Most Americans will recognize this photo. Trump had claimed that the hurricane would strike Alabama, but the weather service showed him the map with the projected path missing Alabama. Trump promptly took a sharpie and drew an altered black path that included Alabama. He thought that proved him correct.
Was Trump lying? No, in his mind the storm was headed towards Alabama, and his sharpie alteration was just proving he was right.
To tell a lie is to make a false statement in the full knowledge that it is false. Trump doesn’t do that. He invents a reality in his mind and believes it to be true. Every day he comes up with outrageous statements, even with detailed numbers and statistics that anyone can check as false, but fact-checking doesn’t matter to him. He has invented his own reality.
Another silly example is his oft-repeated statement that he is going to bring prescription drug prices down by 500, 600, or even 1000%. The fact-checkers can point out that such reductions are mathematically impossible and are limited at 100%. No matter to him; he just continues to spout this branch of imaginary mathematics, which we might call ‘Trumpometrics’.
Of course, the granddaddy of his ‘lies’ is the rigging of the 2020 election. I’m convinced he truly believes his own falsehood, and disregards mountains of facts and judicial decisions to the contrary. That is his own fantasy.
And now we come to the Iran war, or ‘little excursion’, as he calls it. He makes up these fantasies, like ‘We won in the first hour’, but then reality and cognitive dissonance set in, and he has to correct his fantasy by stating that he is sending troops to his already-won war. As we have seen, his stories change by the day or even by the hour, but he appears to believe even the most contradictory versions.
Living in a fantasy reality is a sign of schizophrenia. I’m afraid Trump may be schizophrenic, as he has lost touch with reality.
The media have shied away from the word ‘schizophrenia’, but I fear we may be hearing it more and more, as Trump goes off the deep end with his flights from reality.
That is why he is so dangerous. He may have a vision of an easy takeover of Kharg Island, and will parachute in troops. But then what will he do when those troops start to be killed en masse? He’ll invent some other fantasy, such as, “We have won a magnificent victory on Kharg Island.”
A worst-case scenario is that he might actually get the idea to nuke Teheran. His sycophants might even egg him on: “Mr. President. What a brilliant idea! You are a true genius.” When I see his schizophrenic fantasies, I am actually becoming frightened that he might just do it. After all, attacking Iran for no apparent reason other than “I felt like it” was pretty off-the-wall. There’s no telling how far this madman will go. We’re in scary territory.