According to an article in Friday's Washington Post:
In the days since Trump’s tweets alleging the wiretapping were posted, the White House has called for a congressional investigation, declined to comment, dodged questions, pointed to media reports that don’t contain the information aides say they do and analyzed the president’s use of quotation marks — all while doubling down on his claim without providing any evidence.While doing research, I found this cartoon:
I keep thinking that President Trump simply cannot think logically, he only thinks emotionally. Evidence obviously has no meaning to him. Only his beliefs have meaning. If there's no evidence of wire tapping, that just means the FBI hasn't looked hard enough to find the evidence that Trump believes must exist.
How can President Trump believe the evidence must exist? Because some staffer comment or news article or email or idea convinced him to believe it. And once he believed it, it becomes an emotional conclusion. What he believes cannot be wrong, since that would mean he is not as smart as he thinks he is.
There is no middle ground for those who think emotionally. Those who think emotionally must be right, and the only acceptable alternative is that the world must be conspiring against them to maliciously argue something is wrong that must with absolute certainty be right. If something they argued for turns out to be a failure, it is always the fault of those ignorant and malicious people who disagreed with them.
This topic has special meaning to me because I spent over a decade arguing with people who believed that Muslims sent the anthrax letters, even though all the evidence clearly said the letters were sent by an American scientist. And those True Believers are still out there arguing the same things they argued ten years ago. No facts or evidence will ever change their minds. And, of course, they have no facts or evidence to support their beliefs. As with Trump, they want the FBI to find the facts and evidence for them. They are just absolutely certain that there is evidence out there somewhere that will confirm their unshakable beliefs.
It also seems that if these True Believers have one totally unsupported belief, they also have others. And they are totally certain about all of them. The absurd claims were probably never more absurd than when Trump argued that millions of people voted illegally in the election he won.
From my observations, it appears that Trump was elected by people who think the way he does, people who think emotionally, not logically. Were they driven by a hatred of foreigners, a fear of foreigners or a hatred of the government in general? Maybe a bit of all three. All that appears certain is that were "fed up" and wanted to elect a fast-talking game show host to straighten out the situation. Trump told them what they wanted to hear, and they believed him.
Another thing that Donald Trump has made very clear is that he had absolutely no idea how complicated politics can be. He was probably the only person in America who thought that replacing "Obamacare" would be a simple task.
I'm reminded of a comment in Eric Hoffer's book "The True Believer" which said
the only way to change a True Believer's mind is to convert him to a different belief. "He cannot be convinced, but only converted."
I have a paperback copy of Hoffer's book somewhere in my library, but I couldn't find it when I looked for it yesterday. (It's probably behind some other book.) But I quickly found a free pdf copy on the Internet. Searching through it for the word "convert," I found this full quote:
The fanatic cannot be weaned away from his cause by an appeal to his reason or moral sense. He fears compromise and cannot be persuaded to qualify the certitude and righteousness of his holy cause. But he finds no difficulty in swinging suddenly and wildly from one holy cause to another. He cannot be convinced but only converted. His passionate attachment is more vital than the quality of the cause to which he is attached.I also found this quote which seems very much to apply to President Trump:
Both by converting and antagonizing, he shapes the world in his own image.And this quote also seems to apply to President Trump:
The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others. The creed whose legitimacy is most easily challenged is likely to develop the strongest proselytizing impulse.So, we can assume that as more and more of Trump's absurd beliefs get shot down and debunked by people citing facts and evidence, the more Trump will become convinced that he is right and the world is conspiring against him.
Doing a Google search for the words "Trump" and "impeach" I was provided with 16,900,000 results. Among those results, I found a web site called "impeachdonaldtrumpnow.org" which is looking for people to sign their petition to impeach President Trump (and to donate to their cause). There are also a lot of other sites out there with petitions to impeach Trump. I also found a Time Magazine article titled "Congress Can Remove Donald Trump From Office Without Impeaching Him." And a Bloomberg.com article titled "Trump's Wiretap Tweets Raise Risk of Impeachment." According to one source, Congressman Jerrold Nadler has already set in motion a plan to impeach Trump.
Of course, if Trump were to be impeached, that would mean that Vice President Mike Spence would become President. Some consider that to be a worse situation: It's better to have an incompetent President than an evil President.
Personally, I think it is more likely that Donald Trump will resign before the end of his four-year term than that he will be impeached. If he doesn't find being President the "fun" and the boost to his ego that he thought it would be, and if he constantly suffers setbacks in his plans, he could just "throw in the towel" and say "The hell with it." He'd blame others for his failures, of course.
I've been wanting to write a comment about Donald Trump for weeks, even though I try very hard to avoid thinking about him. The problem is: He's on the TVs they have at the gym where I work out four times a week. I seem to work out at the exact same time that Trump's spokesman Sean Spicer gives his daily news briefing.
When I get home, the evening news every night seems to have some story about Trump's latest screwball tweet. And The Late Show with Stephen Colbert always has some hilarious comments about the Trump absurdities.
It's all very hilarious.. But, at the same time it isn't very funny at all.
