Will It Ever Stop?!?
Sorry for yet another political post, but it’s hard not to comment on the totally extraordinary. Trump’s press conference on Feb. 16 veered from paranoia to grandiosity in a way not unfamiliar to Trump watchers for the last 20 months except for a new, unsurpassed level of narcissism—a level that gets ratcheted up higher and higher the greater the pressure he is under. (I’ll note here that many of his followers were thrilled by his performance; they believe he speaks for them. We’ll see if they believe this in 2019.)
There are so many bolts of craziness shooting from the mouth of the Complainer in Chief, that most of us feel incapable of even enumerating them, much less think of a larger context beyond “I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING!”
So I’ve selected just one thing that I believe I can grasp, thanks to some input from a gentleman who recently called in to the NPR program On Point hosted by Tom Ashbrook.
First, the undeniable, embarrassing, semi-ludicrous public event on Feb. 16:
Donald Trump was caught out, in full view of the world, in a categorically disprovable falsehood when he claimed that his electoral victory was the greatest since Ronald Reagan. As a reporter was pointing out that his count had been surpassed by Obama twice and Clinton twice, Trump interjected “I was talking about Republicans,” only to be told that George H.W. Bush had also beat his electoral number.
To which Donald replied (twice): “I was given this information.” As if he had been misled, as if he were the victim (since he is always the victim) of someone else’s bungling. As if he had not had 90 days since the election to take a look for himself at the actual numbers.
At least Rick Perry would have had the grace to say, “oops.”
“He Doesn’t Want to Learn”
Here’s where the comment from the caller to Tom Ashbrook’s program is apropo (the caller being a lifelong Republican, retired military): “He just doesn’t want to learn.”
Yes! That simple insight goes to the pith of it. It goes deeper than that Donald Trump doesn’t know what the facts are. It goes deeper than that he doesn’t care which facts are actually true, or which are “alternative” facts. It’s that he has little interest in assembling what data points he has, factual or fictional, and using them to expand what he already knows, or thinks he knows—i.e., to learn something (unless it involves making a quick buck).
This is the frame of mind that makes possible a statement such as “I know more about ISIS than the generals do.” He believes it! This is why he needs someone like Steve Bannon at his elbow, a guy who is always on the lookout to extend his knowledge to make a coherent interpretation of events, even if it is to construct a conspiracy theory with but the faintest resemblance to the truth.
I am reminded of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s epigram, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” That’s a positive: since Mr. Trump has trouble holding just one idea in his mind for more than half a minute, we might not have to fear that he can mastermind the creation of a police state.
We do have to worry about Steve Bannon and other henchmen, since that crew is capable of engineering a police state. The fog of Trump’s war on “The Lying Media” enables them to take ground step by incremental step. They’re already running a test with the roundup of immigrants.
Bannon the thinker drives the emotional bulldozer of Donald Trump roughshod over democracy—or so he plans. While the great majority of the Republican legislators are happy to climb aboard the dozer in the interests of passing their agenda, and the ones who are not happy plod behind in silence.