Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Ignorance of history is no excuse for misinformation

"Dumb Donald is really dumb!"--Gene Rayburn, several times on Match Game in the 70's.

"How dumb is he?"--audience & panel chorus.

That usually sets up a question during the game. However, President Donald Trump demonstrated again on Monday that he doesn't have a firm grasp on history.

Showing once again that he is the embodiment of the sound byte mentality that has been supposedly a part of pop culture for nearly 40 years, Trump tried to sell the idea that the 1918 pandemic caused by a Spanish flu didn't end until after World War II, nearly 30 years later.



                                                              Image courtesy of Yahoo!.

Yeah, I'd frown, too, if I realized I'd made another gaffe in front of the whole world. Other politicians, including the Lincoln Project, and celebrities such as George Takei and singer-songwriter Richard Marx weighed in, chastising Trump for using the seeming lack of mental fitness of presumptive Democratic candidate Joe Biden as a campaign platform while demonstrating time and again that he's not the stable genius he claims to be. People make mistakes all the time. That's what makes us human.

To illustrate what I'm referring to, here's a clip from The Independent's YouTube channel:



However, it also illustrates just how ill-informed Trump has been about the coronavirus pandemic that has gripped the US for the last six months and counting. While he's relying on Republican dirty tricks to ensure re-election in November (and that's not quite as certain as he thinks), such as voter suppression, Trump isn't doing enough reading on the pandemic to get a firm grip on things. This may be a by-product of a spoiled childhood extending all the way to the sunset of his years, but here's the problem. He is showing the world that he isn't that much better than Biden, who is, by the way, three years Trump's senior, in terms of mental fitness, and never really has been. He's traded on The Apprentice and his New York street toughness right from the moment he announced five years ago he was running for President. And you know commentators like Brian Tyler Cohen, who's already checked in on Twitter, are going to have a field day disseminating Trump's latest gaffe, which, because of the scope of his error, nets him another Dunce Cap. We also recommend a case of Ginkoba to improve his memory, such as that is.

4 comments:

magicdog said...

Meanwhile, Former President Obama thought he ruled over 57 states and asked where did Carey Grant stand when filming his classic scene on Mt. Rushmore in the movie, "North By Northwest".

hobbyfan said...

Didn't know about the Obama "57 states" comment, but maybe he was confusing that with Springsteen's "57 Channels".

Joking aside, Trump should look in the mirror the next time he rails against Biden's memory...

Mike Doran said...

Note to hobbyfan:

The "whatabout" defense never works.

In any event, Mr. Trump's problem is not occasional mistakes - in his case, it's their appalling frequency, often within the same sentence.

Also, his equally appalling repetition of the same errors, days and weeks afterward.

Also also, his inability to admit it when he gets caught out in them.

Borrowing a phrase from Gore Vidal's The Best Man:

"... that is a tragedy in a man, and it is a disaster in a President."

hobbyfan said...

And yet Trump continues to be a real-life Pinocchio, having completely (it seems) forgotten what truth is.