Internationalist Writer

Internationalist Writer

Archives for August 2019

The Pathetic Prez

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Quotes:   “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I’m gonna eat some worms” (Children’s song, 1863)

In the news:  Trump hasn’t saved coal in W. Virginia.  They don’t care (Kelsey Brugger, E&E News, 8.19.19)

In context:  You might feel sorry for Donald Trump if he wasn’t destroying the country and damaging a new generation by tearing kids from parents.  The Russians tried that during their Soviet Communist era and the experiment was a disaster.  Donald Trump may not know that bit of history.  He’s busy wreaking havoc because nobody of any consequence likes him or gives him credit for what he thinks he deserves.

Donald Trump may have friends but chances are he doesn’t have one who wouldn’t gleefully throw him under the bus if the opportunity presented.  Trump’s rage and his thirst for vengeance seem to override any need for the basic human form of bonding based on the emotions that make up the complex concept of love.  Those closest to him through family kinship seem plastic props on autopilot to boost the Trump ego when posed next to him, reacting on cue when he refers to himself or his self-touted deeds.  Family members who don’t fit the mold are unseen.  Trump is driven by some force beyond basic human needs.

Two emotions are characteristic of Trump’s expression.  One is a derisive smugness and the other is rage.  The level of genuine emotion behind those expressions is impossible to decipher.  He plays for effect through the media.  Some feeling may be masked by his trademark ploy of fanning outrage about plain old decency.  Whether real or feigned, Trump presents a picture of a ticking time bomb due to rage.

Rage can be a reaction to inconsolable pain, the worst of which is thirst for love from someone who can’t give it.  People kill over unrequited love.  Failed marriages drive spouses to wipe out entire families.  Others sublimate the pain turned into rage by turning their entire world into enemy territory.  Donald Trump seems to have taken that route.  He seems hell-bent on inflicting pain, especially by vengeful punishment of all those who don’t seem to love him like he needs in boundless measure.

Sigmund Freud dealt at length with the libido, or the life force, battling with the death instinct,  Loosely understood, that translates into and either or situation.  Either I get what I want or I will destroy what I can’t get.  That explains the Terrible Twos that all human kids pass through on their way to childhood.  Likewise, the Bible laid out the case for Lucifer’s fall, the principle archangel who challenged God and ended being rule of his own domain as god of the underworld.

In his position as the President of the United States, Donald Trump is the most powerful man for the moment in the entire world.  He could be promoting  good will and cooperation in a complex world full of challenges.  Instead, he destroys everything in his path.  He may be a white nationalist or a mere territorialist like a guard dog protecting his turf, but the level of his vehemence suggests a motive much deeper and more personal than an entrenched belief.  Someone, at some time in his life, must have wounded him fatally with the anguish of  unrequited love.

No one, probably not even Donald Trump, knows who hurt him so deeply that he must destroy all to satisfy an unquenchable rage.  Perhaps his mother didn’t give him the enormous amount of attention he needed as a child.  Maybe his father was disappointed that Donald couldn’t perform better with the enormous family bounty that was handed him.  It’s even possible that Donald was irredeemably wounded by first wife Ivanka who left him after Donald fell victim to a short-lived second wife.

Whatever deep-seated wound drives Donald Trump to destroy instead of construct as the “builder” he has sold himself to be, it’s a good chance he’s a miserable human being.    Like all others, he deserves help to find peace within himself.

That kind of help can only come through analytical help from psychiatrists.  Trump will never find relief by laying waste to the country and the world.  To prove that to himself without outside help, he may end up nuking the world with himself included,

No Dangerfield, this Don

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Quote:  “I get no respect,” (tag line of insult comedian Rodney Dangerfield)

In the news:  “Man insulted at New Hampshire rally by Trump because of weight says, “I love the guy.”  (Reuters,  8.16.19)

In context:  Almost 100 years ago, psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud described humor as an outlet for aggression.  About 50 years ago, the insult humor genre came into vogue along with the spread of television sets in American homes.  While the genre ran its course long ago, it has resurfaced with the rise of Donald Trump.

As a world leader, Trump himself is a joke.  By definition in ihe Cambridge English Dictionary, a leader is one who heads a group based on ability or position.  Donald Trump leads by virtue of his position but he is obviously lacking in the ability to perform the duties of his office.

