Monday, October 19, 2020

Closing Arguments

I really think this explains what follows (and it might help to be listening to Paul Simon's "Graceland" while you read this. I'm listening to it as I type. Something appropriate about that coincidence.)

Trump is the poster child and the Superspreader-in-Chief for a deeper illness in America. It afflicts men and takes the form of patriarchy and toxic masculinity—a system in which (mostly white) men promiscuously wield their privilege and power to control others.

To counteract his own feelings of insecurity and inadequacy, Trump’s primary defense has long been the grandiose insistence that “Only I can fix it.” It’s a zero-sum game. If he doesn’t “win” in every contest, real or imagined, then he sees himself as a loser. If he isn’t in total control, he feels weak and humiliated. If he isn’t dominating, he is succumbing.

This is what Trump believes it is to be a real man, and from that perspective, his recent behavior makes perfect sense. No disease is going to tell Trump what to do. He treats COVID as just another opponent he must squash—not by bringing the crisis under control for the sake of all citizens, but by minimizing and sneering at it himself. Likewise, no one is going to make him denounce the white supremacists who support him, and no defeat at the polls is going to force him to voluntarily give up the presidency, even if each of these stances make it more likely that he’ll lose the election.

Trump’s lack of empathy and absence of conscience have long given him the license to invent his own rules, define his own reality, defy norms, and break multiple laws. He lies without shame, and the more unacceptable he finds the facts, the more he dissembles. The volume of his lies has increased from five per day in the first year of his presidency, to 23 a day in the spring of this year, and almost certainly much higher during the past several months. In the 18 months that I spent with Trump to write The Art of the Deal, I never once saw him express affection or comfort to anyone, including his three young children. I saw no evidence that he ever had a single true friend.

Now, sensing defeat, Trump is doing what he’s always done under stress: doubling and tripling down on whatever fictional facts he wishes were true. But this time, his brazen tactics have produced exactly what they’re meant to defend against. He looks weaker, more vulnerable, and more out of control than at any time since his election. His poll numbers have plummeted.

Really haven't seen a better description of "toxic masculinity" than that highlighted passage.  Now what's he doing with it as the days darken and the weeks to November 3 run out? 

Projecting like a cineplex. Attacking the people with the megaphone is never a show of strength. Gee, why is that? He probably won't like this one, either: Is it time to talk about "herd immunity" yet? At this point it's safe to say they've given up on the entire country. [Insert "His supporters' lips move when they read" joke here.] I know, but I'm fed up worrying about the feelings of those "snowflakes." Especially when Il Duce is the Criminal-In-Chief.
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