I'm not American, but is there really two sides to consider when one calls a US election stolen and has started to replace military officials? I call that an attempt at a coup.
Here's what I know: I have lots of family and some friends on the right. And as confusing and frustrating as the past four years have been, I continue to believe that most of them are good people. I have the ability to mentally frame things in such a way that I can see where they're coming from, how they slipped down this slope, why they think Trump really is their last hope. The reality of the situation - and all of the things that really are very wrong with it - is extremely complicated. But labeling all conservatives as nazis is not only wildly inaccurate, it further marginalizes people and pushes them towards more and more ethical compromises that they feel are necessary to ensure the continuation of their way of life. Nazis exist, and they do tend to align themselves with the right, but treating them as representative of the whole is a gross oversimplification that we can't afford to be making.
Is this a professional diagnosis? Do you know him personally?
Or is this a projection? It sounds an awful lot like projection. Your post does this a lot about a lot of people...
It may be correct. It may not. But it doesn’t help your case to play Freud on, what is in your case, pixels on a screen.
You can’t seriously call someone a “petulant child” unless you’ve actually interacted with the person. This is a 74 year old whose best-known expertise is in constructing artificial personas to better negotiate deals. Think about that. He’s not your father.
The commonly accepted term is “loose cannon”. It skips the psychoanalytic overhead very few people are in the position to do. You say “loose cannon” and, for a large group of people the situation, and how to mitigate it, comes into better focus.
I’m sure your family and friends are delighted that you continue to think they are good people. And it is noble of you to have developed the ability to frame things in such a way as to not reflexively demonize those who disagree on this matter. But edit before you post.
"Why is Trump making these controversial staffing changes now? No one knows for sure, but it’s probably not as sinister as some fear. When the resignations and appointments were announced, some worried that a sinister plot was afoot — that Trump loyalists were “burrowing” into the Defense Department so they couldn’t be removed when Biden takes office, or that there was some sort of coverup going on, or even that Trump was setting the stage for a coup. But experts I spoke to doubt those explanations, and suspect what’s really going on is that Trump finally had an opening to clean house at the Pentagon with the election now over, and that he’s putting in people more amenable to his wishes in order to finally accomplish some of the policies the Esper-led Pentagon had pushed back on — such as withdrawing all remaining US troops from Afghanistan before Christmas."
https://www.vox.com/21560260/trump-pentagon-defense-secretar...
Yes, there are other sides to consider. There always are. Now you decide how reasonable they are--but you cannot skip taking the time to understand the other side.
People said the same thing about a coup when he was first elected, when characters like Steve Bannon were in the White House whispering in his ear. At peak Trumpism across the country, before his approval rating started going down, that probably would have been a better time to do such a thing if it were going to happen. And yet... it just didn't. Lots of callous and shortsighted and regressive policy-making ensued, to be sure, but nothing like a coup.
Tldr: it's the media
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/526362-trump-orders-penta...