Can You Say Narcissistic?

Trump's niece, a clinical psychologist, can and does in her damning, soon-to-be-released family memoir:






You can read more excerpts in the Washington Post and the New York Times.

But of course, Mary Trump doesn't tell us anything about her uncle that couldn't already be seen by any casual observer:  he's a cold-hearted liar, cheater, bully, narcissist, maybe sociopath - a conceited rich kid with an infantile mind who has oozed and schmoozed his way through life on daddy's money, without ever having to suffer the consequences of his actions.

And talk about daddy issues - no wonder he's always sucking up to ruthless, strong-man dictator types, desperate for their approval.

But I suspect, as I've said before in this blog, that just as in the old Greek plays about powerful men consumed with hubris, his actions are soon going to catch up with him, big time.  Call it what you will - nemesis, karma, divine justice - there's just no wheedling your way out of it.

It could come as soon as Election Day - 120 days from now.  And just think what a huge ratings flop that would be. A failed president! A loser! Sad.

George Will: "This Sad, Embarrassing Wreck of a Man"

Embed from Getty Images

"Want to play with my ball, Donny?"

Your Head Trucker finds it odd that people keep trying to pin the label of mental illness on Trump, when instead it is patently obvious that he is no more than a big, dumb buffoon - a consummately vain, overgrown rich kid who learned little from his expensive education, and remembers less - a reality-show actor who keeps flubbing his lines and missing his marks - a mental infant in the paunchy body of a 70-year-old blowhard.  Had he remained in private life, the only ones really hurt by his incorrigible self-worship would be his many creditors, probably.

But as president, with the active connivance and abetting of the entire sycophantic Republican Party - and perhaps with the encouragement and blackmail of Trump's Machiavellian father-figure, Putin - Trump, like a rogue elephant in a bazaar, is doing incalculable damage day by day not only to the foundations of this Republic, but also to the finely balanced bulwarks and linkages of the Western world that have, in broad terms, kept the peace and enabled the general prosperity of the whole world these seventy years.  (I do not say it is or ever has been a perfect world - but just try to imagine how much worse a world it would be without America in the lead, morally, financially, and militarily.)

He also has made himself, not really the leader, but rather the tool of those hateful, benighted forces in this country that are inimical to liberty, equality, decency, and democracy, with baleful results we have already seen; even worse may be to come. If his childish, lurching rampage is not soon stopped, or at least neutralized, he stands a good chance of going down in history as an enemy of the human race and a betrayer, whether by sheer stupidity or malicious design, of all that America is and has been and should be.

When I was younger and more idealistic, not to say naive, I thought it a very strange and rather silly thing, that custom of the ancient Egyptians and Romans, among others, to pronounce damnatio memoriae - oblivion - upon a despised ruler, once he was removed from office.  I must say that I have in recent years come to understand much better just why they did that.

George Will, one of the leading conservative pundits for the past four decades, a man of high intelligence and fine writing, who left the Republican Party in 2016 with the advent of Trump, began a column in the Washington Post this week with the same metaphor of an infantile leader:

America’s child president had a play date with a KGB alumnus, who surely enjoyed providing day care. It was a useful, because illuminating, event: Now we shall see how many Republicans retain a capacity for embarrassment. . . .

I recommend the whole essay for the perusal of my truckbuddies. But if you haven't the time to read it, Will summarized his views in the first five minutes of this clip from Wednesday's Morning Joe program:




I believe Trump will not last very long on the spotlit stage he occupies now - as them ol' Greek boys put it, after hubris comes nemesis, and a miserable end. But Trump is merely the image of the beast - a fake president, to use his favorite adjective - the willing, gullible pawn of evil men who are only too glad to feed his gluttonous self-love while using him to further their hellacious schemes - and beyond them, the credulous millions who eagerly follow and support, an army of willing tools and fools, worshipers of a god made in their own image.

If Trump for some reason were to fall silent tomorrow and depart the White House for some quieter spot, do you not think there would be plenty of others ready to fill the space he vacated?  Be sure that the fakery show would continue as planned, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.  The dire problem we face is not simply that of one churlish buffoon alone.

