I’m really beginning to believe that a line has been crossed. I’m talking about the line between neurosis and psychosis. I’m talking about Donald Trump.
A week ago, on August 30th, Trump sat down for a chat with Tiffany Justice of ‘Moms for Liberty’ (which, seriously? Is there a ‘Moms Adamantly Opposed to Liberty’ group somewhere?). The issue of trans rights came up and Trump said something completely batshit deranged.
“The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s gonna happen with your child. And you know, many of these childs [sic] 15 years later say, ‘What the hell happened? Who did this to me?’ They say, ‘Who did this to me?’”
That’s…well, as I said, completely batshit deranged. And as much as I complain about the news media ‘sanewashing’ the batshit deranged stuff Trump says, I have to admit that I did the same thing. I laughed with others about it, and basically dismissed it as Trump being a fucking bonehead again, exaggerating wildly for effect. Because, c’mon, ain’t nobody gonna to believe a kid goes to school and comes home days later (I guess the kid’s parents were busy and didn’t notice he was gone for a few days) with an entirely different set of gender tackle.
But then yesterday Trump held a rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin. And guess what? He basically repeated that same completely batshit deranged story. He said,
“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day at school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation. Can you even imagine this?”
No. No, I can’t imagine it. In fact, I can’t even imagine any rational person saying it. I especially can’t imagine a fucking candidate for POTUS saying it. And I double especially can’t imagine a fucking candidate for POTUS believing it. But I’m actually beginning to wonder if Trump does, in fact, believe something like that is happening. I mean, if you say something completely batshit deranged once and it gets reported as being completely batshit deranged, a person who is NOT completely batshit deranged would know NOT to repeat it.
But here we are. And all of a sudden, I’m hearing the lyrics to Psycho Killer in my head.
You start a conversation, you can’t even finish it
You’re talking a lot, but you’re not saying anything
When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed
Say something once, why say it again?
Psycho Killer
Qu’est-ce que c’est?
Seriously, qu’est-ce que fucking c’est? It’s delusional, is what it is. And that brings me right back to that line I said may have been crossed in the opening paragraph. Back in January of 2021, in an article about Trump for Psychology Today, Dr. Stephen Diamond wrote this:
Once a person, including a leader, has crossed over the line from neurosis to psychosis, for, by definition, a delusion is a psychotic rather than neurotic symptom, that person has now become debilitated or disabled by a severe mental disorder, and may no longer be able to continue to perform or discharge their job responsibilities safely, efficiently and effectively. Their reality testing–which is different than neurocognitive functioning per se–has been significantly impaired.
Bingo. By repeating that completely batshit deranged story, I have to question if Trump’s reality testing has gone down the porcelain facility. It’s pretty widely accepted that he’s had a severe personality disorder for decades. But has he crossed that line? Is he actually delusional?
I’m thinking the answer is, yeah.
gregfallis.com 
I disagree. The only thing this turd of a human being (and more and more I use the term human being loosely with him) knows is that when he spouts nonsense, people believe it. It has been the FOX + Right-Wing model for almost thirty years: make shit up and blow everything way out of proportion. How many times have we heard that Bill Clinton, Barack Hussein Obama and/or Joe Biden were going to destroy the economy or destroy the country and take away all our freedoms?
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I don’t know…I’ve always argued that Trump was a malignant narcissist who simply didn’t care about truth. I still that’s true, but now I’m actually wondering if he’s lost the plot and is clinically delusional.
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I avoid having to listen to him if I can. But what I have heard in this election cycle has been very worrying. He is definitely slipping.
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Yes. The question is how far has he slipped? Is he just more cognitively impaired? Or has he truly lost touch with reality?
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I saw a video clip of him earlier. X I think. It was from the 80’s. I didn’t listen with sound on. I just watched. I actually watched him (in an interview) 3 times. He hardly looks or acts like the man we see now. He looks physically like Baron, very much so. But as he’s talking his face is totally different to now. There is no sneer or arrogance writ large. His mouth moves like an ordinary mouth not like the current pursed asshole we continuously see. His smile was open and happy looking. He’s also talking in whole sentences and with flow, I could see that without the sound on.
