Donald John tRUMP has no soul. A soul requires
nurturing, years basking in the sunshine of affection, held in the
nest of those about you. Our Caesar Disgustus had, by all
accounting, no such upbringing. Indeed, by the time he reached
pubescence, his father had him shuffled off to a military academy, it
is said, in order to instill some discipline into the boy. Military
academies, in case you aren't aware were, in our youth, places that
adults put kids who just didn't fit in, who didn't adapt, didn't
behave. When a kid was sent off to one of these institutions, it was
seen by the greater community that his parents had thrown up their
hands and given up. But let there be no misunderstanding here: these
were and are institutions. I have not been understood: Donald J.
tRUMP was, as a teenager, institutionalized.
Of course, the cure didn't take. It couldn't take. For
what tRUMP needed was not discipline, it was unconditional love and
acceptance by the people who matter most. Again, I am led back to a
remark made by a college professor who once said “every infant
needs to look into his mother's eyes and see his own reflection. I
looked into my mother's eyes and saw confusion.” When Donald
looked into his parents eyes, he more than likely saw a mixture of
contempt and terror. One doesn't get love from your Sergeant, your drill instructor doesn't tuck you in at night. This is what happens when one is born into a family that has no business having children. It almost makes one feel sorry for the hapless
bastard.
“I often wonder,” wrote
conservative political commentator David Brooks, who
didn't love Donald Trump. I often wonder who left an affection void
that he has tried to fill by winning attention, which is not the same
thing. He's turned himself into a marketing strategy. As Michael
Cohen said in his testimony on Wednesday, even the presidential
campaign was a marketing campaign to build the Trump brand.
“In turning himself into a brand he's turned
himself into a human shell, so brittle and gilded that there is no
place for people close to him to attach....
“Imagine what your own life would be like if you
had no love in it, if you were just using people and being used.”
(1)
When love becomes transactional, everything becomes
transactional. Everything becomes a commodity, where empathy and
compassion have no room, where the terms of the deal are all
that matters. A void is left in place of soul or, as David Brooks so
adroitly put it, he's turned himself into a human shell. I would add
that perhaps he has never been anything but a shell, that any
emerging sense of empathy and compassion—so necessary for a well
adjusted human being—were aborted in childhood. For this, his
parents and extended family have much to account.
“Normal people have moral sentiments,” Observes
Brooks. “Normal people are repulsed when the president
of their own nation lies, cheats, practices bigotry, allegedly pays
off porn star mistresses.
“Were Republican House members enthusiastic or
morose as they decided to turn off their own moral circuits, when
they decided to be monumentally unconcerned by the fact that their
leader may be a moral cretin?
“Do they think that having anesthetized their moral
sense in this case they will simply turn it on again down the road?
“This is how moral corrosion happens. Supporting
Trump requires daily acts of distancing, a process that means that
after a few months you are tolerant of any corruption. You are
morally numb to everything” (2)
Precisely. As the
latest “twitstorm” flushes
the morning sewage into every living room in America, the nation must
perform daily acts of ablution, as the country struggles to keep
itself clean. Basic hygiene requires it. But cleansing is itself an
act of distancing; and it is the only way to, at least momentarily,
rid the stench from the nostrils.
Brooks' observation
about creeping tolerance and growing numbness is telling and bitter.
Look about, in nearly every department of government there brews a
scandal in plain sight. The Veterans Administration being run by a
trifecta of cronies out of the complex at Mar-a-Lago; the witches
brew bubbling at the Environmental Protection Agency where coal,
asbestos and mercury are once again in the ascendance; where
regulations are being shredded in the name of profit. Ergo: the
interior department. And let's not forget the plundering of the
public purse in the prison system, our schools, our health care
system. We haven't even begun to plumb the depths of scandal
swirling about the heads of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, or
Treasury Secretary Mnuchin. The corruption swirling in this cesspool
has become so overwhelming that it dwarfs all previous experience.
It is impossible to keep up with it all, the stench paralyses the
senses. A major political party has already lost its sensibility,
and the rest of the nation may soon follow. What was previously
abhorrent becomes normalized and thereby legitimized.
When Cohen told the
nation about the man behind the curtain, the Republicans only
attacked the veracity of the witness. But, as Gail Collins
recently observed:
“Almost everybody who knows Donald Trump appears to
be going to prison for lying. Or is awaiting sentencing for lying.
Or is facing charges of lying.” (3)
Lies embellishing and supporting this façade; lies that
are the hot air that inflate the balloon that is this shell; lies
that form the hard surface of this empty shell. A shell filled with
nothing but the noxious gas of mendacity; a shell nothing can be
allowed to penetrate; a shell to which nothing can attach.
When Cohen told the
nation about the man behind the curtain, no one on the committee rose
to defend our Caesar Disgustus. You can't defend an empty head, an
empty heart, an empty shell.
“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”
Impeach and Imprison
______________
- Brooks, David. “Morality and Michael Cohen” The New York Times. Friday, March 1, 2019. Page A23.
- Ibid.
- Collins, Gail. “Trump's a Guy Who's Tough To Defend” The New York Times. Thursday, February 28, 2019. Page A27
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