Bluster boomerang on display
Tabulating how little Trump has done for his voters’ economic misery is not enough. Failure and hypocrisy don’t speak for themselves when cult denial reigns: job-sucking outsourcing continues (especially in backwaters), domestic factory growth sags, better paying jobs are coastal and/or in tech, tax reform is a joke, and bonehead tariffs inflate prices on basics the bottom 50% must buy. No infrastructure, no job training, no national educational push — surprise! Billionaires flourish while Trump families grit their teeth, still dreaming a cruel hustler’s jingoism, ignorance and racism will magically improve their lives.
We need to shift from betrayed promises to what’s visible daily: Trump’s incredibly craven character and revealing expressions. Character — not only as destiny but revelation — offers now the cleanest lever to disrupt the sham Trump narrative. No miracles promised, just another shot across the Trump darkness, painfully displayed on the world’s stage this week.
A week ago I quipped Trump lies so often, and so badly, that simply reversing 90% of his gutter outpourings speak far more truth. Across Trump’s Reversal Syndrome, white is black (except racially) and up is down for this agent of mass distortion, whether propaganda by design or the offspring of derangement (or both).
Here’s a second framework to disrupt the faux (merely surface) disruption. Leverage Trump’s own crude, juvenile insults as revelatory not about the abused targets, but his own addled personality. When he calls Nancy Pelosi a “nasty, vindictive, horrible person” (because she anticipates his facing jail-time after departure), that says so much more about him than a savvy, establishment politician who neatly baits the wannabe baiter to show his teeth. In fact, his pot shots parallel his lies — and the never-ending subterfuge needed to keep his rigged hustle going. When we shift to Trump lying and schoolyard insults, this character focus provides ways to address non-cult Trumpers and/or right-leaning centrist/independents.
Mock king of fake news
Top of the list, no one produces more global Fake News than the Commander of Fake News himself, displacing 24/7 FOX folly. Compared to Trump, even imperfect reporters are founts of truth and accuracy. What guilty colluder, if not conspirator, won’t constantly yell “no collusion” to spur misinformation? Do folks innocent of obstruction of justice repeatedly obstruct legal inquiries (as “fake witch hunts”) run by alleged fools and schemers? Ditto, every sexual predator who boasts of grabbing women must then pooh pooh video evidence of his own creepiness. Anyone whose tax returns are preposterously, forever “under audit” may get away boasting, “I’m rich, really rich” — while denying illegal emolument profits or heavy dependence on Russian oligarchs to stay afloat. Trump is a model of consistency, telling falsehoods, when simply inverted, that tell truths he can’t hear but his fans need to confront.
By definition, the worst president must lie 10,000 times in three years because his greed and mental paralysis must defy reality. That’s what hustlers do, cover yesterday’s sins with today’s fables. Anyone so perverse to call the free press “the enemy of the people” confirms himself the greatest enemy to democracy, majority rule, even open exchange by the people. Trump’s media assault attacks the only venue that challenges the rigged game he dishonestly promised to battle.
So, the greatest source of White House hoaxes ever calls climate change not just untrue or unworthy but a “hoax concocted by the Chinese.” Thus bad faith indicts itself by foisting bad faith on 97% of scientists wholly separate from China or politics. Whether as know-nothing or demagogue, Trump reveals how his disordered mind or ruthless ambition works — the deceptive, belligerent slanderer who then concocts a world out “to get him.” Perhaps he should name-call less often. Thus does denial impale itself on its own petard.
Further, whether on white supremacy or the fake vaccine controversy, rapist immigrants or unjustified “Muslim immigrant” threats, the transmitter of cruel conspiracies must decoy his act with delusions he “tells it like it is.” There IS an unholy “witch hunt” but the head witch creates his own fun house mirrors because he has no better defenses against reality. Thus, the disgraced draft dodger speaks of D-Day heroism beyond his ken, with subsequent mock logic he “makes up for” avoiding service (in a war he scorned) by pushing today’s massive defense spending. There is no fixing stupidity (or cowardice) like this, only forever shining a spotlight on how real-world actions expose who’s in the White House and the immense, yet unknowable range of damage underway.
Direct link: Lying & trash talk
Moving from limitless lies to equally chronic trash talk, here’s the most telling rub. No one he attacks looks as bad in the end as the slanderer himself. Has the prosperous NYTimes or CNN lost its audience because Trump lies they’re “failing” — all because they won’t mimic FOX? Only an inveterate (and dim) bully would think grammar school slams make him look good. How defective (if telling) when on the world stage, facing insolvable problems like Brexit, he tweets pointless insults to mere starlet Bette Midler — from pettiness, childishness or perversity. The Trump bluster boomerang.
What does it prove about nasty Trump when strong women (immune from his charms) are inevitably called “nasty.” From Hillary and duchess Meghan Markle to Pelosi, women with more class and intelligence are “nasty.” Hillary’s hardly faultless but too controlled for open nastiness; Markle, soft-spoken, English royal family duchess, was hardly “nasty” when joking she’d leave for Canada were Trump elected. Or was she prescient, now married to a prince and permanent UK resident?
Ditto, does not Trump indict himself by castigating successful women as dumb, ugly, fat, “that dog” (a black ex-adviser), pig, horse-faced, gushing blood, open to being groped, or (Pelosi again) “crazy,” “a disaster,” and “a mess” who’s “disintegrating”? If I had to capture Trump, these last words hit the mark. Overt misogyny confirms not just his primitive nature, but how he can sucker equally insecure men. Pigs should squeal loudly as Trump takes to unimaginable extremes what male, chauvinistic pig originally meant.
My point is clear. Everything false, nasty and slanderous that Trump projects on others — whether more honest, smarter, principled or well-read — redounds on his own abysmal character. He cannot resist showing himself the bullying man-child stuck with 6th grade howling. No one has damaged Trump as much as the undisciplined Donald. Pelosi keeps cleaning his clock, more popular than ever for taming the Food-Fighter-in-chief. If nastiness were impeachable, Trump wouldn’t have lasted a month. Who but a criminal type would have campaigned about putting his opponent in jail, then go ballistic when the Speaker (privately) expects him to face imprisonment.
Focus on character, not corrupt promises
So, for those still leaning Trump, I say throw his own foul words in their faces. Have them justify not only betrayed promises — and few economic advances— but grisly character flaws. Do they grope women — then defend it because they’re not caught? Do they enviously insult their betters from insecurity? Do they think spirited women who dare challenge them are thus nasty, vindictive and horrible? Do they think smart pols have low IQs because they choose to run? Does Trump honestly qualify as presidential? Present the chronic lies and ceaseless slanders — and let them defend not what they dream can happen — but what’s truly “telling it like it is.” Let them say: yes, I identify with endless lying and juvenile name-calling — that’s the presidency they want.
Finally, at no extra charge, here’s the last of three recent poetic jests — parodying the nihilistic Macbeth when cornered and facing doom. We hope the same for all pathological liars, grifters and insulters.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Impeachment slowly creeps with petty pace,
Before with luck the end of recorded time;
Blunted yesterdays forgo sending fools
To rightful expulsion. Out, Trump darkness!
Nasty poseur, mired in lying trash talk,
Strutting phony grievances, the stage martyr
Who dumps disgrace on all our heads. Behold
This foul tale, with idiotic sound and fury,
Signifying nothing, though squandering all.
COMMENTS