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16th May 2020, 05:38 PM | #1 |
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What age would you use to characterize Trump's behaviou?
In a great many posts I've seen Donald Trump called a "toddler." I haven't raised any kids myself, so I'm not qualified to pass a judgement on this. But I'm curious how parents here on the forum view him.
For those here who have raised children, preferably all the way to adulthood or mid-teens, given what we've seen of how Donald Trump conducts himself on television, in interviews, and on Twitter, as well as stories coming out of the White House, what age would you ascribe to Trump's overall behaviour? Toddler? Spioled eight year old? Tween? Emotional or even responsible teenager? Examples from your own child raising experience would be interesting. |
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The social illusion reigns to-day upon all the heaped-up ruins of the past, and to it belongs the future. The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd, 1895 (from the French) |
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16th May 2020, 05:50 PM | #2 |
Penultimate Amazing
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I've not raised any kids either, but am thinking four or five years old. He's like the little kid who holds his breath until he turns blue. Or orange.
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16th May 2020, 05:59 PM | #3 |
Penultimate Amazing
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I've got 2 boys, 11 and 9.
Neither of them have acted this way at any point of their lives so far. |
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Gunter Haas, the 'leading British expert,' was a graphologist who advised couples, based on their handwriting characteristics, if they were compatible for marriage. I would submit that couples idiotic enough to do this are probably quite suitable for each other. It's nice when stupid people find love. - Ludovic Kennedy |
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16th May 2020, 06:16 PM | #4 |
Penultimate Amazing
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It depends. I've seen him behave like a toddler and like a middle school playground bully. He's got quite the range.
I'd say he has the emotional maturity of a 10-12 year old. |
16th May 2020, 06:21 PM | #5 |
In the Peanut Gallery
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16th May 2020, 06:22 PM | #6 |
a flimsy character...perfidious and despised
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There are zygotes that are more emotionally mature than Trump.
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Being the victim of genocidal atrocities does not give you free reign to commit your own genocidal atrocities. When Republican politicians were young, they were the kids who watched James Bond movies and said "I want to grow up to be just like [insert name of villain here]." |
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16th May 2020, 06:56 PM | #7 |
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He is a 73 year-old narcissist with Daddy issues and and an unhealthy sexual obsession with his daughter Ivanka. From his own lips he claims his mother doted on him, but his relationship with his father appears to be more troubled.
Still, he has led a life of privilege, with everything handed to him unearned, and thus its value unappreciated. Despite multiple failures, he continued on, preying on the naive largess of some willing to lend him money despite an abysmal track record. He failed at owning a casino which suggests he is horrifically inept, or unlucky in the manner in which Michael Corleone suggested to Moe Green. He has successfully marketed his name, but little else, and now that name is much devalued throughout the world. In the end, he is an adolescent occupying a senior citizen's body, seeking retribution for grievances; a mopish, teenage pseudo-hard guy occupying the highest office in the United States, the holder once seen by some as the leader of the free world. But no longer as the rest of the world save 44% of American voters see this self-absorbed nitwit as he is: a hollow dry husk of a human being who's only goal is to be adored, if only by nitwits like himself. Also, maybe a shot at Ivanka. |
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Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end . . . WS |
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16th May 2020, 07:08 PM | #8 |
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Banging a pornstar, eating fast food, two scoops of ice-cream for me, one for you, mocking appearances and disabilities. Every day concerned about how's perceived in the news and social media. He's a teenager.
I agree that he's been very lucky in life, and I know that his supporters will blanch at that sentiment. There are people who eat healthily and exercise regularly, and they die in their fifties. There are people who grift, and the law catches them early and often. There's no such thing as a karma (Jimmy Saville got away with his crimes), but if Trump lives five, ten or twenty more years, it could all catch up to him. And I hope it does. |
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Cain: Don't be a homo. Diablo: What's that supposed to mean? Cain: It's a heteronormative remark meant to be taken at face-value. |
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16th May 2020, 07:33 PM | #9 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Very lucky in life...it sure helps when you're born into wealth. Being a millionaire at four certainly doesn't hurt. And having a daddy who can give you a 'small' loan of a million dollars in the 70's ain't no small bag of beans. It's the equivalent of $6.8 million today.
