SPIN AND SURREALITY

SPIN AND SURREALITY

Spinmeisters for Trump, like the cleanup guys following the elephants in the circus parade, are kept busy these days denying, rationalizing, and reframing the language he uses to convey sense and purpose to what he says and how he acts. Thus we are told by his spinners that Trump’s mocking of a reporter burdened with a neurological condition didn’t happen, but if it did it does not explain what was “in his heart,” which we are led to believe was as pure as the driven snow. In other words, we are to deny facts since they said so in an attempt to warp reality via reframing fact via fancy for political gain, which is in itself at least a neurotic if not psychotic exercise in mass psychology.

For the record, I personally have seen the film of Trump’s mocking of this unfortunate reporter who had the audacity to question Trump on an issue and report adversely to Trump’s interests. It was mocking, it was despicable, and it was “in his heart,” but his spinmeisters did a good job in diverting our attention from the issue the reporter pointed out by questioning what we saw and heard versus what was “in his heart” rather than on the issue itself.

So now we the people can ignore what Trump says or how he acts and instead try to divine what is “in his heart?” Is that our task, our mission as citizens, that we are to dismiss what he says or how he acts and try to decide what he really meant to say or how his acts should be interpreted by some hazy post speech and act standard not based on fact? Welcome to surreality, fellow Americans. What you see and what you hear are not real and may be safely ignored; his spinners will let us know later what he really meant to say, though I here note that we are at a disadvantage since very few of us are psychiatrists.

So what are we to make of commentaries or speeches by Trump when they are subject to auditing and correction by his paid spinners? Should we ignore them given the new post-factual environment he has provided us in his murky world of narcissism and juvenile impulse?  Beyond that, how are we and the people in the rest of the world called upon to believe anything this man says when he talks of damage to the environment as a “Chinese hoax” or our CIA chief as a possible leaker of intelligence in the recently concluded election or that Putin is “a strong leader” (and presumably one to be emulated)? What did he mean to say and what does he mean to say that would be applicable in the world in which we live?

You and I live in the real world and I refuse to live in his world fashioned by preconceived visions that this obviously disturbed person has concocted. Two and two are still four and our greatest physicist Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of gravity still obtain – and are not subject to meaningless speeches and spin – nor, big Wall Street banks bring prosperity back to our economy. Such wrongheaded ideas he has proposed have long since been disproven as such trickle down economic designs destroy aggregate demand and will rather “Make America Poor Again” rather than “great again,” all as repeatedly noted by preeminent economists such as Piketty and Stiglitz.

So what are we to make of his inaugural speech tomorrow or the ones his speechwriters will be writing for him in the future?  I propose to ignore them and await what his spinners say he said, which is apparently what he meant to say but didn’t per their spin. I am a lawyer not a psychiatrist, but with his record and confused mental state and irrational statements, methinks he needs both lawyers and psychiatrists to help him perform as head of state and commander in chief, fearsome projects in and of themselves for the undemented much less for the disturbed. Tomorrow he becomes our public servant and for the good of the country I hope he comes to understand and appreciate that.     GERALD       E