Posted on 03/26/2019 5:28:20 AM PDT by servo1969
Reading unhinged Leftist delusions about Trump's criminality -- despite the Mueller report's exoneration -- reminds me strongly of people with dementia.
When she was already in her high 80s, my mother had to go to the hospital for heart surgery. The surgery went very well and gave my mother another five good years. What didn't go well, though, was the hospital stay.
Those of you with elderly parents may already be familiar with something called "sundowning," which is a form of dementia that worsens at night. Although it's technically a symptom of Alzheimer's disease, it's also very common in elderly people who do not have dementia, but who are thrown into an unfamiliar setting -- especially a hospital setting that sees them woken up at all hours of the night and living in a sort of perpetual twilight. (As you may have guessed from its name, sundowning is associated with disrupted Circadian rhythms.)
On my mother's first night after surgery, the nurses telephoned me at 3 a.m. because Mom had been hysterically calling out for me to rescue her. They hoped that I could talk her down. I couldn't, though, because although she recognized my voice on the phone, she was convinced that I was an alien being who had kidnapped her daughter and taken the daughter's (that is, my) place.
Because the phone call didn't help, I threw my clothes on and headed to the hospital. I shouldn't have bothered. My mother was in the grip of a deep hallucination and didn't recognize me. It was very strange having her desperately calling me to rescue her even as I stood there in front of her. I went back home.
When I returned to the hospital the next day, Mom filled me in on exactly what had happened to her that night. The nurses, she told me, were using the mobile computer carts that they brought to the bedside to run an illegal retail business selling designer clothes. They had kidnapped her and brought her down to a cellar beneath the hospital, put her at a sewing machine, and brutally forced her to sew clothes for ten hours to make products for their illegal business. She'd demanded that they bring her daughter to her (that would be me), because she knew I would rescue her. I never came, though. Instead, they sent an impostor to trick her. Later, when they returned her to her bed, the patient in the next bed was dying, and they forced mom to nurse the patient.
As my Mom was otherwise lucid that morning, I tried to show her that the patient in the next bed was alive and well and that the computer in her room was limited to patient data. I told her that I had talked to her on the phone and come to the hospital. I also pointed out that Mom wasn't any good at sewing now that her vision was diminished. None of that mattered. Even while she acknowledged as true every single fact I told her, she nevertheless clung steadfastly to her narrative. It had happened and nothing could persuade her otherwise. She believed in that delusion until the day she died.
The next night, Mom called for me again and again I spoke to her on the phone without her recognizing me. This time, though, I didn't go to the hospital because doing so would be pointless.
When I visited her the next morning, she had a new night-time adventure to report. She told me that she had been sleeping in her bed when she saw three Germans arrive from "there" (pointing to the window). The Germans came to her bed and stood around her as they discussed using her body in strange and torturous ways for scientific research. She was frightened and called for me, but I didn't come, which was a tremendous betrayal of my alleged love for her.
This morning, Mom was able to walk, so I took her to the window -- the same window through which, she assured me, the Germans had arrived. When we reached the window, I pointed out that (a) it could not open and (b) her room was on the third floor of the hospital. Because that evidence was before her eyes, she readily agreed that my facts were correct. But again, she refused to deny her hallucination. It was another one she clung to until her dying day.
Although my mother was an intelligent woman, had a lot of common sense, and was closely tied to reality when she wasn't in the hospital, those visions were all-encompassing. They felt completely real to her. It was apparent that they had interwoven themselves so completely into her synapses that she could not accept that they were anything other than the truth -- even if they conflicted with common sense, physics, trusted sources, whatever. They had happened.
You all know where I'm going, of course. People suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome invested themselves so completely and thoroughly in the Russian Collusion theory that nothing will shake their belief that it happened. That mass delusion, that collective hallucination, has become as real to them as the chair on which they sit, the food they eat, or the face they see in the mirror. And because it has profound emotional resonance, playing as it does on their fears and their fantasies, their hates and their hopes, they cannot let it go.
With that in mind, I'd like to share with you two posts I saw on my real-me Facebook page. One is from a die-hard Proggie and the other from a #NeverTrumper. Both are people whom I've known for decades, so I can attest to the fact that they have jobs (one of them, indeed, is a leader in his field), they have families, they have friends, and they manage their lives with reasonable skill.
They're also completely delusional. Here's the Proggie's take on what we know to date about the Mueller report:
Just remember that the report says there was not enough PROOF to prove collusion at this time.
He is still a criminal.
He is still a liar, cheat and fraud.
He is still a horrible person.
Not enough proof? At this time?! Let's talk about what 19 lawyers, 40 FBI agents, and all their support staff did for two years (and here I'm quoting from the Barr letter): They "issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, obtained more than 230 orders for communication records, issued almost 50 orders authorizing use of pen registers, made 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence, and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses."
And after all that effort, here's what Barr summarizes as the Special Counsel's findings on collusion:
The report further explains that a primary consideration for the Special Counsel's investigation was whether any Americans - including individuals associated with the Trump campaign - joined the Russian conspiracies to influence the election, which would be a federal crime. The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the report states: "[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."
