Arkady
President
As I posted previously, and as has been more recently confirmed by others, Trump is in the midst of a serious cognitive decline, similar to what we saw late in the Reagan presidency, when he was on his way to an Alzheimer's diagnosis:
http://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2017/02/using-discourse-analysis-to-assess.html
http://www.mediaite.com/online/trum...0-years-scarborough-returns-with-a-vengeance/
Trump reminds me very much of my grandmother, in the last couple years before she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. She leaned heavily on vague filler words and favored repetitive uses of a small collection of simple adjectives. That was enough to communicate her overall feelings on a subject (e.g., you'd never fail to grasp whether she liked or disliked a particular politician), but not the reasons for her feelings.
As with Trump, my grandmother's decline was most noticeable not in terms of the absolute level of discourse (even some smart people have trouble ordering their thoughts into language on the fly), but rather in terms of the decline over time. My grandmother's active vocabulary shrunk dramatically, and the complexity of the thoughts she would attempt to communicate fell to the level you'd expect of a young child, after a lifetime of being a relatively sophisticated speaker. Take a look at an earlier post of mine to see an example of what I'm talking about when it comes to Trump:
https://www.politicaljack.com/threads/whats-wrong-with-trump.92274/
As I pointed out, in a short passage of just 360 words, Trump stumbled through the same vague expression of emotion eight separate times with only slight variations:
When you go back to transcripts of Trump interviews in the 1980s and 1990s, you just don't see that kind of simple-minded repetition of emotional phrases. At this point, I don't think there's serious doubt that Trump's mind has declined alarmingly. But what I'd like to add to the discussion is the observation that this may actually have helped him, politically.
Back in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s Trump's mind was still clicking on all cylinders. I'm not saying he was particularly smart, but he was in good working condition. To extend the metaphor, he was a well-tuned 140 horsepower four cylinder -- nothing exciting, but it'll get where it's headed. At the time he had political ambitions, but they never caught fire with the public. Then his brain declined, he enrolled as a Republican, and his political efforts finally started paying off. I don't think that's a coincidence. I think the mental decline gave him the ability to speak "dummy" natively, and that's an invaluable tool for reaching a certain portion of the electorate.
Trump's voters were mostly older, rural, and under-educated. It's easy to alienate such people if you make them feel bad about themselves by talking over their heads, or putting demands on their intellects that they're not accustomed to accommodating. For the kind of voter who has spent his whole life in a small town surrounded almost entirely by people who share his narrow background, with little exposure to the wider world nor any advanced education, it's easy to fall into a deep mental rut. People in such ruts are going to resent being expected to climb out of them to follow a political argument. But late-stage Trump makes no such demands on listeners. He doesn't speak in complicated arguments drawing on knowledge and expecting logical reasoning. He speaks in simple cliches and vague and endlessly repeated emotional outbursts.
Take the text I linked to above as an example. If you didn't get what he was trying to communicate (that he doesn't like the term "American exceptionalism"), the first time he told you, don't worry. He'd go on to tell you the same thing seven more times in the next few seconds, with minor variations. So, feel free to remain half asleep on the couch -- you'll get all there is to get out of his words without any effort.
It's late-stage Trump who finally took off, politically, because he's the one who could communicate on the level of tens of millions of under-educated Americans with aging brains. Donald Trump in his 40s, 50s, or early 60s would have alienated them even with his little 140 hp brain, but Donald Trump in his 70s is speaking their language.
http://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2017/02/using-discourse-analysis-to-assess.html
http://www.mediaite.com/online/trum...0-years-scarborough-returns-with-a-vengeance/
Trump reminds me very much of my grandmother, in the last couple years before she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. She leaned heavily on vague filler words and favored repetitive uses of a small collection of simple adjectives. That was enough to communicate her overall feelings on a subject (e.g., you'd never fail to grasp whether she liked or disliked a particular politician), but not the reasons for her feelings.
As with Trump, my grandmother's decline was most noticeable not in terms of the absolute level of discourse (even some smart people have trouble ordering their thoughts into language on the fly), but rather in terms of the decline over time. My grandmother's active vocabulary shrunk dramatically, and the complexity of the thoughts she would attempt to communicate fell to the level you'd expect of a young child, after a lifetime of being a relatively sophisticated speaker. Take a look at an earlier post of mine to see an example of what I'm talking about when it comes to Trump:
https://www.politicaljack.com/threads/whats-wrong-with-trump.92274/
As I pointed out, in a short passage of just 360 words, Trump stumbled through the same vague expression of emotion eight separate times with only slight variations:
I don't like the term
I never liked the term
I don't need terms like that
I don't like the term
I don't like the term
I never liked it
I never liked the expression
But I never liked that term
I never liked the term
I don't need terms like that
I don't like the term
I don't like the term
I never liked it
I never liked the expression
But I never liked that term
When you go back to transcripts of Trump interviews in the 1980s and 1990s, you just don't see that kind of simple-minded repetition of emotional phrases. At this point, I don't think there's serious doubt that Trump's mind has declined alarmingly. But what I'd like to add to the discussion is the observation that this may actually have helped him, politically.
Back in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s Trump's mind was still clicking on all cylinders. I'm not saying he was particularly smart, but he was in good working condition. To extend the metaphor, he was a well-tuned 140 horsepower four cylinder -- nothing exciting, but it'll get where it's headed. At the time he had political ambitions, but they never caught fire with the public. Then his brain declined, he enrolled as a Republican, and his political efforts finally started paying off. I don't think that's a coincidence. I think the mental decline gave him the ability to speak "dummy" natively, and that's an invaluable tool for reaching a certain portion of the electorate.
Trump's voters were mostly older, rural, and under-educated. It's easy to alienate such people if you make them feel bad about themselves by talking over their heads, or putting demands on their intellects that they're not accustomed to accommodating. For the kind of voter who has spent his whole life in a small town surrounded almost entirely by people who share his narrow background, with little exposure to the wider world nor any advanced education, it's easy to fall into a deep mental rut. People in such ruts are going to resent being expected to climb out of them to follow a political argument. But late-stage Trump makes no such demands on listeners. He doesn't speak in complicated arguments drawing on knowledge and expecting logical reasoning. He speaks in simple cliches and vague and endlessly repeated emotional outbursts.
Take the text I linked to above as an example. If you didn't get what he was trying to communicate (that he doesn't like the term "American exceptionalism"), the first time he told you, don't worry. He'd go on to tell you the same thing seven more times in the next few seconds, with minor variations. So, feel free to remain half asleep on the couch -- you'll get all there is to get out of his words without any effort.
It's late-stage Trump who finally took off, politically, because he's the one who could communicate on the level of tens of millions of under-educated Americans with aging brains. Donald Trump in his 40s, 50s, or early 60s would have alienated them even with his little 140 hp brain, but Donald Trump in his 70s is speaking their language.
