Warg Riders of Isengard in LOTR: The Two Towers

The first presidential debate was surreal, wasn’t it? I still shake my head in amazement at how it went and how the follow up discussion of it is going. What are we talking about now? Fat shaming and the origins of birtherism and Trump’s taxes! Geez, you’d think we lived in an octopus’ garden by the sea with no other issues out there threatening us or needing serious consideration and work to solve. Instead of making a serious comparison of tax policy and the effects it will have on the economy, we’re bickering over Trump’s taxes. Instead of discussing how we can improve racial, gender, and social equality in our country, we’re discussing whether Trump really fat shamed and bullied a young woman twenty years ago. Instead of evaluating whether we have race problem in policing, we’re discussing whether questioning Obama’s religion and values in the year eight was the same as birtherism (it isn’t). As we continue down the path toward the United Fucking States of Fucking Stupid, we’re riding our wargs bickering and fighting over crumbling bridges spanning deadly rivers of lava trying to trick our fellow Americans into eating poisonous cupcakes and screaming Fuck you you fucking traitorous bastard at everyone who disagrees with us on the least little point or won’t eat that goddamn deadly cupcake. The end of that road is the United Fucking States of Fucking Stupid NIHILISM people! Wake up and smell the festering running pustules of our discord and turn the fuck around.

The Debate at Hofstra U

The Soft Bigotry of Trumpian Expectations by Sarah Kendzior

Otherwise the debate was a study in contrasts: a well informed, thoughtful, and considerate candidate and a willfully ignorant, disdainful, and petty candidate. A well-spoken articulate candidate and a word salad in search of Russian dressing candidate. A candidate with superior planning, organizing, implementing, and self-control skills and a candidate who couldn’t focus on his debate prep and who consequently allowed himself to be baited by Clinton into hysterically flopping around like a moron imitating a disabled reporter and looking like a braying ass.

So, what did we learn about Clinton during the debate? I want to focus on three aspects of Clinton that we’ve covered here in these bytes, pixels, and Googles: (1) her autistic features, (2) her personality, and (3) sadism (not hers but how she is treated). We’ll add one more that we’ve yet to address here at the Psy in the hallowed ether of this blog, family dynamics.

Clinton’s Autism

Clinton’s Theory of Mind

I have long maintained based on little more than a desperate grasp at saying something that may sound like I’m criticizing Clinton in a futile effort to sound balanced and create false equivalencies, some trite pieces of evidence that can be easily read into on the TV and computer screen, and a more than passing knowledge of mental health and psychology issues that Clinton could be a high-functioning autistic. Nothing has roped in more trolls to this blog than this suggestion! Go figure. The trolls are usually on FB where I pimp the blog. I usually admonish them to read the blog other than the title and blurb to which I normally get crickets. Crickets are good.

Clinton’s Health Debacle & Mindblindness

It is not really criticism of Clinton, though. It is an observation that seems to fit the evidence and predicts the future. Clinton genuinely seems completely incapable of viewing herself and her statements as others might see her. She seems to think that if she is satisfied with an answer, then everyone will be, that if she finds it interesting, everyone will,  and that if she believes herself to be earnest and sincere, then everyone else will, too. She seems to be tone deaf when it comes to the ways others will react to her. This state of affairs describes a condition known as mindblindness or the inability to realize that other people have thoughts that may differ from our own. It is one of the most common and salient features of autism.

If Clinton weren’t autistic and mindblind, why the fuck hasn’t she arrived at a plausible reaction to the whole email question?!? For the love of fucking god, why can’t you understand that I made a mistake, and I’ve taken full responsibility for it, and I would do it differently if I could (a) is not convincing people that any of this true and (b) adding the word, already, to any and all of those statements just annoys people and convinces them further of your calculating, scheming dishonesty! That it does not assuage the concerns of people who are seeing it on their Facebook and Twitter feeds and hearing pundits harp upon it from whatever nitty gritty teensy tiny angle that they can focus on so they can pretend to be relevant on the punditry stage? We know you aren’t stupid, so there must be another reason, and I have chosen autism. Wake up and smell the stage makeup, Clinton. It ain’t working and you could put the poor dumb bastard you’re running against away if you could solve this problem!

