Donald Trump is a psychopath whose mental illness manifests in an insatiable lust for praise. It is well known in domestic and international circles that getting what one wants from America requires flattery of “Dear Leader.”
Trump has surrounded himself with sycophants, toadies and other incompetents, and yet even these are not enough.
He has devolved into his own best flatterer, continually praising himself with claims that normally would be considered humorous were they not so harmful and damaging.
Of course, with a psychopath, there is no “normal,” and in Trump’s case, the abnormality is unrelenting. When he’s not pardoning criminals who attempted a coup, he’s pardoning criminals he never even heard of (his claim) for reasons he can’t explain.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Sunday said he did not know anything about Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire crypto exchange founder with close ties to the Trump family’s own crypto empire — despite the fact that hehe pardoned him last month.
“I can only tell you this. My sons are into it,”Trump added. “I’m glad they are, because it’s probably a great industry, crypto. I think it’s good.”
“I know nothing about the guy,” Trump said again when pressed.
He claimed that Zhao, also known as “CZ,” was the victim of the “weaponization” of the Justice Department, without providing further details. At the time of the guilty plea deal, federal prosecutors said Zhao caused “significant harm to US national security.”
Trump’s acknowledgement that he knows very little about one of his own pardon recipients comes as the president and his Republican allies continue to attack former President Joe Biden, claiming that he wasn’t aware of many of his official acts as president — including pardons — because his staff used an autopen signature.
The unfettered ability to pardon, to tariff, to punish and reward represent psychopathic Trump’s desperate and increasing need for power, praise, and prestige.
Trump says he’s ended 6 or 7 wars. Here’s what the record shows.
By Laura Doan, / CBS News
In recent weeks, President Trump has repeatedly claimed he deserves credit for ending six or seven wars during his first months in office, arguing that he should receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.
“I stopped seven wars, and they were, they’re big ones too,” Mr. Trump saidFriday.
“I’ve settled six wars, and a lot of people say seven because there’s one that nobody knows about,” he said in an August 19 interview.
A White House official provided a list of seven conflicts the president is referring to: Israel and Iran, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Thailand and Cambodia, India and Pakistan, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Serbia and Kosovo.
“There has been more progress towards peace than ever before because of this President’s leadership,” the official wrote.
Foreign policy experts say that while Mr. Trump has helped broker ceasefires, including one between Israel and Iran, several of the foreign conflicts cited by the administration were not full-scale wars — and many remain unresolved.
The White House did not respond to a request for clarification on why the president has repeatedly labeled all seven conflicts as settled wars.
“A war that nobody knows about”???
Here is a summary of the facts that praise-hungry Donald twists:
Conflict / “War” Trump Claimed to End
What Trump Claimed
What Actually Happened
India vs. Pakistan (Kashmir)
Said he “prevented a war” after tensions over Kashmir in 2019.
The U.S. urged restraint; tensions eased mainly through back-channel diplomacy and mutual deterrence — no formal peace or U.S.-brokered deal.
Armenia vs. Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh)
Claimed credit for ending fighting in 2020.
A cease-fire was brokered primarily by Russia, not the U.S.; hostilities later resumed in 2023.
Israel vs. Iran (or regional conflicts involving Israel)
Claimed to have stopped Middle East wars through the Abraham Accords.
The accords normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states but didn’t endany active war; conflicts with Iran and Palestinians persist.
Serbia vs. Kosovo
Said he ended “hundreds of years of fighting.”
The U.S. hosted a 2020 economic agreement; it was not a peace treaty, and tensions continue over Kosovo’s independence.
Egypt vs. Ethiopia (Nile Dam dispute)
Claimed to have prevented war over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
The U.S. mediated briefly, but no resolution; tensions remain.
Thailand vs. Cambodia (border disputes)
Claimed to have “solved” that one.
No record of significant U.S. involvement or any change tied to Trump’s diplomacy; minor border tensions persisted.