If you want to see a preview of the next episode in this filthy saga, look no further than Steve Bannon, Trump's erstwhile campaign manager and political incubus, who has stated his own evil intentions quite plainly, for all the world to hear: "I'd rather reign in hell, than serve in heaven."  What he is now organizing is a world alliance of far-right nationalist parties, united in one revolutionary goal: the exaltation of dictatorship, tribal hatreds, and willful ignorance, along with the utter destruction of liberal democracy, the rule of law, and fundamental human rights; that is to say, the triumph of lust over love, of greed over goodwill, of darkness over light in the human soul.

Do not be deceived, my friends:  the long, pleasant Indian summer of the postwar era, so dearly bought with blood, toil, tears, and sweat, may be drawing to its close sooner than you think, if the present danger is not swiftly and firmly averted.

And somewhere, the cunning jackal Putin is licking his chops hungrily, while the foolish Europeans and Americans split and re-split themselves into warring camps:  divide et impera. I do not know the remedy to all this - I only point to the rising flames.

So quit fretting about Trump's mindless tweets, a child's babbling, a mere sideshow, and focus instead on the real peril, the mortal danger that lies straight ahead. Bannon's declared intentions are unmistakable, undiluted evil, straight from the mouth of the Devil.

And now you can't say you weren't warned.

The Nation in Peril: "A Unique and Present Danger"

I suppose you fellas have already seen and read the unprecedented editorial that the Washington Post published yesterday, condemning the Republican nominee as "uniquely unqualified" to be President, and a direct threat to the Constitution.  But in case you haven't, go read it, now, right here.

The Nation, our republic and democracy, is in grave peril, and we must all do what we can to defend it - or watch it dissolve into a perverted Orwellian monstrosity, infernal, putrid, and wretched beyond imagination - so says your Head Trucker, but I think I am merely putting into words what every decent, intelligent person (a particularly articulate one being the writer Joyce Carol Oates) already thinks, and has thought for the past year, ever since that braggart, bully, and charlatan threw his hat into the political ring.

It occurs to your Head Trucker that the word hubris might have been invented just to describe him, the perfect exemplar of what those old Greek boys called a tyrant.  Of course, he will meet his nemesis eventually, as such characters always do, bearing within themselves the seeds of their own destruction - Oedipus, Napoleon, and Hitler are names that spring to mind here, not to mention Faust and even Lucifer himself - but perhaps not until the tyrant has caused incalculable damage and suffering in all directions.  (Now aren't you sorry you slept through Western Civ and World Lit?)

So I will add nothing here to the mountains of commentary already flooding the airwaves and intertubes - but I also recommend that you all read this article, based on a New York Times report this week, which seems to reveal Trump's "business plan" for the Presidency:  namely, that he will let his running mate be "the most powerful Vice-President in history," handling all foreign and domestic policy, and all the other tedious daily details of the Executive Office - in other words, doing the President's job for him - while Trump loafs around in comfort like a chairman of the board and simply "makes America great again," pulling the strings from behind the throne and issuing imperial decrees at his pleasure.

In other words, at a stroke, Trump would break apart the constitutional checks and balances on which our system has depended since its founding, and run it like one of his megabusinesses - a casino, perhaps.  Utterly revolting to the mind and chilling to the spirit.  As are all his other nebulous, infantile, utterly irresponsible ideas and self-serving proposals.

Some of you, at least, are old enough to remember the well-worn phrase used for practice by generations of student typists:

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.

Though in need of a small edit or two, never has it been truer than now.  The prime springs of History often turn not upon great events, but upon small ones:  for want of a nail, the shoe was lost, and so on.  The choice between renewal and ruin, utter ruin, is ours - but only while democracy lasts.  And the clock is tick-tick-ticking louder all the time.

I am old and rather weary now, circumscribed in action and limited in resources; this slight blog post is about the extent of what I can do: a pebble thrown into a pond. But some of you can do a little more, perhaps, thereby encouraging yet others downstream, as it were, who can do even more than that, and so good luck to you.

 I close by simply saying, as so many patriots have said before me: May God bless the United States of America.  We certainly need all the help we can get.


Addendum, 9:45 p.m., 7/24: Yes, Hillary is well past her sell-by date, and fails to inspire for several reasons. But she is hardly the fiend that the foaming right has made her out to be, and for all her faults, she is, as the Washington Post observed in its editorial, not a threat to constitutional government.

The choice is between a flawed, ambitious leader who is experienced and capable of high office - or a bloated, preening, ignorant toad who with the help of his fawning lackeys would turn this country into the biggest personality cult the world has ever seen. To my mind, there is no question here.