OK here's an easier one. Define; hints provided.
Hypermammiferous — a dreamy desire of some and often a prideful exhibitory feature by the desired, but burdensome to others. As always, no cheating now. Just separating the prefix from the base should conjure in your mind a ready definition.
***
Extra credit for ignoratio elenchi — the principal if not only argumentative tactic of Republican pols and pseudoconservative pseudointellectuals, not one of whom I can think of as hypermammiferous.
"Unprecedented, historic corruption" is how Republican senator Mitt Romney characterized Trump's latest contribution to historic presidential corruption. "An American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president," added Romney.
Various sources have disclosed that the legal profession was stunned by the president's brazen abuse of power in commuting the sentence of "dirty-trickster" Roger Stone, which is stunning in itself. As a tinpot dictator, Trump takes pride in undermining the rule of law — just before completely blowing it up. Why yet another act of presidential debauchery would shock anyone is a bottomless brainteaser of Stephen Hawking proportions.
How could we have known that this ghoulish gangster of a president would set Stone free? Let us count the crooks in Trump's pattern of "benevolence." Among those who have received, or are about to receive, presidential clemency are twice-self-confessed liar and Russkie collaborator Michael Flynn; master fraudster Paul Manafort; personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, in effect, by the firing of a Rudy-investigating US Attorney; court-contemptuous Joe Arpaio; bribe-begging Rod Blagojevich; felonious campaign contributor and conspiracy aficionado Dinesh D’Souza; tax fraud and police commissioner Bernard Kerik; perjurer "Scooter" Libby; and that friend of swindled investors everywhere, junk bond king and securities huckster Michael Milken.
Of the criminal friends of Trump or friends of Trump's criminal friends who have yet to receive clemency, as the Times notes, is in itself "interpreted by some critics as an act of witness tampering, in effect promising intervention to allies as long as they did not cooperate with investigators against Mr. Trump." And as former Justice Department official and now Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith observes: "In 31 of 36 pardons or commutations Mr. Trump has issued, the act advanced the president’s political goals or benefited someone he had a personal connection to."
What is to be done? asked Vladimir Lenin. Not a goddamn thing, answers the U.S. Constitution, whose framers never imagined that a US president could ever be loathsome, treacherous, criminally dirty, an openly appalling.
The Washington Post summarizes a say in the life of Donnie J.:
"More than 130,000 Americans so far have died of the novel coronavirus, with more than 3 million cases reported. Nearly 43 million Americans — more than a quarter of the labor force — have filed for unemployment benefits since the pandemic began. And the nation is riven not just by protests following the death of George Floyd … but also by a president who has deliberately stoked racial animus.
"[Yet] Trump often launches into a monologue placing himself at the center of the nation’s turmoil. The president has cast himself in the starring role of the blameless victim — of a deadly pandemic, of a stalled economy, of deep-seated racial unrest, all of which happened to him rather than the country."
In a way, though, he's right, This annus terrabilis is happening to him with particularly acute misery, since he brought it on himself. He ignored health experts and US intelligence and all the flashing red signs, with the totality of his negligence and dithering causing the needless deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. Tens of millions of Americans then lost their job since Trump hadn't done his. And a presidential racist bemoaning the nation's "deep-seated racial unrest" is surely ahead in the Self-Pity of the Year contest.
Yes, all these tragedies are happening to him. He's just not bright enough or mentally well enough to comprehend why.
For nearly four years I have lazily puzzled over the differences between the president's two most prominent traits: his narcissistic and sociopathic disorders. While the former is possibly treatable, according to the clinical organization Bridges to Recovery, which just happens to sell treatability, a sociopathic personality's ghastly prognosis is an immutable, unchangeable feature, as a mere five minutes spent with any mafioso would demonstrate — or, merely listening to Trump for two minutes.