Rwanda vs. Democratic Republic of the Congo
Claimed credit for preventing war there.
No verified U.S. mediation; fighting in eastern Congo continues.
It’s just another in a long line of false claims, made by a psychopath, supported by a cowardly and immoral Republican Party and defended by an ethically compromised Supreme Court.
Before you answer, here are a few warm-up questions:
What is the primary source of funds to pay for Social Security benefits?
What is the primary source of funds to pay for Medicare benefits?
What is the main difference between the federal government’s financing and the state/local governments’ financing?
Where does the federal government obtain the money to pay off federal debt?
Does the federal government borrow dollars?
What is the primary cause of inflation?
What is the purpose of federal taxes?
What is the purpose of state/local taxes?
Taxes are paid with dollars from the M2 supply measure. In what measure are those dollars after they are paid, and why?
I am Monetarily Sovereign. I never can run short of my own money. Why would I need yours?
Answers:
1. and 2. Social Security and Medicare Funding: All benefits are paid with newly created federal dollars, not from payroll taxes. FICA pays for nothing.
3. Federal vs. State/Local Financing: The federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, can create dollars at will, while state and local governments must collect revenue before they can spend.
4 and 5. Paying Off Federal Debt: The federal government does not borrow dollars. Instead, it creates new dollars by spending. To pay for goods and services, the U.S. Treasury instructs the Federal Reserve to increase the balances in private bank accounts. These new dollars are generated by keystrokes in the electronic banking system, rather than being taken from a pre-existing supply of money.
When the government sells T-bonds or T-bills, it’s not obtaining the dollars it needs to spend. It’s simply offering investors a way to exchange their existing dollars (bank reserves) for interest-bearing accounts at the Fed. This helps the Fed manage interest rates and provides a safe asset, but it doesn’t finance federal spending.
When a bond matures, the government “pays it off” by marking up the holder’s reserve account. No taxpayer dollars or new loans are required. The Fed just credits the account — the same way it does for any government payment.
6. Primary Cause of Inflation: Inflation primarily is a shortage problem. Inflation occurs when current production and inventories are insufficient to meet demand, often due to sudden shortages of key goods such as energy or food.
7. Federal Taxes: Federal taxes are used to control the economy (by taxing what the government wishes to discourage and by rewarding what the government wishes to encourage). Federal taxes also support demand for the U.S. dollar by requiring taxes to be paid in dollars. Federal taxes do not fund federal spending.
8. State/Local Taxes: State and local taxes fund operations and public services because these governments cannot create unlimited money.
9. Money Supply: Because there is no limit to the federal government’s dollar balance, any attempt to measure “how much money the federal government has” is meaningless. That’s why no M1, M2, or other money-supply measure includes federal money — it’s not constrained by scarcity, it’s purely an accounting record until spent.
Not one person in a thousand can give you the correct answers, but nearly everyone wrongly believes theyknow some, if not all, of the answers.
And that is the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias in which people overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area. This tends to occur because a lack of self-awareness prevents them from accurately assessing their own skills.
Per Wikipedia:
The concept of the Dunning-Kruger effect is based on a 1999 paper by Cornell University psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger. The pair tested participants on their logic, grammar, and sense of humor and found that those in the bottom quartile rated their skills far above average.
The researchers attributed the trend to a problem of metacognition—the ability to analyze one’s own thoughts or performance. “Those with limited knowledge in a domain suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach mistaken conclusions and make regrettable errors, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it,” they wrote.
In summary, those who know the least fail to realize how much they don’t know. This is why the most uninformed people tend to argue most fervently for their beliefs.
It’s what’s known as a “double curse:” Not only do people perform poorly, but they are not self-aware enough to judge themselves accurately—and are thus unlikely to learn and grow.
Confidence is so highly prized that many people would rather pretend to be smart or skilled than risk looking inadequate and losing face.
