The Trump MAGA hat, the greatest fetish for the greatest president, By Hal M. Brown

 

I can imagine what residents of other countries, not merely their leaders, think if they spend any time following American news. Not just political news, all the news. They might think that we’re consumed by the a story about somebody with a strange middle name, Sean Diddy Combs.

They may think we are as interested in him as we are in Donald Trump and his manic move to make the news. Always showing how he’s making good on his promise to make life miserable for immigrants by rounding them up and having them detained in the the Everglades where if they try to escape they’ll be eaten by allligators.

They are probably so used to seeing Trump wearing a baseball hat that they think this is normal. It still gets to me. If they are paying attention to the news they may notice the new hat Trump wore when he visited his Alligator Alcatraz:

These days baseball hats are simply called hats. For example, a MAGA hat. Nobody says “I am going to wear my MAGA baseball hat to the rally.” Still, the hats did originate with baseball. Here’s an article from Smithsonian Magazine:

Like many people in developed countries Americans are interested in fashion and what celebrities wear. For example just the other day we had articles like The best and worst outfits from Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez’s celebrity wedding.

Depending on the fashion of the times presidents often wore hats. The 6’4” Lincoln was famous for wearing a hat that made him look even taller than those around him.

JFK occassionally wore one:

Trump, the preening narcissist, is 6’3” and is taller than most of the people he’s photographed with. He also pays a lot of attention to how his hair looks and I have no doubt is dismayed by the fact that it doesn’t look like it used to. Read article:

For him, the hat serves the purpose of branding and hiding his hair.

The words on baseball caps have gone from just designating sports teams to just about anything you can think of. Until I began to write this and did some research I didn’t know that MLB caps (major league baseball) had become political symbols (read: When Hats Became Symbols of Political Movements).

Of course any history of hats as political symbols will include the two versions of the MAGA hat, the one with four letters and the other with the words spelled out.

There are two meanings of the word fetish used as a noun. One has a sexual connotation but the other applies to the MAGA hat: an object believed to have magical power to protect or aid its owner. (Reference)

I doubt the “Gulf of Mexico” hat will be more than a footnote explaining how Trump’s magical hat fetish evolved unless Trump visits the gulf and actually walks on water.

One benefit of the MAGA hat being so identified with Trump is that I don’t have to explain the meaninn of the following image, at least to those familiar with a description related to her encounter with Trump from Stormy Daniels.

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What's not being asked about why Turmp wanted a brain scan?

 

RawStory (click images above for links) summarizes the portion of the Washingon Post article (subscription, about what happened after Trump was shot. 

In their title RawStory used the word “bizarre.” But is this a bizarre demand for Trump? I assert that it is not. 

Here is the part, excerpted from Raw Story, that I want you to consider:

In an excerpt of the upcoming book, “2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,” to be published on July 8, the Washington Post selected a moment-by-moment recollection of the events of the day — and what followed after Trump was rushed to a nearby hospital.

According to the book, written by journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf, before the president was released by doctors he demanded a CT scan, because he wanted evidence about the state of his brain.

The book details, "In Trump’s room, he told the doctor he wanted a CT scan. The doctor asked why, and Trump said he felt like he needed it," adding that he was then escorted by Secret Service agents to be tested.

After returning, he pressed Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to obtain the scan "film," which baffled her.

"He asked to see the 'film' from the scan. The doctor said that wasn’t done anymore, and offered him a written report," the book noted before adding, Trump repeated his demand, "I want the film."

"She [ Susie Wiles] left to get a copy of the image, and while she was gone, one of the aides asked him why. 'It’s like an IQ test,' Trump said. 'They tell you that your brain is good, so I just want to have that,'" the WaPo report added.

If Trump really said the actual words referring to IQ tests “they tell you that your brain is good” this simply demonstrates that he doesn’t know what an actual IQ test does. He’s not a doctor so, to be kind, we might forgive him for thinking in terms of good and bad rather than healthy and unhealthy when it comes to interpreting a brain scan.

I can see why someone would want to have a brain scan if they were concerned that an incident might have damaged their brain. They might want one if, for example, they had a head injury. In some cases doctors would probably order scans.

I don’t think this is why Trump wanted one. 

It is possible he doesn’t have any kind of brain imaging done as part of his annual physical. He might have asked the doctors to do this but they refused. It is not part of a normal annual physical, at least not any I’ve ever had. Extensive tests aren’tnan ordinary part of such exams. Insurance doesn’t cover the costs. Doctors need a reason for ordering them.

I assume Trump, being president, could have some extra tests done, like an EKG for the heart, but brain scans are only done when symptoms suggest the possiblity of problems. It is possible to self-pay for full-body MRI scans (article). A hypochondriac with $3000 to spare might have one done.

“A brain scan shows detailed images of the brain and surrounding tissues, helping to identify abnormalities like tumors, inflammation, bleeding, and structural issues. It can also assist in diagnosing conditions such as strokes, multiple sclerosis, and other neurological disorders.” (AI assist)

I suspect that Trump wanted a brain scan in the mistaken belief that this would show how high his IQ was, and would be something he could hold up and brag about. He’s always boasted about having the biggest brain. In fact, brain size has nothing to do with intelligence. Not only that, a shrinking brain often occurs with normal aging as a web search will explain (below from link)

I have nothing more than a hunch about what really happened when Trump received an image of his brain. A brain CT scan (below) is only of interest to a doctor:

It is hardly anything Trump could hold up at a press conference or have printed on a T-shirt. Then again, if the doctors told him that the scan proved how he had an Einstein level IQ I have no doubt he would have found ways to share that information bigly. He might have thought he could hold up like I show in the Perchance AI image below:

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Trump is a Two Hit Wonder: MAGA and America First.

