton, Thursday, Feb. 6, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)
In many areas of life, incompetent people do not recognize — scratch that, cannot recognize — just how incompetent they are, a phenomenon that has come to be known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. Logic itself almost demands this lack of self-insight: For poor performers to recognize their ineptitude would require them to possess the very expertise they lack. To know how skilled or unskilled you are at using the rules of grammar, for instance, you must have a good working knowledge of those rules, an impossibility among the incompetent. Poor performers — and we are all poor performers at some things — fail to see the flaws in their thinking or the answers they lack. What's curious is that, in many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious. Instead, the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge.
The Dunning-Kruger effect manifests in the form of the drunk at the bar who weighs in on every conversation with unwanted advice, the online troll who monopolizes comment sections, or the person who reads one book (or perhaps the introduction) and then acts like an authority on the subject.
Visionary science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov signaled to the Dunning-Kruger effect with his famous observation in 1980: "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"
Donald Trump is the Dunning-Kruger president of the United States.
But he is also something much worse than that. Donald Trump is an almost perfect living, breathing example of the Dunning-Kruger effect: a president in a time of plague whose ignorance and stupidity are amplified through apparent and obvious mental illness as well as cruelty, compulsive lying, grand immorality, corruption and evil.
At Tuesday's coronavirus White House "briefing" (another version of Trump's ego-stroking carnival political rallies) he made another "expert" suggestion about how to defeat the novel coronavirus pandemic: Wear scarves instead of masks for protection.
Several weeks ago, Donald Trump visited the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control where he made this astonishing claim:
You know, my uncle was a great person. He was at MIT. He taught at MIT for, I think, like a record number of years. He was a great super genius. Dr. John Trump. I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, 'How do you know so much about this? ' Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.
Apparently, Trump believes he knows more than some of the best trained and experienced doctors and medical researchers in the world.
On multiple occasions, Donald Trump has claimed that there is no ventilator shortage in New York. According to him, ventilators and other medical equipment being stolen by doctors, nurses and other medical staff who are selling them, bringing them home for personal use or perhaps even hoarding the equipment in private.
Donald Trump claims to have magical powers. He has repeatedly said that the novel coronavirus will disappear at some future date which only he can predict.
Trump has said he was the first person to label the novel coronavirus a "pandemic." And because he believes himself to be an expert on all things, Trump can pivot without pause, apprehension or doubt from claiming that the novel coronavirus was a "hoax" to embracing the view that it is a dire threat that could kill hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans.
Trump is also an epidemiologist or virologist, at least in his mind. Last week he said, "You can call it a germ, you can call it a flu, you can call it a virus, you know you can call it many different names. I'm not sure anybody even knows what it is."
Medical professionals know what the novel coronavirus is and have been warning the Trump administration about the threat for months.
The Dunning-Kruger president is an expert in so many things that it is difficult to keep track of them all. Writing at MSNBC, Steven Benen made a valiant effort at cataloguing Trump's claims to preternatural expertise:
About a year ago, for example, Trump was reflecting on technology measures that have been deployed along the U.S./Mexico border, and he assured the public, "I'm a professional at technology."
What kind of technology? He didn't say, but we can probably assume he meant every possible kind.
As we discussed at the time, Trump has also claimed to be the world's foremost authority on everything from terrorism to campaign finance, the judicial system to infrastructure, trade to renewable energy. NowThis prepared a video montage on the subject a while back, and it was amazing to see the many subjects on which the president considers himself a world-class expert.
A belief in their inherent intelligence and great skill in all things is a common trait among authoritarians and other demagogues such as Donald Trump. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, according to national legend, could shoot guns better than a trained sniper at age three. At age eight, he was a daredevil truck driver. Adolf Hitler and his acolytes also made claims to greatness and superhuman abilities.
Trump's embrace of stupidity and ignorance reflects much deeper problems in the United States generally, and the Republican Party and the conservative movement in particular.
Today's Republican Party and conservative movement possess a deep disdain and hostility towards true experts and qualified, proven professionals. Such people are slurred as being "elitists" or not "real Americans," and are suspected of being liberal Democrats who belong to a "deep state" cabal working against Donald Trump and his army of real Americans, with the goal of enslaving them to "political correctness."
Many of Trump's strongest supporters are Christian nationalists who aim to overturn the Constitution and destroy secular, science-based, empirical reality and society. Such people believe in magic, and are the most stalwart, influential and loyal members of Trump's political death cult.
Historian and political scientist Richard Hofstadter famously warned that Republicans and other conservatives had succumbed to the allure and power of anti-intellectualism. Hofstadter's "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" was written in 1963.
Writing in 1947, Albert Camus reflected on Nazism and authoritarianism through the metaphor of misery and suffering caused by a plague:
The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened. People are more often good than bad, though in fact that is not the question. But they are more or less ignorant and this is what one calls vice or virtue, the most appalling vice being the ignorance that thinks it knows everything and which consequently authorizes itself to kill. The murderer's soul is blind, and there is no true goodness or fine love without the greatest possible degree of clear-sightedness.
Some 70 years later, Camus' warnings resonate in the age of Donald Trump.
People such as Donald Trump are all too common among humanity. Unfortunately, some of them rise to great prominence during the most dangerous and troubled times — times when their ignorance and hubris has the power to kill hundreds, thousands or even millions of people. Such a time is now.
Don't waste your time watching Trump's daily infomercials. Remember, you get what you pay for, and the price he demands is surrendering your brain to him. You have better things to do. Do them.
April 18, 2020, 10:43 AM ET
President Trump arrives for the coronavirus task force briefing at the White House on Thursday.
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