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At a 2007 Democratic Candidates Debate, Joe Biden famously said about Rudy Giuliani, “There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb and 9/11.”
The cause of this behavior was recently discovered to be Reality Denial Psychosis, or RDP. Here is how it manifests itself today.
There are still three things Rudy Giuliani mentions in a sentence, but the pattern is slightly different: a noun, a verb and trash talking Hillary Clinton with imaginary scandals.
There are others who suffer from this tragic brain disorder. Kellyanne Conway can’t seem to remove that plastic smile, as she does one Giuliani after another, pathologically and seamlessly shifting from any topic into an unconnected attack on Hillary Clinton. Boris Epshteyn does the same thing, although he doesn’t smile as he rips yet more angry fantasy from the air and talks over everyone.
Donald Trump has his own RDP pattern, but expecting from Trump a noun, a verb and then anything related to the noun and verb will only lead to frustration. Indeed, when people suffer from RDP we should expect disconnected fantasy.
For example, Trump received not one, but two national security briefings. He was told directly and in no uncertain terms the same thing the nation was told, that the Russians are behind the hacking to affect the outcome of our national election. Nevertheless, he denied that connection on stage during the second debate. He even questioned if hacking had happened at all. It is reported that because of Trump’s blizzard of words, neither the noun nor the verb has yet been found.
Sadly, Trump and his surrogates all suffer from this not-rare-enough disease. The primary symptoms of Reality Denial Psychosis are quite real:
- The inability to recognize facts.
- An overwhelming desire to ignore the topic at hand and instead blurt fantasies.
- The ability of the disease afflicted to deny straight-faced what they have previously said, statements which are recorded for anyone to easily fact check.
- The strange need to rationalize deplorable behavior, like suggesting that criminally misogynistic “locker room” banter among male adults is somehow okay.
- Seeing oneself as a victim whenever confronted by adverse reality. This is often compounded by recurring claims that “The system is rigged” any time an RDP infected subject loses or thinks he will lose. Even with extensive treatment, most patients never overcome their “poor me” mental limitation and instead live their entire lives tragically both feeling sorry for themselves and enlisting others to whine along with them.
It will serve you well to keep this pathology in mind as you realize that yet another political interview has wasted your time with a noun, a verb and some unconnected personal attack. A noun, a verb and a national security fantasy. A noun, a verb and criticism of a woman’s appearance. A noun, a verb and mindless self-promotion. A noun, a verb and ___________ (you fill in the blank).
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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.
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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
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One Response to The 5 Things You Need To Know About RDP
dominickpalella October 23, 2016
Jack, RDP is a condition shared by both politicians and the voters who follow them. Seems like a kinder way to describe brainwashing. What Trump, Clinton, or any other politician says will always be an irrelevant fantasy, based on their political ideology, to garner votes in their elections. For example, policy positions and plan statements.
American voters and the reform organizations they follow continue to ignore the one political reality that supports these fantasies. This is the autocratic power granted by our US Constitution to our elected officials. That is, they have no obligation to listen or respond to their constituents when they are in office. Until we recognize and address this autocrat authority within our democratic political system, politicians will represent whomever they want. For example, those who give them the most money, and often don’t even live in their voting districts.
The people we allow to run our government are a problem, but it is not what they say in election campaigns, but what they do in office. I’ve recently revised my web site to make the solution to this problem clearer.
TrueDemocracyNow.org