Anyway, this morning, at long last, I somewhat cursorially investigated these two unsavory features of unquantified human beings, so to speak. And what, as a layman, was my fundamental takeaway from this Health magazine analysis? Essentially, the only real difference between a narcissist and a sociopath is that a narcissist is usually the overbearing, ill-informed gasbag at the end of the bar, while a sociopath can rather effortlessly climb to the position of an obsessively downsizing, family-bankrupting, America-Last CEO. Or to the number "45."
To be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders V, someone would have an exaggerated sense of self-appraisal, set goals based on gaining the approval of others, set unreasonable high personal standards[?], lack empathy, be antagonistic, demonstrate feelings of entitlement, make excessive attempts to attract and be the focus of the attention of others, and firmly hold to the belief that they are better than others. It’s not a phase or a mood; it’s a lifelong disorder. Above all is the narcissist’s need to be the most important, [says clinical psychologist Aimee] Daramus. “That usually comes out of
insecurity, but occasionally you get it coming out of a place of privilege, from someone who has genuinely never been exposed to the idea that other people matter."
Someone with [antisocial personality disorder, that is, a sociopath], according to the DSM-V, is egocentric, acts based on personal gratification, lacks empathy, is incapable of intimacy, and is manipulative, deceitful, callous, risk-taking, and impulsive. "A sociopath is someone who, on a biological level, is lacking awareness of others’ feelings, and isn’t all that interested in anybody else’s rules," says Daramus…. Because of the lack of empathy, sociopaths feel little or nothing when they hurt or take advantage of others." [Adds forensic psychologist Darrel Turner]: "A sociopath … essentially 'gets off' by hurting other people."
That doesn’t mean every sociopath is a serial killer. "It’s actually more common for a sociopath to be driven by a need to control and manipulate other people, to damage them in some way, and to gain money and power," continues Turner. "They are more likely to be in a parasitic or controlling/abusive relationship with a romantic partner; to engage in risky activities…; to backstab and sabotage their colleagues at work; and to carry out financial fraud schemes."
My overall conclusion? With Hunter S.'s fear and loathing and vats of Wild Turkey 101, we have survived Trump's narcissism for more than three years. Surely we can endure just another five months of his sociopathic egocentricity, purely personal gratification, total lack of empathy, manipulation, deceit, callousness, risk-taking and impulsivity.
Just in: The Times reports that a Supreme Court ruling this morning "cleared the way for prosecutors in New York to see President Trump’s financial records, a stunning defeat for Mr. Trump but a decision that probably means the records will be shielded from public scrutiny under grand jury secrecy rules until after the election, and perhaps indefinitely." ("In a separate decision, the court ruled that Congress could not, at least for now, see his financial records.")
It seems that for years I have vastly overestimated the significance of the phrase, "a stunning defeat." The American electorate and its congressional representatives again will be denied pre-election knowledge of the corruption-laden financial fallacies of the swindler in chief, which is a peculiar phenomenon to be characterized as either "stunning" or in any way a "defeat" for the highest-ranking, fuck-you criminal at large. Both exaggerated political descriptions should be rephrased in journalese as, at most, "the mildest of setbacks."
Neither will the deserved stunner of Mary Trump's forthcoming book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, cause a numerically expanded defeat of her comprehensively unhinged uncle. Ms. Trump, a PhD in clinical psychology, excoriates her avuncular embarrassment of exhibiting "twisted behaviors," of assessing others in "monetary terms" only, of "cheating as a way of life," and, unimpeachably, of "threaten[ing] the world’s health, economic security and social fabric.”
Even Trump's sister, former federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry, is quoted by the family documentarian as having described brother Don as a "clown" possessed of "no principles," and, correspondingly, utterly unfit for high public office. Ms. Barry is, in the Times' paraphrase, "particularly baffled by support for her brother among evangelical Christians." (But why? I ask, since prodigious hypocrisy is the highest and most cherished doctrine of Christian evangelicalism.)
About 70 percent of American voters are already and outspokenly aware of Trump's grotesque, "twisted" psyche; 25 percent know of it but won't admit it; and 5 percent don't know who the president of the United States is, or on what planet in our solar system they just barely exist. Hence the mathematical challenge of assessing the influence of Ms. Trump's book on the electorate is rather easy. Roughly zilch.
