Feel free to read the rest of the article, but this is the salient point:
“Trump’s inability to deal with the change”
As many people age they have difficulty with change: in themselves, with the world, with others.
Trump is a time traveler stuck in the 80’s. He is comfortable with the racism, with the misogyny with the tax breaks for the wealthy.
He attempts to ignore his aging body and low intellect—he is aware he is not as smart as other people.
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https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4853672-trump-biden-2024-republican-party/
This isn’t meant as a long diss, but as an explanation of WHY he does what he does. I’ve worked with and under people who were not the “smartest ones in the room” and they did this very thing.
Most notably was an engineer who was my boss. He challenged EVERY THING I did. He actually changed my code and when it failed attempted to blame me (“show me where in the code I broke things? He couldn’t”)
They are sad and frustrated people. They constantly look backwards.
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But most of all they are envious. They are jealous. They want to put others a down to make themselves look big. That boss? He worked for YEARS to fire me. Eventually he got his wish.
What Trump and Vance have in common is they both are people who think small and attempt to belittle to make others smaller.
Vance relies on fiction—the never present Memaw whose life he rewrites to fit any occasion; the children he may not have fathered to use as a put down; his unfunny “jokes.”
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Trump is anger about a world he cannot control heading into a future that is beyond his ability to manipulate. To him, the best time was the past where he didn’t worry about who was a man, what pronoun to use and everyone thought he was sexy. He recognizes his frailty, his age, his mind slipping and rages against it. First, with Biden and now with Harris.
He is faultless. Everything he does is perfect, it is everyone else who fucks up. In the rewritten history he is the champion.
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Which is why he cannot accept change.
He mocks others for faults he sees in himself. Every attack IS an admission. He isn’t smart so he claims to be smart by talking about his MIT uncle. He doesn’t remember anything about economics so he says he won’t bore people by discussing inflation (one of his smoother moves).
His constant word salad is indefensible yet he cannot be quiet: he is constantly telling people, “See? I’m smart! Look at the vast array of subjects I can discuss!”
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And, predictably, it comes out as word salad.
Were he not so dangerous he would be a sad portrait of a man succumbed by a disease as old as time: age.
People ask why he doesn’t step aside and I respond, “It’s ego.” Trump has no concept of doing what it right—it is all about himself.