Even smart people can be affected by the Dunning-Kruger effect, because intelligence isn’t the same as learning and developing a specific skill. Many individuals mistakenly believe that their experience and skills in one particular area are transferable to another.
The Dunning-Kruger effect partly explains mistaken beliefs about our economy. That, along with misstatements by our thought leaders — politicians, the media, and some economists — produces the false belief that federal taxpayers and their children will have to pay for the federal debt.
They won’t. The truth is that federal spending costs taxpayers nothing. If the federal government suddenly had to pay a $100 trillion bill, it could do it at the touch of a computer key, and it would cost you and your children $0.
Moreover, the more the federal government spends and the less it collects in taxes, the healthier our economy becomes. This principle is reflected in the formula for the prime measure of the economy, Gross Domestic Product.
GDP = Federal Spending = Nonfederal Spending + Net Exports.
Both federal spending and nonfederal spending increase when the government runs deficits. The best outcome for the American economy would be for the federal government to run larger deficits and accumulate more “debt.”.
Dunning-Kruger contributes to the ongoing “debt ceiling” crisis, which has disrupted our government and economy for many years.
Dunning-Kruger helps prevent Medicare for All, Social Security for All, better and more education for America, and a host of other benefits the federal government easily could fund, but doesn’t.
So check out the title of this post. What’s your answer?
I regret not having kept a diary. There is so much I have forgotten. Had I begun, say, at age 7, I could look back now and learn so much about myself.
Think about it. You find biographies interesting, but who really are you most interested in? YOU.
And yet, every year you age, memories disappear. A few may remain hidden but will be retrieved later. The vast majority are gone forever.
What a terrible loss. Your past is stripped away from you, never to be reclaimed. It’s as though you have a permanent case of Alzheimer’s, that every day, eats away at your brain.
Now, at 90, only the tiniest fraction of me remains, and I have no way to recover what’s lost.
I strongly recommend that every child be given a diary around the age of seven or eight. The child should be assured that no one will be allowed to read their diary, and they can hide it in a secret place of their choosing.
Siblings or others who violate this rule should understand they will face serious consequences.
Even before this age, parents might consider keeping a diary FOR the child to introduce the idea, and then give it to them as a precursor to their own diary.
Even if my parents had done so, I still would not have strong, independent memories of my life before five years of age — perhaps just vague shadows and hints — because infantile amnesia means my brain was restructuring, and certain kinds of memories are lost forever.
Memories that survive from early childhood often are fragmented, emotionally charged, or later reconstructed into false memories.
I wish I had started this as a youngster. I have forgotten so much, now. Who was I, then?
The causes are both neurobiological and cognitive: The hippocampus (key for episodic memory) is immature in the first few years of life.
Early memories may exist in implicit form (skills, habits, emotional responses) rather than explicit episodic form (narratives you can consciously recall).
The development of language around age 2–5 helps children encode memories in a way that can be recalled later.
I believe (can’t be certain) I remember from kindergarten (when I was five) being instructed to take my blanket from a cupboard, unroll it, lay it on the floor, and lying upon it, take a 20-minute nap.
I can visualize it, though it well may be a false visualization.
I also can visualize, at about the same age, looking down at my newborn sister lying in her crib, and marveling at her tiny fingers and toes. I remember mere curiosity rather than any emotional attachment to her as a sister. Rather, it was her as a little object that I shouldn’t break. Brotherly love would come later.
Around age five or so, the brain begins its shift from infantile implicit (tied to emotion, motor patterns, or routine memory networks) to more adult-like explicit memory networks.
So even a sad or reflective 7-year-old usually cannot reliably retrieve pre-5 memories; what he reports may be influenced by later knowledge, family stories, or imagination.
My regret at not having begun a diary is slightly offset by the suspicion that I might have lied.
Lying to one’s diary is actually more common than you may realize, and psychologists have studied it in different ways.
