1. I posted below about watching a Trump rally speech last Tuesday. In fact, I watched it twice, the second time to count the repetition of certain words. I did it, because repetition can amount to a type of brainwashing, and I wanted to see how Trump does it.
So I watched today's Trump rally speech for the same reasons. He repeats the word "rigged" six times, if I got the count right, beginning with the media, mentioning Sanders as a victim of this rigging, seguing to the whole process being rigged, and finally coming out with "The whole election is rigged."
That was followed by "the whole thing is one big fix." Trump then repeated that statement. "Crooked" Hillary was mentioned at least three times.
That explicit statement about the elections as illegitimate is one step closer to the abyss than he took on Tuesday.
This leaves me very troubled, not only because of the cult-like flavor of what Trump is doing, but also because if his supporters believe in what he says, well, what are they going to do if Trump doesn't win?
2. Scott Adams, the cartoonist of Dilbert fame, and also the cartoonist of misogynist fame, has a new blog post about the coming election, called The Era of Women. The gist of the post is that since women are going to vote Hillary Clinton into power, women will be responsible for everything bad that will happen next.
The post is fascinating, and my usual type of analysis would be to note that electing the FIRST female US president, ever, is not the same thing as the monstruous regimen of women, except in the minds of a few, that electing the FIRST female US president, ever, is not the same as women, as a class, taking all power from men, as a class, and that it most likely means very little change in any of the issues that keeps Adams awake at night.
I would also add that his opinion erases all the men who are going to vote for Hillary Clinton and all the women who are going to vote for Donald Trump, and then I would ask why he can't see the possible election of the first woman to lead this country as a step towards, you know, gender equality, rather than as the obvious total tilting of some imaginary power see-saw to favor the class of women.
I'd finish by asking why it is that Adams, and others like him, can't view individual women and men as individuals in politics. After all, that is the goal in my value system when it comes to sex, race etc.
But I want to try something different, and that is to see what that post also sounds like to me:
Note the false generalization: If one woman becomes the president of the United States, then all women are running the country, perhaps the world.
That sounds like the way the mind of someone depressed works: Everything is SHIT. Not just some things, but everything.
Note the end-of-world thinking: The possible election of one woman wipes out any power men may have held. Perhaps all the men in the Congress, the majority of Congress-critters, will be beheaded? Perhaps the Catholic Church will have only a Popess and priestesses? Perhaps all imams and mullahs will now be women? Every CEO of every large corporation will now be female, the military will only have girl generals, all television sports will be about rhythmic gymnastics, and every single talking head (and cartoonist!) will be female in this new world. The earth has cracked open and will suck up poor Scott and anyone who is at all like him.
That, too, sounds like depression.
And so does Adams' attempt to compare men, as a class, to women, as a class, in some odd endeavor to decide which class "deserves" to rule:
Men had a good run. We invented almost everything, and that’s cool. But we also started all of the wars and committed most of the crimes. It’s a mixed record to be sure. Now it’s time for something different, apparently.
I'm not saying that Adams is depressed. He's more likely to cause depression in others by what he has written. But I spotted those similarities and then wondered how many of those who participate in the nastiest misogyny sites might suffer from the thought errors commonly associated with depression.