Current events remind me of a biblical story, contained in Kings 3 16-28. Two women claim to be the mother of the same child. They both had given birth; one infant, however, died. One mother asserts that the other woman's child died from suffocation, having been 'overlaid' by her during the night. She is accused of switching the infants while the other woman slept. The latter wakes up with a dead child at her breast; she recognizes that it isn't hers; she realizes she's been tricked. They both come before King Solomon to decide which woman is the real mother. He threatens to cut the living child in half with a sword, then give each one half. One agrees; the other says let the child live, even if she will not be able to raise it. The King realizes that the second woman is the true mother, for no one with sound parental instincts would ever allow her child to be killed, even though she would have to give it up. This folk tale is a traditional illustration of the wisdom of King Solomon.
How different is the behavior of would-be King Donald! He continues to divide the country with his little hands on his imaginary sword; the only thing that matters to him is the continuation of would-be King's Donald's autocratic regime.
Trump was deaf to the ultimate cry of George Floyd, "I can't breathe!" He is equally deaf to similar cries of his countrymen, men and women of all races dying from Covid across the country. Instead of doing his best to help his fellow citizens, he continues to assert that the figurative angels of death plaguing the country do not figuratively exist. According to him, he is America, and America must come first.
It is said, by experts, that if King Donald stopped tearing the country apart, admitted defeat, and permitted President-elect Biden to gain necessary access to data to combat the virus better, many thousands of lives would be saved. His bungling of the epidemic has already caused thousands of lives; King Donald continues to kill.
I'm not surprised. In many of the political blogs I've written, beginning the day after his election in 2016, ("Small Hands Blues," November, 2016), I have asserted that King Donald is mentally ill. As a pathological narcissist, who, as part of his pathology, is so lacking in empathy that an alpha male ape would appear to be downright Gandhian in comparison, Trump is simply unable to act like a mensch.
In 1959, the once-famous football coach, Vince Lombardi, said, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing," quoting what a less famous coach declared in 1950. This view is bad enough when applied to a game--when that attitude characterizes how one plays the 'game of life,' however, the results, for the individual as well as for those around him, are poison dart in the quiver of untrammeled vanity.
It is said that Fred Trump, Donald's father, ruined his son by dunning the gospel of narcissism into his son's head. If so, the damage he did has been prodigious. He created a monster, an orange Godzilla who unwittingly has been stomping on Liberty's beacon of freedom, threatening to dim it into a will o' the wisp in an undrained swamp.
I must admit that I had his number down before the election. The racism and inhumanity of the birther movement and Trump's plea for the execution of the Central Park Five left no doubt in my mind that this man was an inveterate danger to democracy. His current inhumanity is just as apparent now as it was then.
I would have sympathy for Trump if he didn't have the power to cause such harm. Trump's pathology doesn't allow him to accept the greatest defeat of his life, namely, Biden's victory. His disappointment must be very great indeed, comparable to a fundamentalist, who, convinced that the end of the world was coming on Friday, wakes up on Saturday under a pagan, indifferent sun, still sending no message from a cerulean sky. His illness will never permit him to concede.
If King Donald gets his way, however, he will either get his kingdom back or the end of his world--and possibly ours-- will arrive before January 21st. We have reason to be anxious
It is my opinion, however, that the current farce will play out as farce. King Donald's jester, Giuliani, does not have enough hair-dye and pratfalls to keep us laughing for much longer. But the joke, of course, could still be on us.
I listen to news in Spanish nearly every night; recently, I learned a new word, 'berrinche' a word used to characterize Trump's post-defeat behavior. It means 'tantrum.' Defeat has removed King Donald's panoply, revealing who he, figuratively, is: a full-grown baby in diapers, screaming for his daddy underneath.
He should be put in jail----maybe be forced to undergo therapy----though a cure is probably impossible. Getting him out of office will help the U.S. recover from 4 horrible years, but it will be a slow recovery---70 million plus people are infected with political madness.
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