What do they think of Trump's cozy relationship with Putin in the other Manchester? By Hal M. Brown

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You know that we have a Manchester in New Hampshire. Fans of Ted Lasso know there's a Manchester in England too.

I was going to unpack everything that was wrong in Trump’s post (above) about why nobody should waste time worrying about Putin. Then I read the first article a web search turned up. It happened to be in the Manchester Evening News (here). 

This was covered in the American media, in Newsweek for example, but it was also reported on in other countries. I came across an article about this in the Manchester Evening News. At first I didn’t think much about this because I assumed it was Manchester, New Hampshire. Then I noticed “MAN UTD” on the top of the page. 

As a fan of the series “Ted Lasso,” I knew this referenced Manchester United, one of the best soccer teams not only in Great Britain but in the world. 

Donald Trump couldn’t couldn't give a rat's ass about what anyone in England, Europe, or Lower Slobovia for that matter, thinks about his cozy relationship with Putin, his abandoning Ukraine, and his shitcanning Amercia’s role as leader of the free world. As I wrote yesterday, Trump only wants revenge for being treated like crap for the previous four years. 

He wants to bask in the warm glow of a sun that shines only on his magnificence. If that level of narcissism was the only psychopatholgy he had it wouldnt be all that bad. He might just be a modern day Caligula.

Unfortunately, it isn’t enough for him to be powerful and to enjoy the trappings and privileges of the presidency. He has to have people cower in fear of him and to bow down to him. It isn’t enough for him to be emperor, he has a driving need to be an evil emperor. When he says “off with their heads” he wants to have the execution televised from the White House lawn.

Trump still believes he has to feign empathy. This may change. Repeatedly he has expressed how it saddens him to know about the death and suffering in Ukraine. He says that he want it to stop. He tries to look and sound sincere. This is all performative. He says the words and people, if they are gullible, just might think he actually feels something. 

Trump never acknowledges that it is Putin who is aggressively targeting civilians and destroying powerplants so people freeze. This because that undermines his narrative of casting Russia as the hero and Ukraine as the villian. If Trump admitted this it would lay bare the lie that he cares about the suffering of Ukranians.

Trump is incapable of experiencing empathy. The only one he ever feels sorry for is himself. The last time this happened was when he had to endure sitting in a hot courtroom during the E. Jean Carroll trial. He’ll think he has to fake it as long as he believes that his grip on absolute power is unassailable. 

Once he believes nobody can ever dethrone him I think he’ll say to himself “fuck putting on the act I’d rather be golfing.”

Addendum:

Trump isn’t particularly good at method acting, but he’s been good enough to convince millions of voters that he cares about them despite not caring about anybody but himself. Perhaps ironically, this is the acting technique developed by a Russian, Konstantin Stanislavski. This seeks to encourage sincere and expressive performances through identifying with, understanding, and experiencing a character's inner motivation and emotions. Actors trying to go beyond getting into the character’s head and get into their hearts. You don’t have to really have empathy to do this well, but it helps. 

Here’s a list of the best American method actors. The one that is generally considered the inspiration for all of them is Marlon Brando.

When I think of what has been happening to America I often flash in my mind to the final scene in “Apocalypse Now” which is simply known as “the horor, the horror” scene. You can view it here.

I must have Brando on my mind since I concluded yesterday’s Substack with this:

I want to thank all of my readers and my Substack subscribers. You can read all of my Substack posts here. If you subscribe you will recieve an email every time I post. Respectful comments are always welcome even if you disagree with me. I generally reply to comments.

I post on BlueSky though the day, You can read my posts here.

For years Trump plotted his revenge as a dish best served cold. Now he is serving it hot. By Hal M. Brown

What if Trump hadn’t lost the election? The term “the big lie” wouldn’t have existed except in books, movies, TV shows, and when one spouse finds out that the other has been having a secret affair for years. Had he won Trump wouldn’t have spent four years convincing a large segment of population that Biden’s winning the election was a big lie.

He wouldn’t have been spending four years seething inside at the utter humiliation of losing and his inciting rage among his cult. Obviously there would have been no assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6th. 