 

Trump has written two songs. They were such big hits they got him elected president twice. Trump spins his Make America Great Again and his America First songs like a DJ who returns to the same two songs ten times an hour during the same gig. One would think that his audience would tire of this. Nope. Not yet at least.

I had a friend in college, AJ Weberman, with whom I am still in occasional contact). He is one of the several old friends and new friends who has a page on Wikipedia. (His is here.)

Back in college, when he was just called Alan, my roommate Paul and a few others used to sit in a booth in the Student Union restaurant between classes and on weekends. Alan would always be working on a detailed analysis of meanings of the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s songs. He’d be writing on a legal pad coming up with connections and interpretations that he was certain Dylan wanted to convey to those smart enough to figure them out. To others who took them at face value, Alan’s explanations would seem obscure. In later years he wrote about the life and works of Bob Dylan, including a pamphlet titled Dylanology in 1969 and he created a word concordance of Dylan's lyrics. He also wrote the Dylan to English Dictionary, published in 2005.

The meaning of Trump’s two songs are not obscure, bit it is worth spelling them out.

The Meaning of Make America Great Again

Trump never actually defined what he meant by “again.” Most critics say that he wanted to evoke the days prior to the Civil War and to the subsequent Jim Crow era before the (more or less) success of the Civil Rights movement. 

When he ran for the second time, of course “again’ meant what it was like during his first term and better.. Part of his attempt to make America even greater has been to transform the country into a police state as will happen if the Big Beuatiful Bill is passed. $45 billion will be devoted to immigration enforcement ridding the country of “undesirables.” This is his version of “great.” Of course “great” also means that he is the absolute ruler, a king with a red hat as a crown.

The Meaning of America First

I thought of writing this when I looked at the Accuweather worldwide temperature map this morning. The temperature maps are shown on top of this page with the MAGA Trump wolf AI image added. This all hatched into today’s Substack. This is how my mind often works as I free associate to my initial ideas for a Substack. (I hope it is why some of you read my Substacks with all the digressions that I try to pull together for those who make it to the end of the page.)

Trump doesn’t want the United States to be an equal partner in the worldwide community of democratic nations. He doesn’t even want to be a leader, a first among equals. He wants every other country to bow down before him and when he says jump he wants them to say “how high” with the “your majesty” implied.

As contradictory as this seems to be, he is an isolationist maldome (click for Wiki defintion). This is the male version of a dominatrix). Trump wants to keep the country out of international entanglements and conflicts when it suits him, and he wants to involve the country when he can play the big, bad, wolf. He wants to be the ferocious big bad wolf in a MAGA hat who is so feared nobody dares to stand in his way when he sets out to get what he wants. His mantra is “dare to defy me and I’ll devour you.”

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For those not well off, Trump's Big Beautiful Bill's message is "let them eat cake." By Hal M. Brown

 While there’s no evidence Marie Antoinette said "Let them eat cake" (the traditional translation of the French phrase "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche") upon being told that the peasants had no bread. The French phrase mentions brioche, a bread enriched with butter and eggs, considered a luxury food. The quote is taken to reflect either the princess's frivolous disregard for the starving peasants or her poor understanding of their plight. (Wikipedia)

In the case of Trump, he understands the plight of those his policies hurt. Depending who they are, he either doesn’t care or is happy that he has caused them to suffer.

Fleshing out what I mean by offering examples of how Turmp’s policies hurt people, and what Big Beautiful Bill will do to so many, seems superfluous since the meaning ought to be obvious and this is all over the non-Trumpian media news.

I’m not a student of French history which is why, as I wrote this, I had to look up Marie Antoinette on Wikipedia to find out the following:

As queen, Marie Antoinette became increasingly a target of criticism by opponents of the domestic and foreign policies of Louis XVI and those opposed to the monarchy in general. The French libelles accused her of being profligate,promiscuous, having illegitimate children, and harboring sympathies for France's perceived enemies, including her native Austria. She was falsely accused of defrauding the Crown's jewelers in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, but the accusations damaged her reputation further. During the French Revolution, she became known as Madame Déficit because the country's financial crisis was blamed on her lavish spending and her opposition to social and financial reforms…

I suppose you can say that any similarities to President of the United States Donald J. Trump are purely coincidential. Most people know what her ulimtate fate was:

You’ve probably seen the above painting as it is often used online. Here’s a Google Image search.

Trump won’t suffer a violent and ignominious demise. If he falls from grace, the worst thing that will happen to him, no matter how many people he hurts, will be to retire to live a life of luxury at Mar a Lago surrounded by people who treat him like a king who was treated horribly by his enemies.

I suppose he could get embarrassingly fat by eating all that cake.

The vainglorious preening narcissist might ban photographers from his golf outing,s but this won’t stop cartoonists. (These are AI from Perchance)

Alas, this may prove to have been wishful thinking. Even though yesterday I tried to think of a best case scenario (link here), I fear that at 81 years of age I won’t live to see America return to the democracy I enjoyed all of my life. I dread thinking what kind of country today’s children will grow up to adulthood in.

With what seems to be only minor bumps in the road to autocracy Trump’s brag about never getting tired of winning seems to be holding true. (Reference)

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