Apprehending coherence implies neither approbation nor disapproval.Brian Peacock wrote:We are so conditioned to expect coherence from a reputedly sane person's speech that we, somewhat charitably perhaps, compile a kind of meaning from the scattered shards of his utterances that was neither intended or there to begin with. Perhaps this is like Trump's superpower - forcing others to generate meaning on his behalf?Hermit wrote:I'd call his speaking style the verbal equivalent of stream-of-consciousness or interior monologue. Rather revealing way to communicate, especially for shrinks.
I'm a bit worried about myself for easily apprehending a coherent thread in what Trump said in the above excerpt. It is not difficult to "translate" it into something that sounds quite conventional and coherent by stripping the idiosyncrasies out, though it'll still be somewhat meandering in content.
Speaking for myself, the coherency in Trump's extemporisations is similar to the logic underlying the sequence of thoughts and actions of a seriously neurotic and psychotic individual. The behaviour of people we colloquially label as insane is no more random than the behaviour of people who speak and act more conventionally.
If you keep in mind that Trump is, above else, narcissistic and that he very likely regards The Art of the Deal as the most convincing proof of his genius, then every seemingly disconnected sentence in the excerpt you quoted falls into a logically coherent whole.
That includes the reference to prisoners if I am correct in assuming he is alluding to the prisoners' dilemma, but not getting the details right. He never cared about getting the details right. I bet that if you asked him: "Why did you say 15,000 people attended your rally when everybody knows the stadium can accommodate a maximum of 10,000?" he'll wave your question away as an utter irrelevance with: "Why do you keep bringing up what I actually say, when you bloody well know what I mean." Like Humpty Dumpty, Trump makes a word do a lot of work, and it turned out to be a winning strategy in this election.