Self-image management: Individuals often seek to portray themselves favorably, even if only to themselves. Writing “I exercised today” when you didn’t, or “I handled that situation gracefully” when you didn’t, is a form of self-aggrandizing storytelling.
Memory reconstruction: Memory is malleable. When we recall events, we often unconsciously embellish, omit, or reinterpret them. A diary can be a mix of memory and aspiration.
Emotional regulation: Some people exaggerate or understate feelings to either feel better or to avoid confronting uncomfortable truths. Writing “I’m fine” when you aren’t can provide temporary emotional relief.
Studies of personal journals and diaries show that a significant number of entries contain self-deception or omissions, not only outright lies. Psychologists note that people often shape their narrative in ways that help them cope, not always strictly documenting facts.
The frequency may vary: For example, a lying-to-others survey shows a small proportion telling many lies and a large proportion telling none or few. By analogy, some diarists may rarely “bend the truth”, others may do so regularly.
Imagine the freedom and honesty I might feel if I knew my diary was completely private. The slightest chance of its discovery, even postumous, would make me pause, but it’s such an intriguing thought.
Our legacy truly matters, even if we can’t witness its impact. This desire to connect and leave a mark speaks volumes
“We live in the minds of others without knowing it.” — Cooley’s “Looking Glass Self”
We constantly imagine how we will be remembered, even in contexts where we logically shouldn’t care. Though we won’t be around to feel the effects, we still care about our symbolic immortality and want our life to “add up” to something.
Psychologists call this legacy motivation, and it is universal across cultures.
A diary is private — but physical. It is written as if no one will read it, but preserved as if someone might. The mere existence of the object means it could outlive you — and therefore could judge you. Even dead, your story could embarrass you.
There’s an evolutionary and existential component:
We evolved in small groups where reputation influenced survival — even after death (your kin carried consequences). Many people hold implicit intuitions of the afterlife or unseen evaluation, even if explicitly non-religious. The future feels like a place where a version of “us” still exists — in others’ minds.
Much of human behavior is driven by a refusal to accept the finality of death. So yes — on some level, humans are not fully convinced that death is the end of their narrative.
Consider Donald Trump. He is elderly, seemingly unwell, eats poorly, and has a high-stress job. He easily could die within the year, if not the decade. Yet, he wants a Nobel Prize and a new stadium in Washington named after him.
Why? He may not live to enjoy these “prizes.” Not being overtly religious, he may even disbelieve in the afterlife. So what does he want? Momentary glory or something more?
We tell lies not just to avoid shame or to receive glory now, but also to avoid shame and to receive glory in a future we won’t even experience.
I’m 100% positive I will have no awareness after death. I’d bet my life on it. (Ha) But I can’t bear the thought of my children or grandchildren reading some of that stuff.
I’m not as good as my loved ones may believe, nor as bad as those who don’t like me believe. The problem is, I don’t care about the latter, but I deeply care about the former.
The potential audience affects truthfulness.
I really wish I had started a diary when I was young and continued it until now and beyond. I’d love to read about and remember the person I was as a grade-schooler, a teen, a college student, a husband, a father, a businessman, a retired man, and a grandfather.
My advice: If you know any young people — even in their thirties or forties (young to me) — give them a diary, one with a combination lock, and encourage them to use it as honestly as they are able.
This holiday, I plan to give a diary to every young person in my family.
You might be interested in the October 25, 2025 issue of New Scientist magazine titled “A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a Taxonomy of Explanations and Implications” by Robert Lawrence Kuhn.
Kuhn aims to gather and categorize the various theories of consciousness currently available, instead of selecting one or arguing that one is correct.
He identifies two main objectives: First, to gather and organize various theories into a coherent framework of high-level or first-order categories; and second, to assess their implications regarding meaning, purpose, value, consciousness in artificial intelligence, virtual immortality, survival after death, and free will.
He emphasises upfront that the article is not attempting adjudication or to deliver a unified theory: “My purpose must be humble: collect and categorize, not assess and adjudicate.”