I hope it all catches up with him very, very soon. Like before Nov. |
16th May 2020, 07:34 PM | #10 |
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He's an emotional 14 year old, an intellectual 8 year old, both stuck in a fantasy nostalgia version of the 1950s.
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"If everyone in the room says water is wet and I say it's dry that makes me smart because at least I'm thinking for myself!" - The Proudly Wrong. |
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16th May 2020, 08:29 PM | #11 |
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16th May 2020, 08:38 PM | #12 |
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Interesting. I can actually believe this: some kids just seem to be nice. However, they've never thrown temper tantrums? Hit his brother and then blamed him for starting a fight? Never been caught with their hand in a cookie jar and tried to lie their way out of it? Never broken something and tried to blame someone else for it? If that's the case, we seriously need more parents like you.
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The social illusion reigns to-day upon all the heaped-up ruins of the past, and to it belongs the future. The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd, 1895 (from the French) |
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16th May 2020, 08:40 PM | #13 |
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The social illusion reigns to-day upon all the heaped-up ruins of the past, and to it belongs the future. The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd, 1895 (from the French) |
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16th May 2020, 08:51 PM | #14 |
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...our governments are just trying to protect us from terror. In the same way that someone banging a hornets’ nest with a stick is trying to protect us from hornets. Frankie Boyle, Guardian, July 2015 |
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16th May 2020, 08:52 PM | #15 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Super duper thread!
Two years old emotionally. Three years old depth of thinking and knowledge. Five years old’s vocabulary. |
16th May 2020, 09:02 PM | #16 |
Penultimate Amazing
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By the time his casinos failed, he was deep in debt to foreign interests. The money he was given to buy (a stake in) them was not his own. It was widely known that Atlantic City was a clearinghouse for money-laundering. So it didn't matter a bit how profitable the casinos were, as long as the money went through them. Even to the point where his father turned up and bought a truckload of very expensive gambling chips to bail Donny out of one particularly dicey situation (perhaps Ivan "Bear-Strangler" Farkyuarpskiy decided he wanted Donny to give him his money back, I don't know).
I gather having a casino go bust and Donny wear the bankruptcy was part of some scam tax-avoidance scheme. I've had someone explain how as this is done as a US tax dodge, but forget the details right just now. So as to business maturity, Donny is less cluey about how real businesses work than your average kid running a street-side lemonade stand. Maybe under 8 years old? |
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...our governments are just trying to protect us from terror. In the same way that someone banging a hornets’ nest with a stick is trying to protect us from hornets. Frankie Boyle, Guardian, July 2015 |
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16th May 2020, 09:12 PM | #17 |
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Flawed question - frankly, the first problem is that he acts like a cartoon villain rather than a child of any age. Possibly some sort of mentally addled Lex Luthor, or possibly the Joker.
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16th May 2020, 09:27 PM | #18 |
Philosopher
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Stone Age.
In the spirit of the OP, it changes day to day. Sometimes he reminds me of a 5 year old whose mommy won't buy him a toy. Sometimes a pubescent teen who constantly tells dumber and dumber lies because he thinks he's smarter than he is. I don't think he has a consistent personality out of many, but they all definitely think the world revolves around him. |
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I have no idea what you're trying to say, but I'm still pretty sure that you're wrong. -Akhenaten I sometimes think the Bible was inspired by Satan to make God look bad. And then it backfired on Him when He underestimated the stupidity of religious ideologues. -MontagK505 |
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16th May 2020, 10:36 PM | #19 |
I would save the receptionist.
