Who would have guessed it? The pundits, just about all of them, have gotten it wrong again. I believed them the first time: I told my nephew, Ranjit, who looked a little nervous on that fateful night when the election results started to come in, "Stop worrying, Ranji--Americans could never elect a man like that." Stop worrying, indeed.
The pundits were wrong, the polls were wrong, and I, who read and listened to what they had to say, was wrong as well.
This time I'm not going along with them. They still don't know who Donald Trump is. They think he's an unqualified--they've got that right--demagogue--they've got that right as well--who, nevertheless, is ready to do what he says he will do, namely, to fight like hell for the working-class, especially the white working-class. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
The real Trump is transparent as the notoriously ambiguous Delphic Oracle. A famous example was its response when asked whether the Greeks or the Romans would win the Trojan war. (I could not find the Latin quote, so I am translating what I remember to be the English version back into Latin. If anyone knows the Latin quote, please let me know!) The oracle's revelation is as follows: Dico Troianos Danaos vincerunt. "I say that the Trojans will defeat the Greeks." But this could also mean, "I say that the Greeks will defeat the Trojans!" (Troianaos is in the accusative case since it follows "dico" and either Troianos or Danaos can be the subject of the dependent clause, since Latin, as an inflected language, has much freedom regarding word order.)
Thus, the oracle was more than ambiguous, it was meaningless. Similarly, one can't be certain if Trump believes anything he says. The one thing we can be certain about Trump is that he is a pathological narcissist. He needs praise like frogs need water. He will say just about anything to get it. He's like a stand-up comedian who feels like he's in heaven when he delights the audience, and feels like he's in hell when he flops. Another thing about Trump: he can accept criticism as readily as a fly, if it could think, would accept an invitation to play trampoline upon a spider's web.
I give but one example. During the Golden Globe Awards, Meryl Streep said that Trump's mockery of a handicapped journalist "broke her heart." Trump replied--how else--with a tweet:
Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn't know me but attacked me last night at the Golden Globes. She is a Hillary flunky who lost big. For the 100th time, I never "mocked" a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him "groveling" when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media.
(Ugh! What ugly writing!)
Do you doubt that his response would have been very different if Meryl Streep had praised him? If you do, you're like the pundits who try to give meaning to the meaningless. Trump reminds me of a toddler throwing a fit when his brother gets two cookies when he only gets one. If his brother, however, gave the two cookies to him, the toddler's pouty lips would turn into a drooling smile in an instant. Whatever Trump says is merely a means to get praise; change the audience and Trump's "message" will change accordingly.
(This, by the way, is what Trump said about Streep in 2015: "Meryl Streep is excellent; she is a fine person, too.")
If sparrows were in power, he would tweet wildly in their favor, and beam with delight when they all tweeted back their admiration. If they weren't important, he'd be trying to wildly empower stray cats.
Donald Trump, to put it mildly, had never been an advocate for the working class before he ran for president. He associated throughout his career with whites like those he appointed for his cabinet, rather than like the disgruntled rural whites who imagine he means what he says.
How can one tweet for the poor tweety birds with a cabinet full of rich vultures?
Trump reminds me of a comedian who gets into trouble for having made an ethnic slur. "I was just trying to be funny. I love and support (lesbian, gays, or whoever he had insulted). If I offended anyone, I apologize. Still love me, still love me--please!" Yes, Trump is more like a narcissistic comedian rather than like a politician. He delivers what his audience wants to hear with true mastery. " I just needed to get my cheers and claps"--yes, but in Trump's case the jokes are on us.
An example of one of those jokes-on-us is the following excerpt from his acceptance speech:
Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of the nation, an educational system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge and the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have taken too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and right now.
A wildly inaccurate clown's-eye view of America! "Let the toddler rant," the Republicans must be saying to themselves. "We control both Houses and we have a very different agenda."
Yet the pundits continue to analyze such statements as if there were content behind them. For instance, this is what Gail Collins wrote in response to his inaugural speech (New York Times, January 21, 2017):
He still appears to think that all poor neighborhoods are terror zones and public schools are something out of "Oliver Twist."
Here is a quote from the Times editorial from the same date:
The new president offered a tortured rewrite of American history...
Liberal journalists and TV pundits have been providing analyses in the same vein for some time. They are wrong.
Here's what I believe is the real reason why Trump has such a dystopian view of America: if, in your own myth, you must be a savior, the people you are to save must first be in grave danger. If they're not really in gave danger, well, make it up.
If you want to be known as the liberator of birds, it helps to put them in cages first.
Trump, I say again, is a pathological narcissist. A better adjective that applies to him, instead of misguided, ignorant, racist, misogynist is, well, crazy.
According to a Russian proverb, a wise man has long ears, big eyes and a short tongue. That does not describe the person whom we elected to the highest office of the most powerful country in the world. One that does: a narcissist is deaf to words of wisdom, blind to insight, has a big mouth and has, in Trump's case, small hands as well. Without cheers, he disappears. I hope it won't take too long before the white working-class figures out that they've been had. Until then, there is a very good chance that Trump will do considerable damage to democracy, to the United States, and to the world.
We're in for a wild ride indeed.
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