In Trump’s mind, he is the center of the universe. Everything revolves around and pertains to him.
I think for people like Trump, life is a video game – and not even a good video game, one with a story and whatnot. It’s like Pac-Man or Frogger, where you’re just running up your score. There are no serious consequences and everything is meaningless. If you lose all your lives, you just plunk in another quarter and play again. There’s no win condition, there’s just higher scores and faster levels.
Nothing matters, and the only goal is to hit the highest score, however you can.
I think “president of the United States” is the highest score he’s ever hit, and I think the levels are moving too fast for him to play much further now. Which wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, because remember, if you lose, you just drop another coin and play again. Except he’s running out of coins, and Trump’s not sure he can scrounge up anymore quarters.
His day-to-day mood and actions are almost wholly dictated by how sure he is of his supply of quarters. He’s mad half the time that he even has to worry about more quarters. He thought if he got this far, he’d have infinite lives, or a steady supply of coins, and that’s turning out to not be true.
All the sources he used to get more quarters from are gone – his dad, the banks, probably the Russians…
Cheating is one thing. He always cheats. But now he’s running out of hacks and cheat codes. And maybe he’s starting to think, well, if he can’t play this game… then no one can.
We’re entering a very dangerous moment. We’re getting to the “break the controllers and smash the console” stage of the game.
Reading List
- Los Angeles Times: ICE deliberately limited testing at Bakersfield immigration facility with COVID-19 outbreak – “Last month, as the coronavirus spread through federal immigration detention centers around the country, officials at the Mesa Verde facility in Bakersfield rejected a suggestion to test all detainees there because it would be difficult to quarantine those who tested positive, the officials said.”
- Vox: Kamala Harris’s controversial record on criminal justice, explained – “But Harris has also faced questions over her record on criminal justice issues — a record that’s led some critics to describe her not as a progressive reformer but as a relic of a ‘tough on crime’ era going back to the 1990s and 2000s.”
- Lifehacker: How to Submit Your Mail-in Ballot Without Using the USPS – “Fortunately, there are a number of ways to ensure that your mail-in ballot is delivered in time regardless of what happens with USPS.”
- New York Times: What if ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Closer Than Scientists Thought? – “In what may be the world’s most important math puzzle, researchers are trying to figure out how many people in a community must be immune before the coronavirus fades.”
- New York Review of Books: Co-opt & Corrupt: How Trump Bent and Broke the GOP – “For a century, those who have worked closely with authoritarian rulers have shown the symptoms of this malady: a compulsion to praise the head of state and a willingness to sacrifice one’s own ideals, principles, and dignity to remain in his good graces, at the center of power.”
- NBC News: Plan Your Vote. – “Mark your calendars. Everything you need to know about mail-in and early in-person voting, including the first day you can cast your ballot in the 2020 election.”
- ProPublica: ICE Guards “Systematically” Sexually Assault Detainees in an El Paso Detention Center, Lawyers Say – “Allegations include guards attacking victims in camera ‘blind spots’ and telling them that ‘no one would believe’ them in ICE detention centers, which imprison about 50,000 immigrants each year at a taxpayer expense of $2.7 billion.”
- Vox: Coronavirus is in the air. Here’s how to get it out. – “How to make indoor air safer (but not necessarily safe) during the pandemic.”
- TPM: Here’s What The Post Office Needs To Survive A Pandemic Election – “Fueled by the president’s unfounded claims about rampant voter fraud, and reports of equipment being removed, the plight of the United States Postal Service has captured America’s attention. Will it collapse? Here’s what you need to know.”
- The Atlantic: Russiagate Was Not a Hoax – “The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence confirmed what the Mueller report could not.”
- Andy Slavitt: What Future Generations Will Remember About The Pandemic – “We haven’t made our kids’ future important enough to inconvenience ourselves. And they know it.”
- North Jersey: He murdered three women and was hunting a fourth. These women outsmarted a serial killer – “Police didn’t crack this case. Women did. Women outsmarted the killer. They found him. And they stopped him.”
- New York Times: The Republican Embrace of QAnon Goes Far Beyond Trump – “As the president all but endorses the internet-driven conspiracy theory, it is shifting from the fringes of the internet to become an offline political movement.”
- Buzzfeed News: These Countries Have The Highest COVID-19 Infection Rates. This Is What The US Has In Common With Them. – “Once viewed as a beacon of government competence and a model for public health, the US has fumbled the response to the coronavirus pandemic even more than countries known for widespread corruption, poor healthcare, and ubiquitous poverty — to the shock of many around the world.”
- New Yorker: What Happens if Donald Trump Fights the Election Results? – “Stealing a Presidential election in America is difficult, but it has been done before.”
- New York Times: Why Trump’s Approval Ratings on the Economy Remain Durable – “Despite the recession, polling data and interviews with voters and political analysts suggest that a confluence of factors are raising the president’s standing on the economy issue.”
- New York Times: How Zeynep Tufekci Keeps Getting the Big Things Right – “Dr. Tufekci, a computer programmer who became a sociologist, sounded an early alarm on the need for protective masks. It wasn’t the first time she was right about something big.”
Notes & Thoughts 