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PERSON WOMAN MAN CAMERA TV
Person Woman Man Camera TV

While talking to Mary Trump, Donald Trump’s niece who just published a book on how stupid, racist, sexist, and creepy her uncle is, Stephen Colbert said, “Bragging about passing a cognitive test is one of the ways you fail a cognitive test.”

Donald Trump was mocked for bragging about passing a cognitive test, a test not designed to detect intelligence but for early signs of dementia. Then, he bragged about it on television again which brought new mockery. He’s not dumb enough to go on TV and do it a third time, is he? Yes. Yes, he is.

Yesterday, an interview was released where he said he boasted how amazing it was that he could perform a memory sequence. Telling Dr. Marc K. Siegel, a professor of medicine at New York University and an analyst for Fox News, he was able to repeat, “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”

Trump elaborated. “It’s, like, you’ll go: Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. So they say, ‘Could you repeat that?’ So I said, ‘Yeah. It’s: Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.'”

“‘OK, that’s very good. If you get it in order you get extra points,'”. OK, now he’s asking you other questions, other questions, and then, 10 minutes, 15, 20 minutes later they say, ‘Remember that first question…not the first…but the 10th question? Give us that again. Can you do that again?'”

“And you go: ‘Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV,'” If you get it in order, you get extra points.”

“They said nobody gets it in order. It’s actually not that easy, but for me, it was easy. And that’s not an easy question. In other words, they ask it to you, they give you five names and you have to repeat ’em. And that’s OK. If you repeat ’em out of order, it’s OK, but, you know, it’s not as good. But when you go back about 20, 25 minutes later and they say go back to that…they don’t tell you this …”Go back to that question and repeat ’em, can you do it?’ And you go: ‘Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.'”

“They say, ‘That’s amazing. How did you do that?'” I do it because I have, like, a good memory, because I’m cognitively there. Now, Joe should take that test, because something’s going on. And, and, I say this with respect. I mean…going to probably happen to all of us, right? You know? It’s going to happen.”

I think it’s already happened.

The thing is, Donald Trump exhibited to the interviewer, a doctor, that he could repeat it several times immediately, not 25 minutes later. By the way, it’s supposed to be a ten-minute test. The interviewer did NOT ask any follow-up questions. What he should have done was ask Donald Trump to repeat five other words, like, “Plane, Toy, Fox, Clock, Hat.” Then, ask him to repeat them again. And later, like 25 minutes later near the end of the interview, ask Donald Trump to do it again. Then…maybe we could all say, “That’s amazing.”

What’s amazing is that Donald Trump won’t shut up about being able to repeat five words in order again and again. These were five words of things that were probably in his immediate area during the interview. There was a person, a woman (surely Kaleigh McEnany was off-camera), a man, a camera, and probably a television monitor, and these words were all similar (“Person, Woman, Man” and “Camera, TV”). And even while repeating these words, Trump had some difficulty. It wasn’t “bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.” It was more like, “Bam, bam……….bam? Bam….Bam.” That’s amazing.

In an earlier interview, he claimed it was in front of several doctors who all said, “Rarely does anybody do what you just did.” Did what? He’s bragged about passing a cognitive test more than he’s bragged bout winning Michigan.

Joe Biden said Donald Trump is our first racist president (sic). That’s not true but rarely does a president exhibit as much racism as Donald Trump. Racism is what Donald Trump keeps repeating. We know this: Donald Trump is a stupid racist displaying early signs of dementia.

Rarely does a president brag about passing a cognitive test. This is a man who was applauded for lifting a cup with one hand. That’s amazing.

We have a stupid, racist, sexist, narcissistic moron as president (sic) of the United States of America. That’s amazing.

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by Timothy Snyder Timothy Snyder | Department of History

Fascism was never about actual people and their predicaments but about a glorious imaginary collective that had died but would be reborn. In the 1920s and 1930s, the idea was everywhere the same: At some point in the past, the nation or the race had been greater, purer, more beautiful. That ancient perfection could be seen in ruins, poems, monuments. Then, so the story went, another group, some inferior race, some cabal had come along and inexplicably ruined the people’s destiny. If only that group could be removed, then the race could be restored, made great again.

In U.S. President Donald Trump’s adoration of Confederate statues and in his mobilization of state power to protect monuments, it is easy to see a similar style. The specifics of the present, the plights of individual Americans, are irrelevant, beside the point. The death of George Floyd matters only insofar as it can trigger a desire to dominate. It is a prompt to a certain narrative in which, in the end, white Americans are the true victims and the U.S. president is the greatest victim of all. The deaths of tens of thousands of Americans from the coronavirus is neither here nor there. Here too the president is victim-in-chief, with a mandate to lead the people into myth. What matters is Americans’ ability, through the medium of metal and concrete, to see their way back to a past when they were great.

Consider what would have happened had the president expressed as much concern for people in February and March as for statues in June and July. There was no call earlier this year for haste, for sudden action, for interagency cooperation, for an expansion of the role of the federal government to defeat a pandemic. On the contrary: The states were told to deal with the coronavirus themselves, and individuals were left to sort through the confusion and contradictions of statements from the White House. But when statues are threatened, then, it seems, exceptional action is called for. What if all the men (and, yes, they are nearly always men) swinging batons now had been passing out masks a few months ago?

Who are the miniature stormtroopers now appearing in Portland and soon in other cities? That the men in mismatched shoes and ill-fitting uniforms lack identification and insignia recalls virtually every authoritarian regime. It is a basic feature of a state under the rule of law that a citizen can recognize legal authority and tell the police from the thugs. It is the nightmare moment of repression to be seized by unknown men. When the government itself elides the distinction between those who protect the law and those who break it, when it makes itself into a paramilitary wearing the wrong kind of camouflage, it invites others to do the same. It is not so hard, after all, to rent a van, play dress up, and start hurting people. When citizens do not know whether they are being intimidated by governmental or nongovernmental forces, the situation is rife for the kind of escalation that fascists liked.

Fascists thrived in crises and indeed sought them out. ...
 
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