Even on the heels of his announcement that he would not seek the presidency, Michael Avenatti stayed glued to Twitter, insisting that only a fighter like himself has a chance against the President in 2020.
To those who say the Dems do not need a fighter to beat Trump, they need just the opposite, I ask this: When is the last time a kid avoided getting his butt kicked by a bully by citing poetry? The party may not like it, but they will lose without a fighter.
— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) December 5, 2018
It’s like taking a close relative to be committed to a mental institution, and hearing them ranting away as you leave about how wrong everyone is about everything and they’ll be sorry and they’ll etc. etc. etc. It’s not that bad because he’s just kind of a self-regarding jerk, not an insane relative. But it’s that same sense of sad futility about how wrong people can go when they start getting lost in their delusions.
This is the trap of the so-called “alpha male.” It’s somewhat different than Trump’s delusions; Trump is not a real “alpha male,” he is more like a pick up artist. The difference is a PUA goes to a bar and pretends to be a doctor or a lawyer so he can get his one night stand, an alpha male actually is a doctor or a lawyer or has some other social dominance and he uses that to his advantage to get his one night stand. Trump is a PUA bullshitter; Avenatti is (was) a legit alpha male, for what it’s worth.
The trap is sprung when the alpha male starts buying his own sales pitch. This is what happened to M.A. I believe. When you believe your own press releases, you can no longer evaluate your reality objectively, and you start making stupid decisions. Because you believe you are invincible, you are bullet-proof. A little humility goes a long way in the development of wisdom. This is why pride is one of the seven deadly sins. It’s not just because prideful people are assholes, but because of the negative impact it has on the prideful person. Pride goeth before the fall.
There was a comment by Bill Brown in Frank Bruni’s opinion article titled “What Kind of Democrat Can Beat Trump in 2020?”
He said a few of things that I’ve thought about for a while:
I’m not 100% behind everything he wrote.That said, he did make some very good points. There were a lot of good comments in that article. I agreed with much of the most liked comment by Edward also. But with the exception that I think the ACA was a good pursuit for Obama. However, it should have been dropped when it became clear it was more of a Tom Daschle and the drug and insurance industry creation than Obama’s. Instead, I think if we had passed a law like Canada has about it being illegal to lie and mislead in the media while we had the votes to push it through, we would be a better country today.
Dropped? What would we be pointing to as worth defending now? It may not have been the ideal but it got a lot of people insured. And who decides what’s misleading and a lie? That doesn’t seem workable in a society with a First Amendment.
Hillary did beat him and that was before all the shit really hit the fan.