Trump would have reentered office having learned that he had to pick people who were utterly loyal to him since he’d learned that to do otherwise major parts of his agenda would be modified or derailed. Whether these people would have been less extreme and more qualified than those he picked this time is open to speculation, but it is possible. 

Considering that Project 2025 was published in 2023, it wouldn’t have been an actual carefully designed blueprint for turning the government into an autocracy, even though the authors would have been available to advise Trump. 

Musk bought Twitter in 2022 so it is possible he wouldn’t even be in the picture today. 

When it came to winning the election, I wonder what would have happened if the person shooting at him in assassination attempt at Pennsylvania rally had missed completely. There never would have been that bloody ear fist raised photo. That was the best commercial for a product in the history of advertising. It was all the Marlboro Man ads rolled into one. The “Where’s the Beef” ads helped Wendy’s compete with McDonalds. That one photo of Trump without a slogan screamed “the beef is here.” Trump would have won without this, but it sure helped make both him feel invulnerable, and led others to think he was ordained by God to be president. 

A major psychological factor, in fact, the major factor that drives Trump today besides his need to be the greatest and most feared king in history, is his need to exact revenge against all of his enemies. From actual people to nameless immigrants, he relishes being able to make them suffer. 

Not all malignant narcissists are also sadists, but Trump is. He has appointed people who, to varying degrees, have a sadistic streak like Tom Homan and Kash Patel. 

This leads me to my other “what ifs.” Two things happened that shook him to the core but in very different ways. The worst for him was the E. Jean Carroll trial. Day after day he had his freedom taken away and had to sit in a hot courtroom where the only thing he had to be thankful for was that the trial wasn’t televised. There still were unflattering drawings of him from courtroom artists. Donald J. Trump who never was forced to be anywhere he didn’t want to be had to be in that courtroom for days on end. 

The only good thing to come out of that trial for him was the mugshot which ended up on dozens of t-shirts and mechandise. Trump had to be sitting there thinking about becoming president again and getting back at everyone who ever dared to cross the king. He probably thought about having E. Jean Carroll, her lawyer Roberta Kaplan, and Judge Kaplan to be hung in a televised execution on the White House lawn. Instead he spent the years until the election with the resentment festering inside. 

The other thing that happened that caused Trump to have his sense of omnipotence upturned was the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, what he assumed was the king’s impenetrable fortress. The FBI even found sensitive documents in his bedroom. Consider how he must have felt knowing that armed agents were violating his personal domain. 

The meaning of the proverbial phrase “revenge is a dish best served cold” is that taking revenge at a later date is more satisfying that enacting it immediately. Taking revenge later means you have time to premeditate your revenge to perfection instead of acting in haste. The saying means that the longer you wait to take revenge, the more satisfying it is when you do. Now after years of preparing for this day, Trump is able to serve his revenge dishes piping hot. 

Mafia Godfather Don Corleone said, "Revenge is a dish that tastes best when it is cold." We now have a Mafia kingpin running our country. (Reference) 

Since you are reading this on HalBrown.org I encourage you to change and read what I write on my free Substack. You can read all of my Substack posts here. If you subscribe you will recieve an email every time I post. Respectful comments are always welcome even if you disagree with me. If more people do this I won't have to post the same essay in two places.

I post on BlueSky though the day. You can read my posts here.

Hitlerism as a word never became popular. There is now such a thing as Trumpism. Move over, Nazism. This is the ism that will describe America. By Hal M. Brown

 

This is the Wikipedia entry for Trumpism. The term is a part of the current lexicon.

Hitlerism never became a popularly used word. Nazism did. I am not sure why. Hitler achieved a cult of personality the same way Trump has done. Maybe it is just that the term didn't have a ring to it.

This is from Wikipedia:

Nazism, formally named National Socialism (NS; German: Nationalsozialismus, is the far-right totalitariansocio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany. During Hitler's rise to power in 1930s Europe, it was frequently referred to as Hitler Fascism (German: Hitlerfaschismus) and Hitlerism (German: Hitlerismus). The later related term "neo-Nazism" is applied to other far-right groups with similar ideas which formed after the Second World War and therefore after Nazi Germany collapsed.

