A man who has never healed from his childhood trauma

I finished the book This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin. The book is very much a brain science book, written for the layman. It starts with how the brain processes the signals it gets from the ears and goes from there. Some of the things the author discusses: Air pressure fluctuations stimulate hairs in the inner ear with each hair triggering at a particular frequency. So the brain has to reconstruct all those frequency signals into the sound of a flute or trumpet or piano or drum. When both a flute and trumpet playing how does it decide these frequencies belong to the flute and those to the trumpet? By age five hearing kids have absorbed the structures of the music of their culture. They may not know the names musicians apply to these structures (keys, chords, phrases, and all the rest), but they understand when something fits the structure and when it does not. Kids a bit older are able to tell this piece of music fits these structures (hip hop), and that piece fits those structures (church hymns). A great deal of listening to music is creating expectations of what comes next according to the structures we’ve internalized. We are intrigued when a composer defies those expectations. Great composers balance expectation confirmation and defiance in interesting ways. People with “perfect pitch” are able to hear a pitch and identify the letter name associated with it. But a lot of people, maybe a large majority, have good pitch memory, just missing the piece of assigning the letter name. Levitin told of a study in which he asked non musicians to sing their favorite song. Most sang it close to the pitch of the original recorded singer and at the same tempo. The cerebellum is the old part of the brain, the “lizard brain.” It is the brain’s timekeeper – otherwise we wouldn’t be able to walk. It is also the place of emotions – if it wasn’t we wouldn’t react to fear fast enough. This is where music and emotions come together. Is music an evolutionary adaptation or an evolutionary byproduct of some other adaptation. The author says it is the first one. Otherwise it would have died out by now. What has kept music a part of human experience for well over 50 thousand years is its use in building community and in courtship. Only in the last 500 years have we turned music into something where people listen to experts. Before then practically everyone in the community was involved in creating music or dancing to it. As for courtship, teens are the ones most eager to form bands, and rock stars sure attract groupies. I found it fascinating. Walter Einenkel of Daily Kos reported the conspiracy theories around Taylor Swift being a part of defense psyops (which I’ve written about) are getting so strong the Department of Defense issued a denial.

Department spokesperson Sabrina Singh told Politico, “We know all too well the dangers of conspiracy theories, so to set the record straight—Taylor Swift is not part of a DOD psychological operation. Period.”

I can imagine some of those believing that theory saying: Since Swift is part of a secret operation (so secret they claim even Swift isn’t aware of it) of course they’re going to deny it! Once some of these theories get going attempts to refute them will have zero effect. Rich Snowdon of the Kos community wrote a short post:

Whenever I hear MAGAs claim they love Trump, I want to say… If you really loved him, you’d gather a group and go do an intervention. Because this is a man who has never healed from his childhood trauma. And who brags compulsively but never feels worthy. And who sucks attention from the whole world but it’s never enough. And who will die without ever having one true friend. And… Are you okay with this?