Trump is ignorant about the significance of historical context.  He pulls out of accords achieved over decades that took into consideration the vastly conflicting interests of the involved parties.  He does not work well with others.  True leaders of any group readily  admit they depend on input from experts in discrete fields within the range of their concerns.  Army Generals rely on Colonels, who Sargeants, who rely on Lieutenants and so forth.  Trump increasingly goes it alone, systematically replacing experts with those he can rely on to implement his vision.

The Trump vision is hazy at best.  “Nice letters” and “nice conversations” with global tyrants are Trump’s criteria for steering US international relations.  From his conduct since taking up residence in the Oval Office, it seems clear that Donald Trump is out of his element.  He hires and fires with a zeal more apt for a TV reality show than with a confidence aimed at securing a country and with that, the world.

The scars of past failures may be haunting the President in the loftiness of his current position.  Six gargantuan bankruptcies, however, never took the wind from his sails.  He simply moved on to more easily accessible sources of funding, with attached strings that remain unknown to this day.  Moreover, in the White House he is gambling with taxpayer money, not his own.  That guarantee should build his confidence and undoubtedly does.  Except that the obstructionists foil his ploys.

The support of the Republican Senate under Moscow Mitch is indispensable to carrying out the Trump agenda even from the bureaucratically encumbered Oval Office, but now there is oversight from the democratic Congress that doggedly noses into legal and financial trails however Trump dodges them.  Ever worse is the piercing, prying eye of the pesky American Constitutionally protected right of a free press.  With all America’s mighty powers at his fingertips and yet thwarted by safeguards, Trump vents his frustration by pivoting from outright aggressive policies to insults he claims are humor.

A common feature of the 1960-70’s insult humor form of entertainment was self-deprecation.  The comic admitted a flaw in himself and then took an adversersarial position with a target in the audience.  As equals, the comic and the mark carried out a ritual of “festive abuse.”  Rodney Dangerfield made a career out of working out his aggressive tendencies that resulted from some inferiority affliction through such exchanges.  “I was so ugly when I was born that the doctor slapped my mother,” Rodney joked before he insulted anyone in the audience.

Donald Trump could never be a Rodney Dangerfield however he insults people in the outmoded Dangerfield tradition.  The Trump trademark is gasconade, an elaborate boasting about abilities he doesn’t have.

For however long Trump holds his office as President of the United States, it is better that he work out his aggressions as a pretender to the title of insult comedian than for him to sit in the Oval Office.  The country gets into trouble when Trump assumes the dignity of his office to conjure new plans for how to create moral mayhem to insure that the media spotlight stays on his antics and not on his machinations.

However odious to many and however disingenuous the claim of humor for downright offensive and incendiary comments, that is among the least of Trump outrages.  As long as the Trump rally doesn’t mind being ridiculed, it is more worthwhile to point out to the more objective audience at home that Trump is a failure, even as a stand-up insult comic.

 

 

 

Toxic Trump

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Quote:  Anger is like drinking poison and expecting another to die (Buddha)

In the news:  We Can No Longer Ignore Trump’s Role in Inspiring Mass Shootings (Mehdi Hasan, Intercept, 8.04.19)

In context:  A toxic person may be hard to define but it sure is easy to spot one.  SNL has a skit about a couple who arrive late to a dinner and take over the event with wild stories of adventures that bore and drown out everyone else.  A toxic love is such an effect of one person on another, which describes the relationship between Donald Trump and his base.

The rational mind plays a minimal role in love at its best.  In toxic love the faculty of reason plays an opposing function.  The more that family and friends object to the union based on its effects, the more that the special bond is reinforced between the toxic lover and the unwitting partner.  It proves that outsiders don’t understand, they don’t speak the same unspoken language of soul to soul communication, or mind-meld as Dr. Spock of Star Trek would describe.

Parties to a toxic love enter into the arrangement as voluntarily as anyone smitten by Cupid’s arrow.  Both people gain from the companionship of togetherness.  In toxic love, however, the joys become drowned by conflict as the needs of one exert undue pressure on the one who meets them.  The bond of love deepens with every investment made when a storm is weathered together until some climatic event severs the union irreparably.  Unfortunately, this often in the form of a catastrophe.