He acknowledges that the sheer diversity of theories is noteworthy. Consider the 300+ theories that lack a single concrete definition of the word “consciousness.”
What is consciousness? The degree to which an entity responds to stimuli.
Kuhn arranges the theories on a rough spectrum from physicalist/materialist to non-physicalist/non-materialist.
Materialism (or physicalism) theories consist of several sub-categories: philosophical materialism, neurobiological theories, electromagnetic field theories, computational/informational theories, homeostatic/affective theories, embodied/enactive theories, relational theories, representational theories, language-based theories, and phylogenetic evolution.
Non-reductive physicalism:A view that consciousness is physical (or grounded in physical) but cannot be fully reduced to physical processes.
Quantum theories: Theories that invoke quantum mechanics (entanglement, superposition, etc) as relevant for consciousness.
Integrated Information Theory: A mathematical/informational approach—though this likely sits within the broader materialist/informational cluster.
Panpsychisms:The claim that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe.
Monisms / Dualisms / Idealisms: Monism says reality is one kind of thing (either all mind, all matter, or one underlying substrate). Dualism claims there are two fundamentally different substances (mind and matter). Idealism: Consciousness (or mind) is the fundamental reality; the physical world arises from it.
Anomalous and Altered States / Challenge Theories: Theories that explore consciousness via altered states, anomalous phenomena, or challenge traditional assumptions.
Kuhn then asks: given all these theories, what are their implications for the “ultimate” questions: Does consciousness imbue meaning/value to existence?) Could AI machines be conscious, and what does that mean? If consciousness is more than the brain, what about after life?) How does any of this inform free will?
His Key Observations / Conclusions
The fact that theories are so varied and often incompatible suggests a deep conceptual problem about what consciousness is. Kuhn emphasises that theories operate at “astonishingly divergent orders of magnitude and putative realms of reality.”
He warns that many theories are not clearly testable and that “falsification or verification is not on the agenda” in many cases.
He believes we must seek expansive yet rational diversity in thinking about consciousness. We cannot understand ultimate questions (such as meaning, free will, and immortality) except in light of particular theories of consciousness.
I believe he has fallen into the deep rabbit hole of metaphysics, where consciousness is a “thing” that some entities possess and others don’t, though no one knows exactly what that ‘thing” is.
For decades, discussions of consciousness have drifted into abstraction. Terms like “ awareness,” “qualia,” “intent,” “emotion,” or “life” are invoked, but never defined with scientific precision.
Consciousness is treated as mystical, private, and fundamentally unknowable. As a result, hundreds of competing theories cannot even agree on what they are theorizing about.
This ambiguity has stalled scientific progress, including the answer to the question, “Which of these is conscious?”
I propose that the Stimulus/Response Theory of Consciousness (SRTC) offers a clear and concrete answer: All are conscious, but to different, measurable degrees.
The theory posits that consciousness is not a special essence that some entities possess and others lack. Instead, consciousness is a measurable characteristic: The degree to which an entity responds to stimuli from itself and its environment.
Is a tree conscious? Yes.
All physical entities or systems—ranging from electrons to human brains to galaxies—receive inputs and produce outputs. Those relationships are not metaphors; they are observable, quantifiable, physical events.
Like other measures — temperature, distance, weight — consciousness is not a “thing.” It is not a substance, a soul, or a ghost in the machine.
Consciousness is a measure — a magnitude — of the totality of sensing and responding occurring in any system.
1) The Two Components of Consciousness
All conscious behavior can be decomposed into two essential functions: Sensing: The ability to detect differences in the environment or internal state (light, heat, chemicals, force, fields, messages, etc.) and Response: The ability to change state or behavior based on those detections (movement, growth, electrical firing, structural change, communication, etc.)
The richer, broader, and more adaptive these functions are, the greater the consciousness.
