November 8, 2016, the date during which American citizens decided who would be their next president, was, at least in Baltimore where I live, a wonderfully crisp fall day. Several hours after I voted, as the results were starting to come in, I noticed that two of the three of us gathered before the LCD screen—my wife, Nirmala, and my nephew, Ranji--looked a little nervous. I, however, remained calm. “Hillary will definitely win, don’t worry—The American people will not elect a pathological narcissist with non-existent impulse control and with very little to offer, other than hyperbole and populist blather."
That's a quote from a blog essay entitled "Small Hands Blues," which I wrote directly after Trump had been elected president.
I knew his number even then. After the nation's disastrous selection, I didn't expect him to "grow into the job," as several pundits predicted. I expected a mess, and that's what we got.
https://thomasdorsett.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-small-hands-blues.html
Up until the Covid epidemic, Trump enjoyed what I call the "luck of the non-Irish"--a fortunate outcome of a throw of the dice by the chilly hands of entropy. But entropy asserts that nothing lasts; winter must come, even to fools, and so it did.
I also predicted in the blog that the white working-class, who had a right to be angry but were angry for the wrong reasons, by the time Trump's term was up, would realize that they'd been duped and would see the land of the free beyond the Trumpian pig-iron fence. This is beginning to happen, thanks to the increasing manifestations of incompetence and malevolence on the part of our president, but I expected a stampede of raging whites, rather than relatively small groups of cattle transformed back into human beings by a repentant Circe.
The Mad Red Hatter's luck has run out. During the first three years, the Union was in relatively good shape, no thanks to him. (His sole achievement during this time was a tax cut that outrageously benefited the wealthy.) Then came the Covid epidemic. (How many persons would still be alive today, (138,000 dead as of 7/17/2020), if it weren't for Trump's incompetence? Thousands!)
The liar headed the birther movement for five years before he was elected. Some 17,000 lies later, Trump, leading us into the valley of the shadow of death, still claims we should fear no evil and proceed.
He wants the nation to get back to work for the sole purpose of getting himself reelected. (He refuses to wear a mask, like an overweight angel of death.)
I knew he was mentally ill from the very beginning. The pathological narcissist whom we elected--intellectually limited, incurious, racist, misogynistic, self-centered and viciously mean has behaved abominably, just as one should have expected.
Last night, I listened to Rachel Maddow's interview of Mary Trump, whose book excoriating her uncle has just been published. Maddow asked Trump's niece if she had ever heard him use the "n" word and/or antisemitic slurs. Mary Trump looked surprised. "Yes, of course," she replied. Maddow looked very serious, as if she had brought something very hidden to light.
The man who headed the birther movement; the man who wanted the Central Park Five to be executed; the man who thought the latter group of black and Latino men shouldn't be released from prison, even after, many years later, they had been found to be innocent; the man who ordered families to be separated at the border; the man who said that there were fine people on both sides after white supremacists marched on Charlottesville, etc; should we be surprised that such a man used racial epithets in private? If Mary Trump said that she never heard a racial slur come out of her uncle's mouth, I would instinctively know that she was not telling the truth.
C'mon, Rachel Maddow.
(It would be different if, say, President Obama, in a purloined recording, had declared himself to be a Holocaust denier. A lot different.)
What annoys me about many pundits is that they act surprised or outraged when Trump, a bad man, behaves badly. I suppose that's how they earn their money.
Another thing that annoys me about pundits: when Trump talks nonsense, they try to parse his statements as if he really believed what he said. For instance, Trump claimed recently that experts have been exaggerating the severity of the Covid epidemic, and that "99% of the time" the infection was harmless. As if this ignorant man were capable of making a scientific statement! Trump meant nothing more than"a whole lot" by his designation of "99%". Pointing out that "99%" was way off the mark is like taking a little braggart kid seriously when he claims his big braggart dad is the richest person in the world.
Taking this evil Pinocchio in the White House seriously as if he were a real boy instead of a crazy man is, I guess, how pundits make their money. To keep sane, I limit my exposure to them.
As I wrote in my 2016 blog, I had told my nephew, on the eve of the election, not to worry; America would never choose him. Yet we did. I am now a lot less sanguine about our democracy than I was in 2016. Mary Trump read my thoughts when she stated that if The Orange Impostor wins again, the American experiment would probably be over. We can't let that happen!
Or can we?
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