Nazism is a form of fascism, with disdain for liberal democracy and the parliamentary system. Its beliefs include support for dictatorship, fervent antisemitism, anti-communism, anti-Slavism, anti-Romani sentiment, scientific racism, white supremacy, Nordicism, social Darwinism, homophobia, ableism, and the use of eugenics.

It took Trump the four years leading up to the election to position himself to achieve his dictatorial power. He did it differently than Hitler, but the result is the same. Read: 

In January 1933, Hitler did not immediately become a dictator. When he became chancellor, Germany’s democratic constitution was still in effect. However, Hitler transformed Germany by manipulating the democratic political system. Hitler and other Nazi leaders used existing laws to destroy German democracy and create a dictatorship.

In August 1934, President Hindenburg died. Hitler proclaimed himself Führer (meaning “leader”) of Germany. From that point forward, Hitler was the dictator of Germany. Read entire article.

If you are reading this Substack, and have read my previous essays recently, it probably needs no further explanation as to why I have posted the excerpt from this article.

I watch people on TV and in Substack videos and many of them are still smiling as they report on one or another victory against Trump and Trumpism. I only manage to smile, and even laugh these days, when playing pool volleyball and watching a good comedy on TV. I never smile when learning about a victory achived by the anti-Trump movement.

One of the first articles I read this morning was Trump 'clearly' threatening his own people in public: CNN analyst.This is how it begins:

CNN political analyst Mark Preston on Thursday said that President Donald Trump appeared to be openly threatening his own cabinet officials not to get in the way of X owner Elon Musk's efforts to take a wrecking ball to the federal government.

During an interview with host Sara Sidner, Preston said that Trump's first gambit to shut down the United States Agency for International Development looks like just the opening salvo in a broader attack on the government as a whole.

"I think this spells trouble, because this is going to be the first step in really Donald Trump successfully dismantling the government," he said. "Now, everything that he does try to do, Sarah, is not going to be successful but in this first step, he appears to be successful."

The last paragraph is what jumps out. I won’t explain why.

It is hopefully no longer considered by anyone reading this, and many others, to be hyperbole to compare what happened in Germany in the 1930’s to what has happened in the United States in the previous 10+ years. Those of use who see the parallels do not suffer from the pseudo-psychiatric disorder Trump and his allies called Trump derangement syndrome. This legitimately made it into Wikipedia (here), not because it is a real disorder but because it was a political reality.

Coining this term in regard to Trump was an attempt to gaslight his critics, i.e., to manipulate them into questioning their own perception of reality.

What we do suffer, actually suffer from, is seeing things clearly and as a consequence experience anxiety and depression, real disorders, because we see the fate of our democracy.

Addendum:

It isn’t reassuring that the report that a Trump official moved to change the poem on the Statue of Liberty was only deemed partially true by Snopes. Lady Liberty and Hitler are two of the most common themes political cartoonist are using these days.

None of the cartoons which you find when you do an image search for Trump and the Statue of Liberty are funny (Google image search): 

I want to thank all of my readers and my Substack subscribers. You can read all of my Substack posts here. If you subscribe you will recieve an email every time I post. Respectful comments are always welcome even if you disagree with me.

Some think Trump's aura of invincibility is fading. By Hal M. Brown (Not me. I think he's as invincible as he ever was. He controls the people with guns.)

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This is a reaction to reading The Aura of Invincibility is Fading in The Contrarian (here).

The meaning of the word aura is “the distinctive atmosphere or quality that seems to surround and be generated by a person.” The title of Jeniffer Rubin’s essay in today’s edition of The Contratian, published in SubStack, suggests that the aura of invincibility around Trump is fading. Her subtitle accurately says that “plenty of people are taking swings at Trump.”

If you’ve been reading my Substacks, you know I have not been basking in warm sunshine of optimism. Quite the contrary, I am in the wilds bundled up in my roaring blizzard togs. I am feeling the stinging icy wind against my face. I am not face down in the snow, but I don’t see the way to the warm safety of my cabin. I don’t need the weather channel to tell me that this is such an unprecedented storm that there’s no way to tell when, if ever, it will end. 