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I don't think he can be given a mental age, just like an adult with Down Syndrome could not be assigned an age. Some of his thinking is underdeveloped, some is disordered, and some is rational.
For example, he can dress himself professionally and has his entire adult life. Compare that to Steve Jobs who could rarely be found in a suit once he got a little money. So, Trump has the capacity to understand societal expectations and conform to some of them. Trump, however, defines his entire self-worth based on what he believes other people think of him. The more positive feedback he gets, the better he feels about himself. When confronted with negative feedback, he'll often lash out in great anger at his critics. He threatens lawsuits, he calls reporters nasty, and he punishes those he can by firing them just like every Inspector General under his control. This behavior is similar to a young teen of about 13 to 16. It's most similar to teen girls rather than boys. But Trump can function sexually with at least some level of competence. He manages to convince a striking number of people to have sex with him willingly. And he's not exactly bad at it. None of his wives, no matter how much they dislike him, have ever mentioned otherwise. Even Stormy Daniels could only say that the sex was forgettable. This definitely is not the functioning of a 14 year-old boy. My own 14 year-old would pass out if a girl so much as said hello to him. It requires the confidence of at least a man in his 20's. When I was 24, I thought the only purpose in life was to get girls to sleep with you as strictly a numbers game. Trump has not, it appears, moved out of that phase. He was still hitting it hard into his late 60's. But then there are certain behaviors that skew much, much younger - his refusal to read or to do any work, his fondness for Sharpies, his limited vocabulary, and his massive fits of anger. These are all traits you would find in a 3 year-old up to maybe 6 or 7. Trump's complete lack of empathy is similar to a baby of about 1 year. Empathy, science is discovering, begins to develop far earlier than was thought. Thus, my answer is that Trump can't be assigned a mental age. He is a septuagenarian who is able to meet his basic life-needs. He clearly has some serious psychological and maybe neurological problems. Unfortunately, Trump is no longer a private citizen, so his stunted development has a huge impact on the whole world. |
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16th May 2020, 10:59 PM | #20 |
Penultimate Amazing
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There is a difference between mental age and emotional maturity. Mental age is equivalent to your IQ. So, yes, Trump can be assigned a mental age.
Quote:
Emotional age is the level of emotional maturity.
Quote:
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16th May 2020, 11:07 PM | #21 |
Penultimate Amazing
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In 2016, Robert Reich thought that "Trump’s emotional age is under 7." I would narrow it down a little. His inability to even pretend to care about other people suffering and dying makes me say pre-school. His bleach idea also makes me say pre-school.
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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16th May 2020, 11:08 PM | #22 |
Penultimate Amazing
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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17th May 2020, 12:30 AM | #23 |
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17th May 2020, 03:11 AM | #24 |
Penultimate Amazing
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My take is that due to whatever diagnoses he has, it's hard to tell, like with the aforementioned people with Down's syndrome. It's hard to tell what's immaturity and what's conditions like NPD or other factors, or for that matter a show he puts on for the unwashed masses. When he has a tantrum when asked difficult questions, is it fragile ego, a disorder or disability, or a character he's trying to play? If a combination of the three, how strongly does each of them factor in? It's genuenly hard to tell with Trump.
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"He's like a drunk being given a sobriety test by the police after being pulled over. Just as a drunk can't walk a straight line, Trump can't think in a straight line. He's all over the place."--Stacyhs "If you are still hung up on that whole words-have-meaning thing, then 2020 is going to be a long year for you." --Ladewig |
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17th May 2020, 03:32 AM | #25 |
Penultimate Amazing
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...our governments are just trying to protect us from terror. In the same way that someone banging a hornets’ nest with a stick is trying to protect us from hornets. Frankie Boyle, Guardian, July 2015 |
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17th May 2020, 04:36 AM | #26 |
Penultimate Amazing
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The constant mental image I have of him is his leaning back in chair, arms crossed, head down, pouting. Like a 6-year-old who refuses to eat his broccoli.