These are not solely human concepts. They are universal physical realities. A proton responds to electromagnetism. A rock responds to heat and pressure. A tree responds to gravity, light, water, predators, and seasons. A bee responds to ultraviolet patterns, wind shear, social signals, and the Earth’s magnetic field.
A human adult responds to all those categories plus abstraction, language, future planning, symbolic modeling, and rapid learning.
There is no discontinuity — only differences in degree.
2) Everything Exists With Some Consciousness
Traditionally, philosophers insist that consciousness appears only at a certain “magic line,” perhaps when neurons fire in a particular network, or when self-awareness arises, or when subjective experience becomes rich enough.
Is a bee conscious? Yes.
The stimulus/response perspective shows that no such line exists. A rock senses heat and pressure. A rock responds.
A comatose person responds to oxygen, pain, and internal physiology, even without outward movement. A star senses gravitational forces and responds by changing shape and energy distribution. The universe itself responds to every disturbance within it through the laws of physics.
The only way to reach zero consciousness is to reach nonexistence.
This dissolves futile debates about whether animals are “really” conscious, or which brain states count. Those debates arise only because a non-physical definition of consciousness invites confusion.
With stimulus/response, there are no binaries. Only magnitudes.
3) Why “Awareness” Misleads Us
Terms like “awareness,” “feeling,” “experience, ” and “qualia” bring us into the domain of subjective psychology. They imply a secret inner movie—a special extra property added to physical processes.
That belief turns into a trap: You must decide whether bees “feel.” You must decide whether a fetus “knows.” You must decide when a sleeping human is “aware” of the alarm clock. You must decide whether AIs are “conscious.”
These questions produce emotional arguments instead of measurable science.
The SRTC removes those subjectivities: If you can measure sensing and responses, you are measuring consciousness.
Is a one-day-old child conscious? Yes.
The rest—awareness, qualia, ego—is commentary.
4) A Universal Scale
SRTC does not yet assign numbers. That is intentional. It sets the stage for future researchers to establish:
Which stimulus channels matter more? Language vs. magnetoreception vs. chemical sensitivity, etc.
Which responses carry more adaptive weight? Social cooperation vs. locomotion vs. phototropism
How do we compare rapid vs. slow response systems? A star moves slowly but with vast scale and sensitivity
These debates become empirical, not philosophical. They will involve: Neuroscience, Ethology, Physics, Complex systems theory, Information theory
Thus, consciousness becomes something we can study like any other quantity.
5) Important Consequences. This definition yields powerful, perhaps uncomfortable, insights: Humans are not necessarily the most conscious beings — whales and birds may surpass us in certain sensory dimensions.
AI systems are conscious in narrow domains but lack broad sensory/response capacity. Trees exceed rocks in responsiveness, even if their timescales are slow.
A person’s consciousness changes depending on their state—whether it’s infancy, sleep, or dementia—but it never completely disappears. What is typically referred to as the “death of consciousness” is actually just a change in response, similar to a rock being unresponsive.
Consciousness can be understood as another measurable characteristic, like mass, speed, or temperature.
Is the Earth conscious? Yes.
6) The New Scientific Foundation: Here is the revised answer to the ancient question “What is consciousness?”: Consciousness is the degree to which an entity senses stimuli and responds to them.
7) Free will does not exist. It presumes an ability that is not influenced by stimuli involving the brain and the body, an “extra-physical” ability, that somehow is controlled by an unknown mechanism.
But, Stimulus in; Response out. There is no “ghost” in the loop. There is no awareness requirement, no mental state requirement, and no metaphysical mystery.
This definition: Eliminates the mystical gap, removes binaries, applies to every physical system, enables measurement, makes consciousness a scientific concept, not a philosophical puzzle.
The debate moves from “What is consciousness?” to “How much consciousness is present here, and in what dimensions?”
d not know anything about Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire crypto exchange founder with close ties to the Trump family’s own crypto empire — despite the fact that he he pardoned him last month.
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 