July 2020 Archives

Dear America,

It's almost farcical, what Donald Trump is doing to save himself.  He has more at stake in the 2020 election than he has ever had in anything.  Being rejected and demeaned by the other big name developers in New York might be ego shattering for some, but Trump could find ways to explain it: jealousy, envy of his name spewed all over the 

city, invitations to all the show-biz events and the like being badges of substance for one with as little substance as he has.  He could even chalk up the fact that he lost his home  s tate by a two-to-one margin to some kind of failure of the state to recognize what he thinks the nation as a whole saw when the electoral college went his way.  He could even ignore the fact that he lost the popular election because he did, after all, become president thanks to the backfiring of an institution that Hamilton oversaw including in the constitution so as to prevent exactly what it did: elect some populist buffoon because the people fell for his spiel.  But Biden is now almost ten points ahead in the polls.  We all know that polls, especially ones this far out from an election, really don't tell anyone much.  But we have a shot at them being real omens of what's to come, and if it does, what will the Trumpster do?  Rejection by 74 million Americans when only 61 million saw things his way is impossible to ignore in favor of delusions of grandeur, so what will he do to redeem himself to himself?

In some quarters, there is fear that if Trump loses, he'll pull some sort of banana republic stunt and refuse to move out of the Whitehouse and give up his powers as president. It could happen, especially in light of that remark he made at a rally in Texas a year or so ago.  (The crowd was chanting "four more years" and Trump said, "If you really want to drive them crazy, ask for twelve").  He really thinks he's in Vladimir Putin's league, and thus deserves what Putin has usurped, so he might try to usurp it himself as the only way in which to preserve his ego.  He's openly said that as president, he can do anything, although look where that attitude got Richard Nixon, who thought, and actually said to David Frost in a public interview once, that if the president does it, it isn't illegal.  All that got him was one last ride on a marine corps helicopter and a grandstanding, two-handed flash of a "V"-for-victory that is still seen today as a universally understood symbol of self-delusion.  Or, as I have read at least once, he could just refuse to recognize the election results, for which he has already planted the seeds with his persistent fantasy that there is rampant election fraud in this country, which of course redounds to the Democrats in its entirety if you follow his reasoning, or perhaps more aptly said, his self-serving, delusional thinking.

No matter how you look at it, this election is risky for the nation.  We have a megalomaniac in the White House who now has a psychological imperative to ignore defeat.  He might just settle for throwing the entire election into doubt and leave us to sort out the popular division that would render.  He might even try to get The South to secede again and recognize him as president by right.  I know that seems farfetched, but four years ago, who would have believed that Donald Trump could become president of anything but his own fan club or some sham corporation created for the avoidance of taxes.  What I fear is that no matter what it turns out to be, Trump will try to engineer what Putin has in Russia: virtual life-time incumbency, with all the opportunities that represents for money grubbing...what's known these days as kleptocracy.  In Trump's mind, money talks, and what it says is "winner,"  though in Trump's case that would be "whiner."  

What Trump doesn't acknowledge is that autocrats like Erdogan and Putin see Trump as a spoiled child whom they can manipulate...sort of a catamite.    They  pat him on the head and he goes away beaming over the fact that the "big guys" think of him as one of them, never realizing that he is being condescended to and his ego is being used against him by smarter, and if you can believe it, more devious men.  Thus, even if he loses the election, he is a threat.

Let's hope the people who voted for him experience some kind of epiphany between now and November...and that is sticks thereafter.

Mike

Dear America,

As Trump thrashes about trying to turn you-know-what into gold, the hole he is digging gets deeper and deeper.  According to RealClearPolitics, Biden's lead over Trump nationwide has grown to a yawning gap of more than 9%.  We can only hope that it holds.  But in the interim, Trump continues his pernicious presidency unabated in its dedication to destruction of all things virtuous about Americanism.  Today he is meeting with the recently elected president of Mexico, one of his kindred spirits on the world scene when it comes to science denial and disdain for the well-being of all those around them when it serves self-interest.  Neither of them will be wearing a face mask, and no doubt they will ignore current conventions regarding social distancing.  They will be celebrating the advent of the USMCA, or the U.S., Mexico and Canada Agreement, which is a retooling of NAFTA with significant changes only in the form of those insisted on by Congress.  But Trump will ceremoniously declare it "another" of his glorious achievements, none of which have become apparent to me at least, and he will do it with great, self-serving flourishes. We've seen it all before, this obsession with self-congratulation, and it will leave what now seems to be a steady majority of us disgusted--to user one of the Trumper's favorite "d" words--and ruing the presence on the world stage of our own disgrace (another favorite "d" word; apparently he never got past d in the dictionary) of a leader.  Still, with all the untoward conduct he eagerly indulges in there is still a percentage of American voters in the high thirties that love him.  Woe is me.

But we should all have heart, I think.  The pandemic and the cognate financial catastrophe that ensued upon Trump's dismissal of the virus as little more than the flu just won't yield to his incomprehensibly obtuse efforts to wrap himself in the flag and drag his supporters into harm's way in order to affirm his self-serving perfidy.  The very people he is depending on for reelection are the most likely to get sick because of him, and unfortunately spread their disease to the rest of us who are wearing masks and keeping our distances from one another.  The morbidity figure in the U.S. is now just about 3 million: 1% of the population.  And the total of consequent deaths is about 130,000.  Of those who have contracted Covid-19, including those who have died of it, scientific estimates are that over 80% of the carnage could have been avoided if Trump had just acknowledged the danger and shut down the economy two weeks earlier.  But of course he couldn't do that because it would have entailed admission of his own error, and as we all know, the Trumpster never makes mistakes.  He certainly never apologizes for them.  Yet his fans keep on basking in the irrationality of their fandom.  

So here we are in a race with those who have gotten sick due to their carelessness and that of their Trumper ilk while the rest of us have done our best to keep them from getting sick by wearing masks ourselves just in case we are.  In effect then, we are nurturing the serpents in our bosom by doing the right thing, but we have to stay unified in that regard.  We just have to hope that more of us survive than them.  I know how vile that sounds.  Really, I try to keep my baser instincts in check, but I was in a store yesterday looking for something we needed--that is the only circumstance in which we go out these days--and there was someone in work clothes without a mask in the store, which has a sign at the door stating that masks are required for entry.  The workman was talking to the owner of the store, who also wasn't wearing a face mask as we, my wife and I, snaked through the aisle and waited for the workman to clear the register area so that we could proceed to check out while protecting them from a dangerous disease that they all-too-eagerly exposed us to.  And as we wended our way out of the store, I started thinking about the injustice of it all.  I think that patriotism demands that we wear masks in order to protect our fellow Americans, and to his credit, Joe Biden recently, and ardently, said so quite publicaly.  Yet people like this workman drive around in their pickups with no masks on and with flags waving in the back and decals on the windows, effectively saying that as Americans, no one has the right to tell them to do anything that they don't like, even if their recalcitrance harms, or even kills, their fellow Americans.  At least implicitly, their waving of the flag...their arrogation of the right to do so...is a vainglorious claim of patriotism in opposition to the actual patriotism of those who labor to breath behind masks for the benefit of their fellows. 

I don't know about you, but it disgusts me.  Itjust seems...disgraceful, doesn't it?

Your friend,

Mike