So... 6. |
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Science is self-correcting. Woo is self-contradicting. |
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17th May 2020, 04:44 AM | #27 |
Mistral, mistral wind...
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Sorry, double post.
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I'm tired of the bombs, tired of the bullets, tired of the crazies on TV; I'm the aviator, a dream's a dream whatever it seems Deep Purple- "The Aviator" Life was a short shelf that came with bookends- Stephen King |
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17th May 2020, 04:59 AM | #28 |
Mistral, mistral wind...
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The question is about this guy, right?
I think Trump has the same ten-year-old's cartoony approach to being President of the U.S. as he apparently has to driving a truck. If you get the shudders imagining him driving that one thing at 70 mph on the interstate with you on it, the reality of him actually driving the other thing down the road, with all of us in it, should just make you scream in terror. |
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I'm tired of the bombs, tired of the bullets, tired of the crazies on TV; I'm the aviator, a dream's a dream whatever it seems Deep Purple- "The Aviator" Life was a short shelf that came with bookends- Stephen King |
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17th May 2020, 05:07 AM | #29 |
Mostly harmless
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"You got to use your brain." - McKinley Morganfield "The poor mystic homeopaths feel like petted house-cats thrown at high flood on the breaking ice." - Leon Trotsky |
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17th May 2020, 09:15 AM | #30 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Though I raised 3 sons, it is still a difficult question to answer. My sons got along with each other and their basic natures were not combative. Of course they sometimes argued, but always worked it out.
Trump seems at times to act like a 3 year old who desperately needs a nap. At other times a 6 year old who doesn't think he got as much soda as his sibling. He also acts like a young teenager who believes the world revolves around him and whatever he wants. So, not one definitive age, but always a child. A spoiled, selfish, immature child. |
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Julia |
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17th May 2020, 09:18 AM | #31 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Cum catapultae proscribeantur tum soli proscripti catapultas habeant. |
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17th May 2020, 01:17 PM | #32 |
Penultimate Amazing
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There's a bit of a range between NEVER doing something, and it being someone's full time behaviour pattern. I mean, forget children, even adults occasionally throw a tantrum or say something horribly inapropriate or pass the blame or act entitled. I know I have before. The difference is basically: how occasionally?
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Springfield Heights Institute of Technology poster child |
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17th May 2020, 02:10 PM | #33 |
Penultimate Amazing
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17th May 2020, 02:16 PM | #34 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but does anyone remember ever hearing of, much less actually seeing, a former president throw a temper tantrum? I don't remember ever seeing a former POTUS calling a reporter 'nasty' or telling them they're "horrible reporters" and the like. I've never seen a former POTUS behave like a spoiled child whereas it's a regular pattern for Trump.
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17th May 2020, 02:45 PM | #35 |
Penultimate Amazing
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In answer to the question in the OP:
Stone. Or Dark. |
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Cum catapultae proscribeantur tum soli proscripti catapultas habeant. |
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17th May 2020, 02:58 PM | #36 |
"más divertido"
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Gilded.
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17th May 2020, 05:49 PM | #37 |
Illuminator
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Trump himself has said that his personality hasn't changed since the first grade. So 5 or 6 years old.
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17th May 2020, 06:20 PM | #38 |
Penultimate Amazing
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17th May 2020, 08:03 PM | #39 |
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I'd say there's a difference between personality and maturity. I still have much the same personality I had when I was in grade school. I typically score as a Meyers-Briggs INTJ (for what it's worth): introverted, thing-oriented instead of people-oriented, thinking instead of "perceiving". I hope I've matured since then, though.
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The social illusion reigns to-day upon all the heaped-up ruins of the past, and to it belongs the future. The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd, 1895 (from the French) |
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17th May 2020, 08:07 PM | #40 |
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The social illusion reigns to-day upon all the heaped-up ruins of the past, and to it belongs the future. The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd, 1895 (from the French) |
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