MANY THINGS CONSIDERED: Chaos, Confusion, Corruption and Craziness

By Marc C. Johnson

Donald Trump’s Cabinet meeting this week was, even by his standards, absolutely bat poop deranged.

For one hour, 37 minutes and 20 seconds, while the nation faces a war without purpose in the Middle East, the world economy is rocked by a spike in oil and natural gas prices and Putin is smiling because Trump removed economic sanctions, the president of the United States mumbled, rambled, told pointless stories about Sharpie pens and his big ballroom and received a tongue bath from his Cabinet lackeys.

You can watch it on C-Span, but don’t if you have a weak stomach. It is truly gut wrenching.

As I’ve written (many times) before, Trump is an old, degenerating, mentally unbalanced demagogue. Watch that obscene slobberfest in the Cabinet Room and tell me differently.

But here’s my question today: amid all the Trumpian chaos, confusion, corruption and craziness why do the men and women who continue to prop up this reprehensible individual continually debase and discredit themselves by doing so?

How many times can a person sell their soul, mortgage their backbone and skin their knees squatting before the throne of a legitimate buffoon?

Apparently the answer is – endlessly.

Welcome to No Kings Weekend. It could not have come at a better time.

But why? Why do this kind of fluffy sycophancy to a politician – any politician?

Mike Johnson, the Louisiana Republican who is reportedly Speaker of the House of Representatives, just flatly debased himself this week giving a “new” award to Donald Trump. It was utterly cringeworthy.

Late night host Jimmy Kimmel said it’s now clear why Trump tore down the East Wing of the White House and is building a huge ballroom – he needs the new ballroom as a trophy chest.

“My favorite part, when they give Trump these awards, is when he comes out with a look of surprise on his face,” [Kimmel] added. “And the saddest part is, he seems to be genuinely honored by these imaginary accolades.

“Look at him, how happy he is,” he said after another clip of Trump standing beside Johnson on stage. “All the grace and elegance of a gorilla at a wedding.”

Imagine rising to the absolute top of congressional leadership and then spending every single day slobbering over the president – any president – and over and over again verbally kissing his ample hind quarters on TV.

I love my family and friends, but – maybe it’s just me – I don’t gush over them all the time. First, it’s not necessary. They know how I feel and I do tell them, but the level of idolization by the people around Trump is beyond rational belief. If any of us behaved like Mike Johnson or Trump’s Cabinet around our own friends and family they’d wonder why we were acting so silly and more than a little creepy.

The explanation for people like Speaker Johnson is, I think, simple. He’s decided that the only way to “work” with Trump is to praise him as the best thing since sliced bread, and in doing so keep the braying MAGA base from turning on him.

But the impact for the rest of us in way more serious.

Many of these people display the behavior of the proliferating AI chatbots that tell lonely, needy people just what they want to hear.

AI gives us a clue

Stanford researchers actually looked into what happens when an AI chatbot – or a Mike Johnson – serve up lavish, unreasonable praise. You can see what happens to Trump when the lickspittle BS gets really deep. He loves it, really loves it. A crooked smile comes out of his pancake makeup and he beams like a kid getting a blue ribbon for participating in punt, pass and kick competition.

Here’s some of what the Stanford researchers concluded:

As artificial intelligence (AI) systems are increasingly used for everyday advice and guidance, concerns have emerged about sycophancy: the tendency of AI-based large language models to excessively agree with, flatter, or validate users. Although prior work has shown that sycophancy carries risks for groups who are already vulnerable to manipulation or delusion, syncophancy’s effects on the general population’s judgments and behaviors remain unknown. Here, we show that sycophancy is widespread in leading AI systems and has harmful effects on users’ social judgments.

What could go wrong with the fawning brown nosing? Potentially quite a bit with both AI and in human terms:

High-profile incidents have linked sycophancy to psychological harms such as delusions, self-harm, and suicide. Beyond these cases, research in social and moral psychology suggests that unwarranted affirmation can produce subtler but still consequential effects: reinforcing maladaptive beliefs, reducing responsibility-taking, and discouraging behavioral repair after wrongdoing. We hypothesized that AI models excessively affirm users even when socially or morally inappropriate and that such responses negatively influence users’ beliefs and intentions.

When Trump, who we know lives in his own cloistered information bubble, is fed a steady diet of what he wants to hear by people who – like Mike Johnson – act like he’s the greatest individual who ever walked on water, he believes it. Truly believes it.

A more well-adjusted, self aware, critically thinking individual, in other words not Donald Trump, would likely behave as our friends and relatives would.

You said what? Are you off your meds? What are you smoking, dude?

Trump’s response is to believe the BS, fluff his enormous ego and convince himself that he is indeed the greatest.

Trump’s delusions are constantly on display and powerfully reinforced when no one calls him on the fantasies, but instead gives him another phony award.

Trump claims he has wiped out inflation, that the war he started isn’t a war but an “excursion,” that the fighting is over even as more American’s are seriously injured in Saudi Arabia, and that the U.S. doesn’t need its NATO allies.

He’s even fantasizing about naming the Strait of Hormuz after himself and he’s putting his signature on our money. My money clip is going to rust, or turn orange.

His maladaptive beliefs border on the insane, including over and over again claiming the 2020 election was rigged without any proof beyond beyond the conspiracy theories of the cranks around him and the noises in his own head.

And Trump never accepts responsibility, the fault is always with someone else. You wonder who he’ll fire before the Iran fiasco plays out?

The walking, talking sycophantic AI chatbots around Trump, rather shockingly, mirror, in human form, the findings of the Stanford researchers who studied AI:

Although affirmation may feel supportive, sycophancy can undermine users’ capacity for self-correction and responsible decision-making.

Act with urgency

The American experiment is in mortal danger. We have become an utterly unserious country, presided over by an utterly unserious anticipatory monarch. The turd polishers around that man will not change, sorry to say.

They must be defeated. They must be protested. They must be called out by those of us who haven’t become preformative chatbots.

As the wise and clever Internet commentator Dave Pell says, there is a greater chance that AI changes then that Republican office holders do.

Don’t worry. If big tech eventually does tone down the lickspittling, bootlicking, groveling, kowtowing adulation and unctuously servile toadyism, you can always replace it by having yourself a cabinet meeting. ¹

Get out there and let your voice be heard.

(1) – I’m indebted to Dave Pell for calling attention to the Stanford research in his wonderful daily newsletter. He really is the “managing editor of the Internet.”