By his comportment, the president benefits his media detractors with serial vindications of their disparagements. They, however, have sunk to his level of insufferable self-satisfaction by preening about their superiority to someone they consider morally horrifying and intellectually cretinous. For most Americans, President Trump’s expostulations are audible wallpaper, always there but not really noticed. Still, the ubiquity of his outpourings in the media’s outpourings gives American life its current claustrophobic feel. This results from many journalists considering him an excuse for a four-year sabbatical from thinking about anything other than the shiny thing that mesmerizes them by dangling himself in front of them.
Dislike of him should be tempered by this consideration: He is an almost inexpressibly sad specimen. It must be misery to awaken to another day of being Donald Trump. He seems to have as many friends as his pluperfect self-centeredness allows, and as he has earned in an entirely transactional life. His historical ignorance deprives him of the satisfaction of working in a house where much magnificent history has been made. His childlike ignorance — preserved by a lifetime of single-minded self-promotion — concerning governance and economics guarantees that whenever he must interact with experienced and accomplished people, he is as bewildered as a kindergartener at a seminar on string theory.
I'm never going to turn a phrase as well as George Will, so I won't try. I don't know about Trump's personal friendships and I don't really care. I know that all of us seem to think less and yell more whenever we discuss political issues. In short, Trump has brought us down to his level. I certainly feel suffocated by the oxygen that he takes out of the room, but ignoring him, a action that most other politicians make easy, is nearly impossible. He's driving a bulldozer through a china shop without worrying about the damage he's doing or those who will have to clean it up.
4 comments:
Bipartisanship is capitulation, Leo.
But it's not just the national GOP it's the stench of red state politics today. Mike Rounds, Lee Schoenbeck and Dan Lederman are every bit as toxic as Trump is. Recall their indictments of a black Commander in Chief during 2011 flooding but we'll never hear such vitriol with Trump squatting in the Oval Office even as floods inundate parts of the chemical toilet that South Dakota is experiencing right now. That Lederman would call out the SDDP for antisemitism while kissing up to louts like Steve King, Jim Bolin, Fred Deutsch and Pat Powers is simply further evidence of the gaslighting of America.
George Will is the conscience of the Republican Party like John Thune and Kristi Noem are faithful to their spouses.
Larry,
I can't get get beyond the idea that becoming what I'm criticizing costs me whatever moral high ground I may have had.
Trump is worst malignancy on the American body politic in my lifetime. He has not desire to do anything but enrich himself. The fact that his greed deepens fault lines worries me where it may energize others. I am going to gain nothing becoming like him.
Will's analysis, especially the 2nd paragraph, strikes me as absolutely correct. The analogy fits.
I have to hand this to George Will--Months ago he vacated with honor the GOP party. Essentially telling it to "kiss my a--!" More thinking people need to follow his lead and escorciate this GOP for following this pied pier Trump.
I have always adored Will's mastery of the language. His baseball columns are brilliant. But his dismantling of Emperor Trump is truly righteous. He follows in the tradition of Churchill and Mencken.
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