FBI Director Reminds Repubs Clinton didn’t do Email Crimes

Trump’s line of That was no mistake; that was on purpose, while childishly worded, is effective. I cringed when I heard him utter it realizing that it was simplistic and short and to the point enough to actually be remembered and seized upon by ordinary folks and the punditry alike. Luckily, we’re all talking about what an asinine buffoon Trump is, or you’d be digging out of another self-inflicted wound hole. Stop digging, Clinton. Stop digging!

What the hell is it with you and these emails? Why can’t you and your team come up with a line and some easily understood reasoning that puts it to rest? If you don’t want to do it for yourself, do it for your supporters who love you and are stuck defending you to the rabid right! What have we done to make you hate us like that? What? Please throw us a figurative bone here so we can figuratively bash in the brains of your critics — Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, or progressive — who have been weaned on this stupid non-scandal and kill it! Kill it like the cancer it is before it kills all of us! Fuck. It can’t be that hard, can it?

The OCEAN of Clinton’s Personality

The OCEAN of Trump’s & Clinton’s Personalities

The inability to address this issue like any other political liability suggests that it goes beyond autism, although, autism is a pretty convincing diagnosis. It suggests that it gets down to personality, too. Remember OCEAN is the acronym for the five universal personality traits:

• Openness to new ideas
• Conscientiousness
• Extroversion
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism

Which one best explains this phenomenon? If you selected aggreeableness as being the bestest explanation, then you’d be wrong. If you chose trait other than openness to new ideas, you’d be wrong, too. Clinton isn’t open to new ideas as she is closed to them. She is pretty stuck in her ways. I think she literally feels like she’s answered this question and it is time to move on. She ain’t open to nothing new on the email front, folks, so just forgettaboutit. That ain’t gonna happen. Before the next debate, she’s gotta come up with sumpthin better than Mistakes were made.

Here’s a neat trick, these two ideas, autism and closed to new ideas, actually explains a lot about her other troubles: Benghazi, reaching millennials, standing on her head, and being able to whistle Dixie while holding her breath underwater. If you’ve got anything else that being mindblind and closed to new ideas might explain for her, please add it in the comments. Or if you think the whole thing is just full of shit, explain that there too, but be sure to add whatever you think explains her actions and behaviors better. And, if you’re just going to piss and moan, don’t, because I’ll sweep that noise outta this house faster than you can say First Amendment rights.

Family Dynamics, the Clinton’s, & Trump’s ASS

Trump has been telegraphing his desire to point and laugh about how Clinton is a cuckold and he’s not ever since Clinton knocked his dumb ass down and twisted his arm behind his back until he cried uncle with words. Supposedly, Clinton has been ready for any attack on Bill’s infidelity since ’96, I hope. There is all the usual crap that such an attack would leave Trump vulnerable to, namely you can’t get all holier than thou on Clinton if you are a braggadocios serial philanderer who has wrecked two marriages by stepping out. But, such a point is more about ethics and logic than psychology. The psychology part is family dynamics.

Any and every marriage therapist will tell you that couples counseling is not about saving the relationship, but finding a satisfactory solution to the problems in the relationship even if it means ending it. If they don’t, then they are a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad therapist, and you should go find another one.

When an affair happens in a relationship, both people have to look at how they contributed to it. It is never entirely one person’s fault. The philanderer and the philanderee helped produce the situation where one person thought, Hmmm, I bet banging someone other than my partner without my partner’s explicit permission or knowledge is going to make things better. Part of recovering from an affair is working through the contributions of both sides. What is needed here is not a baring of Clinton’s soul on how they worked through it, but that they did work through it.

If Trump dares bring it up — and he’d be a complete idiot if he did, since he is a complete idiot, it pretty much means he will — she should react with a disdainful anger, and talk about how she loves Bill, was able to forgive Bill, and was able to trust him again. She can explain how it was a hurtful and difficult time and not made any easier by it being played out on the public stage in the limelight of not only the presidency but also too however the impeachment and trial.