There have been lot's of losses for Trump & Co. and many wins for our side, but there is this chilling quote from Gen. Barry McCaffrery: "It is all a "consolidation of power with the people who have the guns."

I think of the heroic World War II Resistance. They had many victories thoughout the war. They even had guns. But for every one German officer killed, the Nazis made civilians pay with their lives 10-20 times over. If the Resistance had explosives, too, but when they blew up a bridge the Nazis destroyed an entire nearby village.

The only way the Nazis were defeated was for the Allies to amass huge military might. I don't see us as being anywhere near to D-Day. 

My partner and I are 81. We may not live to to see the Allied victory.

I think Trump and his henchmen will learn from their mistakes and focus their efforts on doing things that they believe will help them the most to achieve their final goal. We know what this is.

They will realize that their mistake was mounting a blizkrieg-like juggernaut. This was overreach where, using Project 2025, as a plan, they tried to do everything at once. But this wasn't actual warfare where Hitler's "lightening war" made sense. This was a planned takeover of a democracy and they treated it like they were invading countries.

DOGE, as well as killing woke and DEI, weren't necessary for them once they installed people like Pete Hegeseth, Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, and others to lead the departments and agencies which had guns. They probably now know that RFK Jr. was a mistake. (The first person just died of measles.) His department doesn't have guns. The same could be said for cutting USAID. Their workers don’t have guns either. 

Greenland, Panama Canal, Canadian statehood, even tariffs, all were unnecessary except as distractions which they didn’t need. Vance’s speech was blowing smoke. Likewise, cozying up to Putin, made no real sense.

Once Musk gave him the millions to help win the election there was no need to let him anywhere near the Oval Office. Like he’s done with others, Trump should have cut him loose without any payback for his services.

Trump & Co. continues to squander their power and waste their energy. For example there was no need to attack the media, kick the AP off Air Force One, and take over selection of the members of the White House Press Corps. They don’t need to control the media. Reporters don’t have guns.

I see this as the the consequence of the personal psychopatholgy of Trump, Musk, and others. Mostly it was Trump who, after the humiliation of losing the election, had his burning need for revenge festered through the E. Jean Carroll trial and literally hit home when the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago.

Trump has a need he can’t control. He has to put on a show. He has to scream “look at me!” He does this every day whether it is through his social media posts, his press appearances, or his signing executive orders making such photos of him doing so with his smiling face this are plastered everywhere. I’ll spare you photos since you’ve seen so many of them.

I predict you will see Trump backing off from many of the unnecessary assaults on democracy and norms, and focus on using the incredible power of the presidency, and the control of the people with guns, to become the monarch he's always wanted to be.

Trump is itching for an excuse to declare a national emergency and to declare martial law. All it will take is for something to happen during a protest rally for him to justify this. There are already are rallies across the country and there will be more and more of them. Some of them have resulted in a few people being arrested. Eventually someone will be hurt, or there will be looting and vandalism. It doesn’t have to be particularly bad, all Trump has to do is say that it was bad.

Then we come down to the question as to whether or not soldiers will follow unconstitutional orders. This sets the country up for a military coup, but I doubt this would happen because it would mean the military throwing out the elected leaders of the country and replacing them with generals who would govern until there could be truly free elections. That would be a step too far for them. I see generals and admirals resigning before they would do this.

Nobody can do more than imagine how far this will go. One thing I believe is that the United States that was envisioned by the Founders is in grave danger of disappearing. Democrats are hoping that they will take control of the Congress in 2026. If they do, this is no quarantee that Congress will act as a check on Executive Department excess. By 2026 Trump may have consolidated so much power he will just ignore Congress. He’s already breaking laws. 

The same applies to the Supreme Court. If they try to rein in the implications of the previously enacted presidential immunity ruling and rule that the president doesn’t have imperial power, Trump can just ignore them. After all, the Supreme Court doesn’t have guns.

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