Do you see any language there about "not enough proof at this time," because I sure don't. Or how about in this paragraph about Russian efforts at sowing disinformation:
As noted above, the Special Counsel did not find that any U.S. person or Trump campaign official or associate conspired or knowingly coordinated with the IRA in its efforts, although the Special Counsel brought criminal charges against a number of Russian nationals and entities in connection with these activities.
Again, I'm not seeing any hedging statement saying, "The Special Counsel thought there was something there, but damned if he could find any proof after those 2,800 plus subpoenas, after reviewing God alone knows how many documents, and after talking to approximately 500 people."
That's just disinformation, though. What about the computer hacking? Surely that's where my Proggie friend saw language about "not enough proof at this time." Hmmm, not so much:
But as noted above, the Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.
This wasn't a case of "not enough proof." As Barr summarizes it, this was a case of NO PROOF. NADA. ZILCH. NOTHING.
There was no proof whatsoever that anyone in the Trump campaign, from Trump on down, did anything wrong with regard to the Russians. Indeed, reading between the lines, blame can only go to one place for Russian behavior vis-a-vis the 2016 election: The Obama administration, which failed to (did it even try to?) stop the Russians.
But facts are irrelevant. My Proggie friend is in the Stygian depths of Trump Derangement Syndrome. He's in the political equivalent of that hospital basement with my Mom, sewing clothes for nurses to sell through their hospital computers. He can no longer distinguish reality from his fantasy. The fact that the Special Counsel's efforts, aided by a team of die-hard Hillary supporting Democrat attorneys, couldn't find diddly-squat to tie Trump to collusion is meaningless. He has hardwired himself to a fantasy and cannot let it go.
And then there's the #NeverTrumper. . . . He was absolutely horrified that Trump said that the people in government who pushed the collusion story had done a very bad thing -- indeed, a treasonous thing -- and that he intended to look into their conduct. Here's what the Proggie had to say:
He should be thankful for possibly dodging a bullet but instead he seems to want to demonstrate he is unfit for office (as the National Review once wrote - any office, even Travis County dog catcher...)
Huh? Did I just understand this man to say that someone who has just been exonerated entirely (go back to the Barr quotes) should be grateful that he "dodg[ed] a bullet"? What bullet? Is the #NeverTrumper saying Trump should be grateful that he survived a treasonous cabal of political operatives anxious to hang onto power, aided by a Special Counsel staff composed entirely of his political enemies, all trying to stage a coup that successfully wiped out the 2016 election? That bullet?
I don't think that's what my #NeverTrump buddy is arguing. I think he's arguing that, despite the most thorough exoneration in American political history, Trump's lucky he didn't get caught . . . doing whatever nefarious hallucination is winding around like some tapeworm in the #NeverTrumper's delirious imaginings. No wonder, then, that this #NeverTrumper thinks that Trump, an innocent man, is "unfit for office" because he stated that he intends to bring justice to those who almost succeeded in carrying out the first true political coup in American history.
My mother's excuse was that she had an aged brain. All of us who are aging can look at her and think "there but for the grace of God go I."
It's different when it comes to the people who wrote those ludicrous statements, both of which are untethered to explicit and undisputed facts. These permanently sundowning Proggies and #NeverTrumpers who proudly display their hallucinations for all to see on Twitter and Facebook, and in MSM articles and TV shows, can't claim age-related dementia. They're in the primes of their lives.
Instead, like drug addicts, they did this to themselves. They've wallowed for years in unwholesome, destructive, dishonest, and deranged fantasies, and now they're trapped in a state of permanent sundowning, completely unable to distinguish their sick fantasies from reality.
And if that analogy doesn't work for you, I've got one more, from the late, great C.S. Lewis. If you're a C.S. Lewis fan, you may remember a scene from The Last Battle, his parable about the Apocalypse. In that scene, although the dwarfs have survived Aslan's judgment which allows some eternal life while consigning others to perdition, they are unable to appreciate their good fortune. Even though the dwarfs are sitting in a glorious sunlit field, they are convinced that they are in a dark and dirty shed. And when Aslan places a feast before them, they perceive it as disgusting refuse that they trample into the dirt as they fight each other.
Do I need to say more? It's enough to know that, like my mother in the hospital cellar, those in the grips of Trump Derangement Syndrome are forever mired in a dark, smelly stable, eating dirt.
We’ve always known that leftism is a mental illness. This is proof positive...
— Hillary Clinton
Another good analogy is Orwellian. Party members must be particularly good at lying to themselves.
Scorn of truth is the evil most fundamental to the decadence of Western Civilization.The Left suffers from a dangerous mass psychosis.
1) mind control
2) grandeur/special abilities
3) impostor
4) monomania = preoccupation with a certain idea, event, theme, person
5) nihilism
6) persecution
7) reference
8) somatic/hypochondriacal
9) self-depreciation
That’s an interesting article. Insights offered from a personal perspective with family suffering.
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