Trump's "Capital Punishment" - It's Not What You Think. It's So Much Worse. [View all]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/alicia-morgan/114361/trumps-capital-punishment-its-not-what-you-think-its-so-much-worse

Trump's "Capital Punishment" - It's Not What You Think. It's So Much Worse.
by Alicia Morgan | July 12, 2025 - 6:14pm


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It is painfully obvious that he is functionally illiterate.

Most likely it started as an unaddressed/undisclosed learning disorder like dyslexia. For the disorder itself, I have sympathy - in and of itself, a learning disorder is not necessarily an indication of lack of intelligence; often it’s a processing glitch in the brain, and many people with these disorders are highly intelligent. It is the content rather than the delivery in Trump’s case that leads me to question his basic intelligence - for instance, his insistence that political asylum refers to people being released from or escaping from a mental institution. But even if there is an inability to create a coherent sentence, there are people whose job it is to fix mistakes before they are released to the public.

When viewed through the lens of simple English language standards, his screeds are ludicrous in the extreme. In their pretense to dignity, statesmanship and erudition they bring to mind a first-grader dressed up in his daddy’s suit, with a mustache drawn on with eyebrow pencil for good measure, growling in the lowest register his squeaky little voice can reach. That these puerile, stinking piles of hot garbage are written on official White House stationery and represent our face to the world is a grotesque affront to all Americans. As someone who was born with the spelling gene, it is physically painful for me to even subject my eyeballs to that kind of toxic mess.

Is it the grossest kind of stupidity? Yes. Yes, it is.

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Make no mistake: he is as stupid as he sounds. But stupidity is not incompatible with his true super-power, which is that he is a social dominator — perhaps one of the most extreme cases in our history. His instinct for domination is unparalleled, and he has the ability to turn his biggest weaknesses into tools of control. He doubles down on everything he is criticized for, and that gives him immense power.

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This is the main point here, and I feel as if it’s being missed. We’re talking about the symptoms, not the disease. The disease is fascism. The disease is authoritarianism. The disease is megalomania and malignant narcissism. The disease is dictatorship.

And cockamamie capitalization is not a harmless joke, but a deadly serious tool of dominance and control.

*It is most likely true that he doesn’t even have to write them himself; his aides (Stephen Miller, in all probability) know how to write according to the Trump Rules - capitalize the first letter of words he wants to emphasize, like nouns (his German heritage, perhaps?) and fully capitalize imperatives (“IMMEDIATELY!”) and words that he is emotionally invested in or is guilty of himself (“SECRET” “UNLAWFUL”). The tell is that there are words that he could not possibly know or use, like “insidious” (which certainly sounds Milleresque).