• chaogomu
    link
    fedilink
    411 year ago

    The “Biden dementia” thing comes from two places.

    First is, Biden has a stutter. Everyone has known about it for his entire political career, and he’s mostly overcome it, but every now and then he’ll trip over a word. Right wing nutjobs will then scream that Biden can’t form a coherent sentence, even though he can indeed do that.

    The second source of the “Biden dementia” nonsense is projection/deflection. In the middle of Trump’s presidency, there were some medical experts who started raising questions about Trump possibly having something along the lines of Frontotemporal dementia. Now, these were people without access to Trump’s medical records or any records beyond videos of Trump, so there’s a large grain of salt to be taken.

    The basic argument was the Trump has a distinct stance, legs ramrod straight, but his torso leaning slightly forward. This is very common among people who suffer that type of dementia. His word choice has also tended to delve into the nonsensical more and more over the years, even if he’s still able to string together a grammatically correct sounding sentence. Which is another sign of that particular strain of dementia.

    The main argument against FTD is the seeming lack of apathy. FTD is a disease that robs you of your emotions.

    The sub category of Semantic dementia might fit Trump better, but honestly, I think he’s just a lazy conman who was never very smart in the first place.

    • SuperDuper
      link
      fedilink
      121 year ago

      Right wing nutjobs will then scream that Biden can’t form a coherent sentence

      This part is also projection to help them justify their own support of a self-proclaimed “stable genius” who is quoted as saying

      Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is so powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible.

    • finthechat
      link
      fedilink
      41 year ago

      The main argument against FTD is the seeming lack of apathy. FTD is a disease that robs you of your emotions.

      Did you mean empathy instead of apathy?

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        81 year ago

        No, they meant if he had FTD he’d be more apathetic, but he doesn’t appear to be that way, so maybe it’s something else.

        • finthechat
          link
          fedilink
          31 year ago

          Oh yeah, I read it again and that makes more sense now. Good call.

      • chaogomu
        link
        fedilink
        31 year ago

        It can do that too, but how would you tell? He’s always been a shitty person with no empathy.

        But no, FTD tends to rob you of your emotional range. Feeling listless and apathetic is common.