I don’t know if he’s lost touch is reality completely but there’s a huge change in him.
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I’ve got to hope that the polls saying this election are close are wrong, because it’s impossible to fathom how that many bat-shit crazy stupid people are out there supporting this lunacy. I’m hoping that a vast silent majority are (like me) totally sick of all of the political e-mails and begging bombardment and have simply gone silent, vowing quietly to themselves to vote but not talking out loud…
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I DO think there’s a very large number of people who no longer want to hear anything about Trump and I think they’ll vote. What pisses me off the most is that it’ll likely come down to how many votes the MAGA lawyers can suppress or delay. Our only real hope is putting massive Harris numbers on the board.
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Honestly, Greg, I think that line has been in his rear view for months, now. Not that he’d ever drive himself anywhere.
Granted, it blurs the line when it’s someone who bullies his way into getting his way.
Was he lying about believing Obama was not born an American and so could not be president or did he really believe that? He sure pushed that canard.
Did he believe the Central Park Five should be executed for crimes that he couldn’t prove? Or did that just clue him in to how much he could get away with when he could swing a full page ad in the NYT?
Did he believe that taking a sharpie to an official weather service map would actually change the prediction so his lie about which states were endangered would stand? He was never charge for that allegedly criminal act so he got away with it but I’m pretty sure the prediction remained the same.
His criminal behavior and odd leaps of illogic have been happening for years, before and after his term. With a history like that the line you described might as well be a mile wide. Hard to tell when he crossed it.
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Yeah, it’s really just a matter of degree. I’ve mostly assumed he didn’t believe his lies; he just wanted others to believe them…or to NOT believe his opponents. Now I think there’s a good chance he’s actively delusional.
I worked in a Psych unit of a prison and I’ve seen truly delusional people. Trump’s behavior this last year or so is strikingly similar.
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I bow to your expertise.
It seems to me it’s a blurry line and my experience in this is very limited. I saw something like this in my dad when he was hospitalized with a very low oxygen count… He (also) read his audience and backed off on some of his crazier claims pretty quickly as his oxygen was being increased. He wasn’t in the locked ward when we visited.
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I don’t make any claim to expertise–just to experience. And you’re right, it IS a blurry line. It should be; not all strange behavior and not all peculiar beliefs are delusional. It’s often hard to distinguish between bullshit and a detachment from reality, especially when reality itself can be slippery.
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Expertise. Isn’t that just experience with a diploma?
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I think his process, whether it’s a considered tactic or just a primal instinct (because who can tell at this point), is to home in on things that push fearful peoples’ buttons no matter how crazy they sound to rational people. So the folks out there who don’t understand, and are therefore afraid of, complex issues like race/sex discrimination, immigration, climate change and so forth, experience a knee-jerk agreement with him no matter how daft his words are. They don’t hear the words, they just hear “those woke lefties are comin’ for yer children and yer freedoms, pal, and they want you to be like them”.
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That’s certainly been his lifelong pattern. But that’s just a manifestation of a personality disorder. I’m thinking he may have moved beyond his sociopathy and set up camp in the realm of actual delusional thinking. Which is a whole nother thing.
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Maybe. I still can’t tell whether he actually believes anything he says.
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I worked in a state mental hospital for 5 and 1/2 years, I believe I have seen pretty much every degree of mental disorder that exists. I am going to force myself to watch the debate tonight even though I can’t stand to look at the man. I think he is beyond common sociopathy….we will see what he displays tonight.
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I’ll be watching too, although a presidential ‘debate’ isn’t a good forum for deciding whether or not a person is delusional. I’ve seen a lot of delusional people who understood the need to mask their delusional thinking under certain conditions. Like, say, a parole hearing or testifying in court or maybe a presidential debate.
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