Ever heard of the word “confabulation”? Here’s some information from the AI Overview on a Google search. “Confabulation is a neuropsychiatric symptom where individuals produce false memories without the intention to deceive, believing these fabricated memories to be true. It’s often described as “honest lying” and is thought to occur as a way for the brain to compensate for memory gaps. Confabulations can range from minor details to elaborate, fantastical stories, and can be believable or bizarre.” Got that? Yes No Maybe? You should. It’s part of someone you know, who happens to be running the country. From The Hill:
President Trump has always been willing to mislead people when it was to his advantage. Even his supporters recognize this. Hence the famous admonition to “take Trump seriously, not literally.” But what Trump is doing now is something different. Confabulation (EDIT: as defined above) is when the person doing it genuinely believes what he’s saying, even if it is obviously and patently false. In other words, it’s not like lying to try and get out of a speeding ticket.
Sound familiar? It should. This is not good news for the US. Trump has been inconsistent all over the place. He can’t remember little day-to-day things. He’ll say anything and everything to make a point … except it rarely has anything to do with the subject at hand. Remember when he first set tariffs, and the board he was holding up looked like something from ChatGPT? Something that just assigned random tariffs to random countries that looked and sounded like something made up?
Well, it has a good probability of being just that – made up. There’s no basis in reality for any of these. I seem to remember the level of Switzerland was set at 40-something percent. Why? Why any of it? As I mentioned in a previous piece, why hammer Canada, Mexico, the UK, and the EU? But, back to the article at hand. Tariffs are just an easy example.
For Trump, the day we could no longer pretend everything is fine came on July 15, when he told a lengthy story about his uncle, John Trump, who he claimed taught at MIT and held three degrees in “nuclear, chemical, and math.” His uncle, according to Trump, once told him how he had taught Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, and how very smart Kaczynski was. Trump’s uncle was indeed a professor at MIT, but everything else in this story is pure confabulation.
It was proven to be wrong multiple times by multiple organizations. That was the first day it really showed that age was catching up with Trump. And wow, it most certainly did. How did we miss all that, and why didn’t we stay with it? There are all sorts of examples scattered in the news from then on. Here’s another one. How about what he doesn’t remember about the Epstein files? He probably can’t read well enough to even look at the first page of the evidence and refresh his memory. He may not have enough memory to *hold onto* that information.
take his insistence that former President Obama and his FBI director, James Comey, made up the Epstein files, even though they were long out of office by the time Epstein was most recently arrested in 2019 (EDIT: During Trump’s First Term). Again, that’s very troubling because being unable to correctly process when past events took place is a common feature in confabulation. The same goes for being unable to remember that he himself appointed Jerome Powell as the chair of the Federal Reserve. And then, of course, there are all the little lapses in judgment that Trump has been displaying recently.
I would call sending bombers to hit Iran’s nuclear facilities a lapse in judgment. And so was “complete and total obliteration”. Remember how upset he was to find out it wasn’t nearly that bad? What a waste of time and money. How about not remembering what’s really happening in Gaza and the rampant killing of civilians? And wow, it seems his memory is *really* shot in regards to Putin.
After the death of a child, watching someone you love and respect struggle with dementia may be one of the worst experiences a person can have, whether it’s a parent or a president. But when the time comes, it’s something that must be faced squarely. That goes double when we are talking about the president.
When you look at this, it’s the underlying reason for TACO, too. Whether or not I love the man, because some people do, it’s really rather sad watching him go downhill. What a difference even now between his previous term and this one. The worst part is watching him trying to change democracy into authoritarianism, with him at the top. When will Republicans accept this? No matter how much anyone makes jokes or comes up with snarky remarks, this is a problem, and it’s getting worse. When will Congress realize it and take action? JD Vance is crap but….
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The one interesting thing is how Melania might be affected by Drumpf’s obvious drift into dementia. She can obviously divorce him but how will such a divorce affect her prenup? I cannot imagine that Drumpf has authorized her with power of attorney (probably covered in the prenup as “Trophy wife is not entitled to the power of attorney as a privilege of the legal arrangement designated as ‘marriage'”) so to ensure she gets anything would entail her to seek a conservatorship (which would likely result in a big family fight since the “kids” aren’t likely to want Natasha to be in charge of whatever finances still remain) and a conservatorship means Melania will never be truly free of Donald (and she will be under a freaking microscope with regards to abuse accusations–given how Donald’s treated her over the years, you know she’d want some kind of revenge but even the mere whiff of an abuse allegation would strip her of that conservatorship).
She wanted the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, but she forgot about Rich, Famous, Old, and Batshit Crazy. Whoops! You’re stuck with The squirrel! 🐿️
what makes me sad is knowing this means he gets away with everything.
Most people who have lived will die without justice.