While those of us old enough to have been born in the shadow of WWII have an almost instinctive disgust of appeasement, it is undoubtedly a diplomatic tool.
But it requires that the person you are appeasing has a demand that serves a purpose for the demander. The demander has a concrete reason for their demand, however obscene.
The mistake of appeasing Trump is to misunderstand his fundamental pathology. 1/ #Trumpappeasement
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Madeleine Morris
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •It's not that Trump has a solid idea of what his demands will achieve: it's not like the Sudetenland, Poland and Ukraine for Hitler's dream of Libensraum, or the exile of all Jews off expanded German territory.
The reason Trump constantly flubs stating his reasons for needing Greenland - and indeed keeps mistaking Greenland for Iceland, is that he is given talking points to make that do not feel fundamentally true to him. So he cannot deliver them. 2/
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CartyBoston
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •His demand is that America, then the rest of the world, become white men playing golf while being served by brown people and women.
It does not make for great speeches, he's terrible, he's not aimless though.
Madeleine Morris
in reply to CartyBoston • • •No, that's the demand of the people around him - who do have a clear racist logic to their desires.
Madeleine Morris
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •And while dementia is most certainly at play with Trump's pathology, the products of a demented mind always do reveal in themselves, a certain psychic logic.
Trump mixes up Greenland and Iceland because his unconscious doesn't differentiate between two northern Islands, neither of which will satisfy the underlying compulsion to demand.
Nothing you give Trump WILL EVER BE ENOUGH. There is no territory, no amount of wealth, no level of adulation that will fill the black hole at his core. 3/
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MissConstrue
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •if you’ve never read Eric, by Terry Pratchett, this will be a tad spoilery. (It is an absolute genius take on Faust). In it the archdukes of hell conceive a plan to rid themselves of an unwanted ruler. They do so by “promoting” him and leading him quietly away to a padded, but plushly furnished, room.
I am 100% positive that if we were to tell Trump that he’d been bigly elected to be King of the world and the heavens above, and put him in a shiny room with 100 chatbots telling how powerful and virile and manly he was, and answering all his social media posts with cult bots, and a McDonalds delivery on demand...we’d never hear from him again.
I mean, it’s worth a shot. 🤷🏻♀️
Madeleine Morris
in reply to MissConstrue • • •@MissConstrue No, you would. Because it would not satisfy him.
It is really hard to digest but vital: nothing will satisfy him because there is nothing that will fill the hole. Nothing.
Ariaflame
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •GutterPoetry
in reply to Ariaflame • • •@ariaflame @MissConstrue
Trump himself, sure. Just give him a mirror. But trump isn't really the issue (he's too stupid), propping him up are his handlers the tech oligarch, christian/zionist extremists etc, authors of project 25, not to mention his blackmailers including putin.
trump has no real principles and merely tries to enrich himself - his handlers are cunning enough to work together to use trump to steal from the world & destroy any democracy we had.
8Petros [$ rm -rv /capitalism/*]
in reply to Madeleine Morris • •like this
MissConstrue, Madeleine Morris i foo ✅ like this.
Madeleine Morris
in reply to 8Petros [$ rm -rv /capitalism/*] • • •MidgePhoto
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •@MissConstrue
A devotee* of the Hungry God.
* Or parasitised by, it differs no more than minimally.
Madeleine Morris
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •While it is entirely natural to want to interpret Trump's demands into some coherent demand that can be either met or rejected (human's crave coherence - we literally cannot stop ourselves for sifting through the gibberish and sanewashing them into something coherent), it is not a strategy that will serve the moment.
It is important to distinguish between Trump and those around him who use his power to push their own agendas. But stop thinking Trump has any coherent agenda. He doesn't. 4/
Madeleine Morris
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •The world could give Trump every territory he demands, all the money he demands, all the airtime - 24 hours, year round Trump, and it would not ever be enough. There is no enough for Trump.
There will never be enough death, enough spectacle of suffering, enough moments of revenge. No punishment will ever be sufficient for those he perceives as his enemies. He would have them killed, brought back to life, and killed again forever. He is a black hole of demand. #5
Madeleine Morris
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •The only tactic that, I personally think, will serve the moment is blanket, outright and clear refusal.
When he hits the wall of an absolute and resounding NO, his psychopathy will become so apparent, so fast, even his most ardent apologists and users will find it impossible to sanewash him. The quicker this happens, the quicker it will be over.
And then impeachment or the 25th will remain as the only possible prerogatives.
