If the media wrote stories about *a rabid bear* the way they write about Trump:

“According to some, Mr. Bear is prone to interrupting gatherings with, at times, heated outbursts. An attendee at a recent picnic Mr. Bear attended without invitation called it ‘unsettling’.”

1/

It. Is. A. Rabid. Freaking. Bear.

That’s actually the story.

Trump is a debilitated narcissist.

That’s the actual story.

2/

Burying the actual *reason* for the behavior and instead perpetually documenting the array of behaviors it produces is ridiculous at this point.

Just today, there was a piece in WaPo that bent over backwards to NOT come out and say that Trump’s is a severe narcissist.

3/

Instead, they danced around his pathological inability to accept criticism, adapt, and make rational decisions based on new information.

4/

Instead, they danced around his sociopathic inability to care about even mass deaths unless it directly impacts him.

5/

Instead, they danced around the fact that his toddler-like ego demands constant gratification so completely that it has produced a wholly dysfunctional White House that exists to please him even by lying about A PANDEMIC.

6/

And *even now* with Mary Trump’s book sitting in the public sphere as a useful proxy for calling out Trump’s pathology, they invoked the book only to <smashes head on desk> suggest maybe Trump is just too into the whole *positive thinking* thing.

JFC.

7/

I understand that there are limits on how the media can discuss Trump’s psychology and mental state.

But...

The yogic pretzeling of stories to NOT talk about it is not only a disservice; it is complicity at this point.

8/

Describing Trump’s behavior du jour as if it is just anomaly and quirk and personality is like that post way up above about a rabid bear described as anything BUT a rabid bear.

Trump’s behavior is patterned and compulsive.

That’s the story.

9/

Pretending it isn’t at this point isn’t just ignoring the story; it is perpetrating a fiction.

Pretending how he acts tomorrow will somehow be new anecdotes rather than consistent with an inescapable pattern is a media-assisted fraud.

10/

Want to do a better job, media?

1) Point out the patterns in Trump’s behavior in EVERY story.

2) Tap psychological experts to say the things you can’t.

3) Absolutely *do not* diminish the grave danger of Trump’s narcissistic syndrome of behaviors

11/

And that means putting an immediate end to stories like the one quoted repeatedly above where journalists describe a rabid bear while making that deliberately opaque.

It has become a fraud in and of itself.

12/

Trump’s behavior is disordered.

It isn’t complicated. It will not improve.

It is time for the media to start pointing out that the bear is, in fact, very much rabid.

We cannot afford any more of the soft dishonesty of roundaboutism.

The story is the rabid bear. Tell it.
13/13