Following such a break and premised on survival, the toxic one will either face legal consequences or go on to new conquests.  The driving needs are stronger than the ties that bind.  The healthy partner on the other hand, who is now left alone, betrayed, abandoned or simply devastated, lost and stuck with fallout, will spend years or a lifetime parsing the volley of choices that led to the current condition.  There were obvious forks in the road that led to continued loyalty instead of an earlier exit.  In chastened memory, the beloved will morph from a heroic rebel into a dizzying control freak.  Through a bruised and wounded worldview, the healthy survivor will recognize that toxic love isn’t blind, it wears 3-D kaleidoscopic goggles.

Outsiders can clearly see that Donald Trump is a toxic person who has found a willing partner in his base.  Whatever charms Trump may possess are certainly under the radar in his current media persona as US President.  His face is everywhere and it rankles as much as his message and words.

Most people like to be soothed and inspired by a leader, but a good swathe of the Trump base likes his approach to leading the country.  It’s a good chance that others grow more uneasy with every crisis weathered in which Donald Trump was not a participating partner.  After the rally, once the spewed venom has performed its function as a cathartic to the disenchanted, the base goes home alone, some to stock up on firearms and the others to question why Trump insulted and blamed and why he didn’t say he was happy to see the gathered and that he appreciated their support.

“Love me or hate me, you gotta vote for me ’cause your 401K is going down the tubes,”  Trump told supporters at a NH rally.  That is a threat, a mechanism of toxic love.  It is not a plea for mutually tackling a challenge.

Trump may not realize he’s toxic.  His gargantuan needs gobble his attention.  There is nothing left for others.  But for the lucky who escape toxic relationships, the breaking point comes in many forms. The most satisfying is the one in which a new love arrives. to remind the smitten one that healthy love simply feels good.

Speak Up, Dems, the Ruskies R Here

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Quote:  Man has no more tormenting care than to find someone in whom he can hand over…freedom (Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 1879)

in the news:   Report: US is underestimating Putin’s “Grand Strategy” for Russian Dominance (Ursula Perano, Zachary Basu, Axios, 6.30.19)

In context:  Birds of a feather flock together and America’s flighty President has a covey of friends whose status last no longer than a photo-op before he’s done with them.  Trump’s penchant for dictators is alarming enough to freedom-loving Americans, but his naivete with regard to Russia’s Vladimir PutHis sounds a death knell for democracy worldwide if left unchecked.

Russia has big plans for dominating the world and it is no better at achieving its goals than America’s current president Donald Trump.  A 1917 Russian revolution led through a violent path to a Russian take-over of neighbors and half of Europe.  That Communist experiment flopped after 40 years but not before it laid waste to countless lives and the natural resources of  others.

A massive failure like that of Soviet Communism may have daunted some but Russia recouped by regrouping into an oligarchy.  The aim was the same under both systems, to plunder the wealth of others because Russia had none of its own.

Whether ignorant of history or simply not caring about anything beyond the current moment in the media spotlight, Trump and Putin confab tete-a-tete at international affairs with no no honor of US protocols.  Russia’s version of events based on its protocols is suspect for good reason.  A recent nuclear disaster was first ignored, then hashed with conflicting reports to the public.  That is Russia’s way and Donald Trump is fine with the method, perhaps taking tips from Vladimir Putin on how to apply the principles to his own more open and scrupulously lawful society.

For sure there are huge gaps in applying the laws of the United States and Donald Trump is a master at dodging through them.  Nevertheless, the laws have been passed and they serve as a basis for redress when breached.  That’s a big difference between the US and the countries whose leaders Donald Trump considers trusted pals.  America’s laws are based on a Constitution that heavily emphasises human rights.  The Constitutions of Russia and China have no such guarantees and that’s the basis on which Vladimir Putin plans to dominate the world.

Trump seems to favor the Russian approach to treating his country’s people.  Putin may his personal advisor.   America’s police are trained to be humane.  Trump tells them to be ruthless.  The Trump crackdown on immigrants could be a page from the Russian playbook.  Millions were slaughtered in the periods around the Revolution.  Moscow Mitch who dominates the Senate may have been a Putin brainchild with an Oligarch thrown in to sweeten the deal with a factory in a relevant state.

The KGB-trained Putin may be considered a pal by Trump but Putin is certainly no friend of America if he is hell-bent on dominating the world.  The test run in Eastern Europe after the Second World War may have failed but Putin is resourceful and hasn’t given up.  After the Chernobyl disaster now comes the “Floating Chernobyl” off the coast of Alaska.  Trump dismisses the importance of all these developments.  It a signal to Putin that he has found America to be his next mark.