She can talk about her loyalty to those who are near and dear to her, even if they’ve hurt her deeply. And how, she’ll bring this loyalty to America and its citizens when she is president. The other part she could add, that would totally take the wind out Trump’s pathetically preternaturally small short-fingered vulgarian sails is that she regrets having attacked Monica Lewinsky and she could apologize to her and invite her to arrange a personal meeting between the two, if she thought it would be helpful. Perhaps, more importantly, she could point out that she was defending her husband, marriage, and family. In the incredible intensity of the moment, she went too far. And, again, she will bring that mama bear ferocity to defending the middle class and America to the presidency.

Bonus material would be if she could note that Trump didn’t attempt to work through his infidelities with his wives and hint that only an emotional midget would leave two marriages through having an affair instead of realizing the relationship was over and ending it like a mature responsible adult would. Perhaps something about the Nina Simone line of the time to start looking for a new man is before the old one leaves.

Sadistic Sadism

Trolls from the Dark Side

An interesting twist on the continued attacks concerning her email, Benghazi, and her marriage would be to use the trolls are everyday sadist defense. I almost never hear back from a troll once I begin asking them, just out of curiosity,  mind you, which kind of troll they are: sadist, Machiavellian, or narcissistic. I think, a similar dynamic is at work here. People who keep bringing up these long resolved issues are being sadistic. They are acting with no regard to the very real emotional pain that all three of these “scandals” must bring up for her.

Being drug through the public coals over her emails must be at the very least humiliating. Answering the same questions time and time again is a form of torture. It has long since past any sense of political fair play or being warranted, especially since the FBI has acquitted her of any criminal wrong-doing, carelessness, but not criminal behavior. It isn’t even that if anyone else did it, they’d be in jail. She just didn’t break the law.

Ambassador Stevens was a close personal friend of Clinton’s. I can’t imagine what it was like learning of his death and having been helpless to stop it. She was the Secretary of State, not the commander-in-chief. She could not command the military and she could not micro-manage the State Department’s security budget. To be accused of negligence and a cover up in the violent death of her friend and three other loyal patriotic Americans must be torture.

No less than eight investigations, and one headed by the human circumcised penis — foreskin would probably improve his looks — Trey Gowdy (R- Slimy Oily Dowdy) exonerated her of any wrong doing and negligence. If there were any hope of smearing her with anything related to Benghazi, Trey “the living dick” Gowdy would still be investigating. To continue talking about it and making accusations is to torture her.

To pull the entire nation through the mud and muck of Bill’s affairs, much less Clinton herself, is to be sadistic and torture us all with the spectacle of a woman who was pretty much powerless to do anything in a painful awful experience. There is a cruelty and disregard there that goes beyond what any politician has had to endure.

Oh, but it is okay to torture women if you’re a misogynistic narcissistic sadist! What else can you do, especially if the uppity bitch is asking you for it, amirite, Ralph Kramden? Archy Bunker?

It is clear that by every metric that can be used to measure such things — shut up about Brightenmybutthurt online poll which you can respond to with the the million vote app for showing Trump won. Of course it did, the button for Clinton didn’t work. Clinton not only won the first debate, but mopped the floor with him. It is clear that Clinton has strong executive functioning skills, has the capacity for compassion and empathy, and has the weirdest creepiest psychotic clown smile anyone has ever seen. She should stop it. She should answer the email situation effectively. She should shut down Bill is a philandering philanderer.

The Debate Tells of Trump

The first debate is in the bag. There have been lots and lots of talking heads on the TV — Max Headroom? — talking their heads off about this or that about the debate. Really they have to fill airtime since we have 25-hours a day, eight-days a week, 4,000 fucking-days a year. Jebus please throw me out the window if I ever hear another light-weight political correspondent asking another know-nothing surrogate about the election!

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Quick Thoughts: Debate Tells of Trump

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