The harder chore will be cleaning up his enablers.
Madeleine Morris
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •All these European and Asian governments need to hire fewer policy advisors and more psychoanalysts.
There is a way to break the cycle of rampant delusion and devouring jouissance of someone in this mental state. It is a brick wall of refusal and silence.
Every accommodation, every appeasement does the opposite. It feeds the machine of all-consuming, unsatisfiable need inside him.
Madeleine Morris
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •And you might ask why I am so adamant in my opinions on this subject. For a very sad reason. I have a brother who is psychotic and who, with a little more charisma and a rich enough Daddy, could easily be Trump.
The greed, the fixations, the delusions, the embrace of conspiracy theory, the lack of proportional rage at what he perceives of as his enemies, his strange fracturing of language, his monomania, his grandiosity, the endless unsatisfiable demands... they're all there. 1/
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Madeleine Morris
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •And I also recognise exactly where he is fragile and what could reduce him to something so broken and fragmented that only permanent institutionalised care could contain him. The black hole around which his drives revolve would devour him.
I am careful not to present that brick wall to my brother. I know exactly what it would do to him.
However, I have no similar sense of ethical obligation when it comes to a man with his finger on the nuclear button.
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CartyBoston
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •Madeleine Morris
in reply to CartyBoston • • •Irenes (many)
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •Quasit
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •I grew up with Trump - or rather, MANY Trumps. It was a New York suburb, the third-richest municipality in America, filled with top Fortune 500 executives and lawyers. Their children were unbelievably spoiled. Raised by nannies, they never heard the word "no".
The ones that weren't emotionally shattered were bullies. No one else was human, to them. The only thing that mattered to them was hurting the helpless. It's as if cruelty was all that gave them any feeling of reality.
I was a tall, shy, red-headed bookworm. They found me an irresistible target. I was tortured and beaten daily. I wanted to die.
That's why I've always hated the rich. I know what they are. I know how they think. And Trump is a classic example - but he's not the ONLY example.
The whole capitalist class must be destroyed. If not, they'll destroy the world. There is NO LIMIT to their greed. It's literally bottomless.
But they'll go insane when faced with a General Strike.
#Trump #Capitalism #Fascism #GeneralStrike
Ben Aveling
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •Spiritual Annie ☮️
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •I'm also familiar with mental health issues, being the daughter of a malignant narcissist. Of course, he wasn't diagnosed because he didn't see that there was anything wrong.
What I lived with is similar. The grandiosity. The need for power and control. The sadism. The "only I" pronouncements. Self-medication. Outbursts. His being the only anger allowed.
Confrontation with truth is the only way.
Madeleine Morris
in reply to Spiritual Annie ☮️ • • •Spiritual Annie ☮️
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •Madeleine Morris
in reply to Spiritual Annie ☮️ • • •Madeleine Morris
in reply to Spiritual Annie ☮️ • • •@SpiritualAnnie Unfortunately, confrontation with the truth doesn't really help them, there is no 'curing' that particular illness.
The confrontation with the truth is important for us, though.
AntififaCyclista😀
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •LionelB
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •They rely on momentum and must escalate. My guess is that a jaw-dropping level of shrill will happen anyway.
When he publicly mocks MAGA for being stupid and easily manipulated, then it will be game over.
Wm.son
in reply to LionelB • • •@lionelb
My hope remains that he will have a sudden break with whatever reality he is in, and will need to dragged away from a podium, ranting and blubbering and pooping himself.
A fitting end.
But I'm concerned about Vance. Could he be worse, in that he isn't a lunatic?
Madeleine Morris
in reply to Wm.son • • •@Sfwmson As to Vance... I really haven't listened to him enough to get a sense of what his particular structure is. But he's a far, far weaker personality than Trump. He doesn't engender the kind of affinity that Trump does.
He would undoubtedly be worse, but I don't think he has the appeal to hold power for long. There is something inherently disgusting about him, in the same vein as DeSantis.
@lionelb
CartyBoston
in reply to Madeleine Morris • • •@Sfwmson @lionelb I keep screaming to everyone "VANCE IS JUST A VENTURE CAPITALIST" as if that means anything to anyone outside my immediate circle.
He thinks the world - and therefore policy - is mechanical, predictable, maybe even deterministic.
And - like all VCs - he studies how to make money using that machine.
But now he, Musk, Thiel are using the machine to amass power instead.
Vance is a fascist's fascist.
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