Putin is the big game hunter who has conned the American master con.  He has succeeded beyond his wildest expectations when he installed Trump by methods Trump convincingly sells to his base as a hoax.  To Putin, the Trump presidency might be likened to opening a set of Russian nesting dolls.  Take off the big top one, the others  fall out right in line.

A third of America makes up the smaller nesting dolls behind Trump.  They are a formidable portion of the Putin plan for Russian domination of the world.  In the freedom of America, they admire the Trump lawlessness and they find comfort in building walls to keep away outsiders.  They may even tolerate cruelty, lies and the lack of method to his madness with tyrants, but every aherent, however ardent, has a breaking point.

Part of the American democratic process is to conduct polls assessing public opinion.  As part of this survey, someone should skip a question about health care, race, favorability or electability.

The question to ask instead, is how the respondent would feel if prison were the consequence for backing a candidate other than the person currently in the White House.

Stranger Than Fiction Trump

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Quote:  Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense (Mark Twain and others w/ variations Quote Investigator, Financial Times)

In the news:  Trump’s Influence is Spreading Like a Virus (Michael D/Antonio, CNN, 8.10.19)

In context:  The truth about Donald Trump is that he doesn’t make sense.  Even science fiction has to have a plausible story line from start to finish for the situation to be believable or else it doesn’t satisfy the reader.  No such restriction holds back Trump.  Adept as he is with delivery, the barrage of his incredible whoppers leaves no room to discern that the lies defy reason.

Global chaos is the outcome of a US presidency that has turned the US topsy-turvy in  the world’s eyes.  For one thing, the world is obviously globalizing and the US has led the effort in smoothing the difficult process.  Out of nowhere, Trump turns back the clock, scuttles hard won regional agreements and inserts himself as the lone savior in America’s relations with nearly 200 other countries, most of which have learned hard lessons from centuries of conflict capped by two world wars.  Even dictators with a stranglehold on their fiefdoms rely on alliances.  North Korea counts China as a friend and Russia under Putin sends oligarchs to pick pockets.  Whirligig Trump goes it alone in the name of the US, whose people are given a Trump say-so about the outcome.  That’s a tall order for America about a leader who dances to a drummer nobody else hears and by outward signs doesn’t seem to exist.

The thought that I’m right and everybody else is wrong is one definition of insanity.  Another is to repeat an action over and over while expecting a different result.  Both those views could apply to Donald Trump but in the America he has created and with the position he holds, the notion cannot be proven and if it was, the diagnosis would not stick.  Throwing mud to roil the waters is Trump’s forte and his saving grace from a verdict of insanity is that he has an endpoint which is greed.

Avarice is extreme greed and gluttony is habitual greed.  Trump fits both those categories with a show of zeal that belongs in the Guiness Book of World Records since he became President of the US.

By numerous accounts, neither Trump nor his cohorts believed he would be elected President based on the vitriol he spewed so obscenely during the campaign.  Evidence indicates he had ample outside help and then with the mighty US powers in hand, he began to make hay. since he couldn’t know how long the bonanza would last.  He started by defying the Constitution’s emoluments clause along with the nepotism prohibition.  The oath of office to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law was out the window from the start.  Then when those outrages lost their magnetic force on the media, he turned his talents to demonizing whoever crossed his path.

Immigrant families became marauding hordes to Donald Trump, justifying in his mind a policy to tear kids from parents and display the atrocity like barbarians one hoisted the heads of the vanquished enemy on pikes to boast and warning to invaders.  Surprise raids on families were next on the menu of outrages for the media to cover. They were fodder for Trump’s insatiable greed for the media spotlight when all they wanted from him was to work in a chicken factory.

The bull in America’s china shop is the craven Donald Trump gobbling up the media airways with chaotic antics verging on sadism.  No amount of attention could satisfy a man whose hunger is greater than the mighty powers put at his disposal by the world leading United States of America.  In that position, he is bearing out the truth of the view that insanity is repeatedly doing the same thing while expecting a different result.  Trump is again destroying his latest venture, the great USA.  With any luck, America will save itself as it always has.

This time, in the case of Trump and on behalf of the world, America can make the Trump story plausible by bringing it to a satisfying conclusion.  That will mean ousting Donald Trump from office.  He simply can’t be made out to be a believable fictional character, either hero or antihero.  He doesn’t make enough sense to play a part in a work of fiction, not even in the horror genre.