Commenter niemann, who is a therapist, wrote that when people are strong narcissists they can’t be helped. Their narcissism won’t let them. I add: I don’t think MAGA people love the nasty guy. Instead, they love what he intends to do with his narcissism. Which means they won’t do an intervention. Commenter jds1978 suggests it is the nasty guy followers that need the intervention. Charles Jay of the Kos community wrote about the nasty guy’s claim that he has legal immunity for things he did while in the Oval Office. Jay noted Rolling Stone reported he and his allies are plotting to give presidents a legal shield for life. If he wins in 2024. Jay listed a few leaders of democratic countries that have been convicted of crimes, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi being one of them. There is also Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who tried to jigger the legal system to get immunity, which prompted massive protests. There are at least two world leaders who do have life immunity. One of them is Putin who got the Duma to legislate it back in 2020. That prompted opposition leader Alexey Navalny to tweet, “Why does Putin need an immunity law now?” The rationale for Putin’s immunity seems to be the same one the nasty guy has given. What if he does something his successor doesn’t like and prosecutes him for it? The other with lifetime immunity, as of last month, is President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus. He’s been in power for almost 30 years. This law also gives immunity to his family and bans opposition leaders not living in Belarus from running in future elections. Do we want to be like Russia and Belarus? No need to answer – I’m well aware many Americans do want that. Mark Sumner of Kos reported another development in the case of the nasty guy storing classified documents in his Mar-a-Lago estate. There were two rooms the FBI did not search. Special Counsel Jack Smith knows about them because of testimony from witnesses. One is a closet. Workers at the estate were surprised when the nasty guy had the locks on the closet changed and that he, not the Secret Service, kept the key. The FBI decided it wasn’t worth breaking the door. The other is accessed through a door in his bedroom that is behind a dresser and TV. Not surprising the FBI missed it. It might be a wiring closet for the TV that has a lot more in it. Smith does not know what is in these rooms. And if the FBI goes back to search those rooms it is quite likely the contents have been moved. Jay reported on the travails of Rudy Giuliani, now in bankruptcy court. As part of bankruptcy proceedings Giuliani is required to list is assets and debts. In the assets column is “possible claim for unpaid legal fees against Donald J. Trump.”

Last summer, CNN reported that Giuliani and his then-attorney Robert Costello traveled to Mar-a-Lago “to make a personal and desperate appeal” to Trump to pay legal bills amounting to seven figures. And now it seems the student has become the master as Costello and his firm have since sued Giuliani for $1.4 million in unpaid legal bills.

All that Giuliani did for the nasty guy after the 2020 election and all he has to show for it is an unpaid bill and lawsuits. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community discussed an article in Politico saying the nasty guy’s campaign has spent more than $50 million on legal fees in 2023. Those legal fees don’t look to be incurred by what the campaign did, but by what the man did. Meaning his campaign donors are paying his legal expenses for his crimes. Which makes a bit of sense – his legal difficulties are his most reliable fundraiser. He had his biggest fundraising day the day after he was indicted in Atlanta and his mug shot was plastered over all sorts of campaign merch. However, it does explain why his campaign is not doing campaign rallies free to attendees. The rallies being done now are put on by Republican state parties and the audience must purchase tickets. The nasty guy is not the only one with cash problems. The entire Republican party does too. Kerry Eleveld of Kos has details of how much the money is not rolling in. Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel is the reason:

But The Bulwark's Tim Miller broadened the lens on RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel's disastrous leadership of the organization. "It’s pretty astonishing that they have stuck with Ronna for over a half decade despite the fact that she has failed on every possible metric: electoral, moral, public relations, fundraising," Miller observed. McDaniel has failed by nearly every metric but one: Her Donald Trump sycophancy is on point, and that's all that really matters in today's Republican Party.

To finish off the story Eleveld discussed how well Biden’s fundraising is doing. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote about Republicans linking aid to Ukraine with reform at the southern border. But that border bill, now close to ready, seems to be put on hold because the nasty guy wants immigration as a campaign issue. So are Republicans using the holdup in the border bill as an excuse to deny aid to Ukraine? Some are beginning to talk about going back to approve the aid package. Though if Speaker Johnson does a few on the far right consider that a reason for triggering his ouster. Johnson could sidestep the issue and allow Democrats, with Johnson’s tacit permission for a few Republicans to join them, to present Ukrainian aid in a discharge petition that requires a floor vote, bypassing committees. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted several people discussing how good the economy is. He included a tweet by Mike Walker with a link to an article on Mediaite. A blurb from the article says:

Fox News commentator Dagen McDowell warned Republicans not to run on the economy in the upcoming election because “it’s good” right now.

Dworkin also quoted an article on CNN that reported that senior House Republicans are realizing their efforts to impeach Biden probably won’t go anywhere. Too many think impeaching in an election year to be too politically perilous. There are maybe 20 House Republicans who are not convinced there is evidence for impeachment. That’s in a House with a two-vote margin. How good is the economy? Sumner reported Fox News says it’s good.