What is it like to be a goldfish?

I’m not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything. I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out and take it easy. I mean that’s all I told D.B. about, and he’s my brother and all. He’s in Hollywood. That isn’t too far from this crumby place, and he comes over and visits me practically every weekend. He’s going to drive me home when I go home next month maybe. He just got a Jaguar. One of those little English jobs that can do around two hundred miles an hour. It cost him damn near four thousand bucks. He’s got a lot of dough, now. He didn’t use to. He used to be just a regular writer, when he was home. He wrote this terrific book of short stories, The Secret Goldfish, in case you never heard of him. The best one in it was ‘The Secret Goldfish.” It was about this little kid that wouldn’t let anybody look at his goldfish because he’d bought it with his own money. It killed me. Now he’s out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the movies. Don’t even mention them to me.

Commenter Cheerfull flags this very interesting tweet storm from Vox’s Dave Roberts, which puts forth the theory that Donald Trump isn’t really a person in a robust sense of that word, but rather a biological entity that reacts stereotypically and impulsively to stimuli, more or less like a goldfish.

It’s a radical theory and I don’t really buy it, or rather I think it’s probably (!) overstated, but it’s a sign ‘o the times that a theory that the president of the United States’s mental life is indistinguishable from that of a goldfish has a certain plausibility.

Anyway, what exactly is wrong with Trump?  There’s been endless speculation that he suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and/or that he’s a sociopath, and/or that he’s in the early stages of senile dementia.  All these claims seem, again, somewhat to very plausible.  Of course it’s possible that this is all over-interpretation, including, ironically, Roberts’ purported meta-interpretation of the other forms of over-interpretation he says are going on, and that Trump is merely a very evil and very stupid man, who has ended up as the most powerful politician in the world because of the Wisdom of the Framers, with James Comey and Vladimir Putin assisting on the own goal.

I guess we’re going to find out, maybe.

Update

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump

Russia must be laughing up their sleeves watching as the U.S. tears itself apart over a Democrat EXCUSE for losing the election.