Nonetheless, in her professional and most primordial diagnosis — one largely for the history books, one gathers — Dr. Trump calculates that her uncle has "all nine clinical criteria for being a narcissist. And yet, she adds, even that label does not capture the full array of the president’s psychological troubles," notes the Times.
Troubles? Sure. But not in Trump's exclusively delusional, emotionally detached and cruel mind. Stunning defeats? Pshaw. He has suffered not one. Even his viral, criminally negligent murder of an estimated 100,000 Americans fails to approach, in his gray-matter vacuity, so much as the mildest of setbacks.
What color comes to mind when you read that "the country reached a total of three million [covid] cases on Tuesday.... At least five states — Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia — set single-day records for new infections on Wednesday."
This is the first recorded instance of a POTUS running for reelection while simultaneously attempting to exterminate his base — a novel and extraordinarily creative political strategy indeed, but one I rather doubt catches on.
In fact, let us hope that nothing Trump has ever done catches on.
As the Times' Adam Nagourney reports: "Trump has governed and led with a focus on conservatives from the day he was inaugurated with a speech warning of [i.e., promising] 'American carnage'" — which was the first and last pledge he has honored.
Trump, with his customary incompetence, has it all wrong as an aspiring dictator. He has forced Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman out of military service because of his honorable loyalty to the United States.
"Through a campaign of bullying, intimidation, and retaliation, the President of
the United States attempted to force LTC Vindman to choose: Between adhering to the law or pleasing a President," wrote Vindman's lawyer, David Pressman.
No no, a competent dictator doesn't simply force an honest military man out of the service. A truly competent dictator is much more decisive that that.
"Hitler … agreed that [Lt. Col. Ernest] Röhm should have the option of suicide. On 1 July, SS-Brigadeführer Theodor Eicke … and SS-Obersturmbannführer Michael Lippert visited Röhm. Once inside Röhm's [prison] cell, they handed him a Browning pistol loaded with a single cartridge and told him he had ten minutes to kill himself or they would do it for him. Röhm demurred, telling them, 'If I am to be killed, let Adolf do it himself.' Having heard nothing in the allotted time, Eicke and Lippert returned to Röhm's cell at 14:50 to find him standing, with his bare chest puffed out in a gesture of defiance. Eicke and Lippert then shot Röhm, killing him."
That's the way it's done. But Trump doesn't read history. Hence his 12-year Thousand Year Reich will be just a trifle truncated.
The Supreme Court ruled today that the Trump administration, along with co-president Jerry Falwell Jr., may allow employers to trash the conscientious Obamacare requirement to provide contraceptive care to responsible women because of religious bigotry or medieval misogyny.
In a related decision, the Court also ruled that women must ask their employer for permission to date — and whom to date, assuming the man passes the employer's pre-date questionnaire — as well as for permission to use the workplace restroom.
Justice Clarance Thomas wrote the decisions, explaining that American women still have more rights than in the 18th century, so — what the hell? Why all the nagging?
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, on the other hand, issued a blistering dissent, in which she said her colleagues had finally gone too far in appeasing pseudoconservative crackpots, wackos, and nincompoops. Justice Thomas responded by thoughtfully giving her, from the bench, a black finger and a Bronx cheer.
I still wonder what the Wall Street Journal's readers think of its much-quoted article of less than two weeks ago:
"Less than five months before the election, Mr. Trump has yet to publicly lay out a detailed vision for the next four years, instead touting what he marks as first-term achievements and arguing that his presumptive Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, will undo many of the policies he has already put in place.
"When The Wall Street Journal asked him last week to identify one new initiative he would undertake in his second term, Mr. Trump pointed to actions taken over the past three years and said he would focus on rebuilding the economy without naming specific policy plans."
