Trump’s a Broken Record

Welcome! Trumpism of the Day is now a separate series rather than being appended to that day’s article.

Today, we have:

Yes, Trump is apparently just repeating the same arguments like a broken record because he has nothing else to say. Meanwhile, we have ample material, as Trump, who likes to call Joe Biden “Sleepy Joe” was recently reported to be extremely tired and denying interviews! So, Trump is now Sleepy Don, and he dug that grave himself. He made that bed. He has supposedly always slept about four hours a night, but perhaps this campaign is getting to him a bit too much.

As Sleepy Don’s cognitive decline continues, and he appears sleepier than Biden ever did, people are continuing to question his fitness as a president. Is it wise to elect a man whose thoughts seem incoherent and highly tangential to any given issue? His train of thought is worryingly broken and jumpy.

Yes, we get it, Don; Harris supports Biden’s policy decisions. It shouldn’t be a surprise, considering they’re from the same party. JD Vance will probably say something similar about Trump if he ends up campaigning for president. But this revelation (that similarly aligned politicians have similar policy views) has preoccupied the felon’s mind for weeks. He won’t stop posting about it. Maybe this “very stable genius” is just seeing something no one else is?

In a recent rally (hello, Michigan!), Trump insisted that the presidential race was in fact not tight and that the Republicans were “way up”. Welcome to Planet Trump, guys! Indulge in Trumpamine; it will induce Trumpophoria! The word euphoria comes from the ancient Greek eu- (“well”) and pherein (“to bear”); literally, to bear well. Trumpophoria is the experience of bearing the Trump – you take Trump into yourself and become him.

Anyway, Trump is of course wrong about the election, and he wants people to believe he’s winning in order to erode the resolve of Democrats and bolster his own supporters. And it’s also a way of praising himself, naturally.

Are you alright, Sleepy Don? Perhaps his dreams are intruding into his waking life. Perhaps he’s having hallucinations. Perhaps he cannot tell the difference between the dream world and the real world and perceives his own dream contents as vividly real. Truly a curse!

Valence

In psychology, valence is the quality of emotions to be either preferable or undesirable. For example, euphoria has positive valence; we want to experience it and seek it out. Loneliness is often negatively-valenced; we want to avoid it. Some complex emotions can even have neutral or ambivalent valence, leading to confusion.

Cult leaders like trump seek to associate themselves with positively-valenced emotions, i.e. enjoyment, satisfaction, trust, etc. while associating everything else with negatively-valenced emotions like distrust, cynicism, hurt, disappointment, etc. When presented with such a situation, people will naturally gravitate toward the positive valence and get roped into the cult, unless they escape the message by regarding it critically.

This is why cults have to depict everything in black-and-white, us-versus-them terms. They have to associate everything outside the cult with negative valence, or risk people leaving to search for a better life.

We all like feeling good, and we like seeing positively-valenced things. But we mustn’t be too eager for them, lest we find ourselves in a dangerous system of thought. So, Trump is at least good at one thing: illustrating how to steer clear of cults!

In this series (Trumpism of the Day, Issue 1)

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