For a national paper as editorially sclerotic as the Journal's, those passages are equivalent to a fatwa against a Republican administration. Often the Journal has gently chastised previous GOP administrations in its editorials, and though this article was fact not opinion, its unusually harsh, June 26 observations essentially declared the Trump administration the SS Andrea Doria. Credit must be given to the Murdochs, the paper's owners, for honoring their pledge to keep news and commentary separate.
The article concludes with a statement from the opposing camp that is also irrefutable, straightforward news — not opinion: "He may have failed to offer the American people any form of coherent message or agenda for a second term, but one thing is certain — he has proved that [another] one would be a nightmare," said a Biden campaign spokesman.
David Brooks and many of his conservative allies are beginning to recognize that the unseemly, ill-fated fusion of social conservatism and economic libertarianism, ca. 1960, is at last disintegrating. It was outside forces — such as Bill Buckley and his Nation Review strategists — that arranged the ideological marriage; never was there any true love between them. Nevertheless it endured because of its electoral success — much like many unhappy couples stay together for the bank account — but with Trump as its spiritual fraud and economic hydrogen bomb, a divorce is inevitable. Writes Brooks, somewhat obliquely:
On the day Trump leaves office…, we’ll still have yawning inequalities, residential segregation, crumbling social capital, a crisis in family formation. Trump’s rise in 2016 was a symptom of all these crises, long before he had a chance to become an additional cause of them.
What’s the core problem? Damon Linker is on to a piece of it: "It amounts to a refusal on the part of lots of Americans to think in terms
of the social whole — of what’s best for the community, of the common or public good. Each of us thinks we know what’s best for ourselves."
I’d add that this individualism, atomism and selfishness is downstream from a deeper crisis of legitimacy. In 1970, in a moment like our own, Irving Kristol wrote, "In the same way as men cannot for long tolerate a sense of spiritual meaninglessness in their individual lives, so they cannot for long accept a society in which power, privilege, and property are not distributed according to some morally
meaningful criteria."
In short, conservatism's fusion of social conservatism — traditional values, family, church, community — and economic libertarianism — individualism, the GOP's more foundational leg — was always doomed to become the old, bitter, dish-throwing couple I lived next to as a child. It served its electoral purpose, but outlived its mutual patience.
And for the numberless time throughout history, this disunion of religion and politics (perniciously introduced in the modern age by Barry Goldwater's acolytes) has demonstrated that the two just don't mix; they can't mix, since religion is about the uncompromisable word of God and politics is about little but compromise.
It's good that Mr. Brooks et al. have come to acknowledge the incompatibility of their cherished loves. The question now is, how can a renovated, more enlightened Republican Party — i.e., one absent its Jerry Falwells and Rush Limbaughs — thrive once it thrusts itself back into the very electoral hole it climbed out of by uniting its competing factions?
The Dems need to pick up four seats to retake the Senate and return Mitch McConnell to his more useful job of mens' room attendant; three seats if Joe Biden is elected. If you're unfamiliar with some the leading candidates below, they're all Democrats.
The only seriously endangered Democratic seat is Alabama's Doug Jones', which we might as well throw a shroud over now. [Update: On New Mexico I erred. See comment section.]
In the grip of the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, the acting chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Tomas Philipson, is taking whatever sage advice he might have and going home.
His departure will leave the CEA with one member. Philipson must have whispered to Larry Kudlow of the National Economic Council that Trump is an
idiot, which tattle-tale Larry then whispered to Trump, because, according to news reports, Philipson's exit was not at his request.
No loss here, but today is economist and renowned epidemiologist Kevin Hassett's last day. Hence now we'll be deprived of crackpot charts on both the economy and the pandemic.
Last — though I'm sure there is more to come — Andrew Olmem, the National Economic Council's deputy director, took a hike last week.
So now this nation in economic crisis is left with economic advisor Kudlow, who has been disastrously wrong in his every prediction since the Reagan administration, and Peter Navarro, who would prefer to build medieval walls around the U.S. from sea to rising sea — another issue no in the White House is working on.