The Republican National Convention is underway, and already our president has plunked himself down — like the proverbial 2-ton elephant — and tried to turn this into a referendum on the upcoming election, and whether it’ll be rigged.
This is so typical of people like Donald Trump. They invent issues and keep harping on them until they worm their way into our common consciousness. I’m no psychologist and I don’t have a name for this condition. I just know I don’t like it … nor do I like him.
I got in on the ground floor when it comes to disliking Trump. I first heard of him in 1985 when he signed Doug Flutie out of Boston College to play with the New Jersey Generals for the now-defunct United States Football League.
Considering what NFL scouts were saying about Flutie at the time, Trump’s willingness to break the entire league’s bank for the Heisman Trophy winner seemed rash. I’ve never lost that feeling that he was a shoot-first-ask-questions-later kind of guy. Generally, I don’t like those kinds of people.
That’s kind of been his way, right up to today. He speaks first (always brashly), is presented with facts that belie what he just said, and then doubles down. He did it with the Central Park Five (youths — Black — who were convicted and then exonerated for the beating and rape of a female — white — jogger; he called for their execution and then refused to apologize once they were exonerated).
He was one of the main perpetrators of the ugly, shameful “birther” movement against Barack Obama. And when Joe Biden nominated Kamala Harris to be his running mate, he floated another version of that racist trope. He was wrong about Obama, and wrong about Harris.
There are so many other examples, from the unscrupulous way he’s dealt with vendors, to discriminatory housing practices, to the way he not only treated his wives, but that he was so brazen about it, that it’s really amazing that anyone thought he was qualified to be president.
But here he is — launching his bid for another term. And the idea that he could win — of course he could — is scary and sobering.
Notice that up to now, his politics haven’t really entered into this discussion. That’s because his politics have nothing to do with this discussion. I can deal with conservative politics. My only real threshold for considering candidates is whether they believe, as I do, that they’re supposed to make the lives of the rest of us easier, and that they show at least minimal empathy toward what the great many of us have to put up with on a daily basis.
This guy has none, and I’ve never witnessed that. Not with Nixon. Not Reagan. And not Bush (I or II). I tend to lean left, so there’s plenty about all the aforementioned men I didn’t like. But not once did I ever feel as if they were lacking in basic compassion for what life has dealt some people.
Until now.
There are some other things, even more frightening, that bother me. This man is addicted to adversarial relationships. He needs real-live bogeymen (or women — hello, Mrs. Pelosi) who can serve as foils for him to kick around. They fuel him.
He understands that these adversarial relationships fuel anger in people — anger that he needs in order to maintain their support.
Have you ever seen a politician — on either side of the aisle — so willing to stoke anger in people? I know others have done it, but certainly not to this level. If you’re looking for an introduction to Goebbels 101, this would be it.
And let’s discuss his incessant use of the schoolyard taunt. Crooked Hillary. Sleepy Joe. Little Marco. Low-energy Jeb. Pocahontas. Phony Kamala. If he were your kid, and you heard him at the playground acting like such a little (well, you know), you’d have all you could do not to swat him.
He tweets like a teenage girl, pouts like a little kid banished to the corner, and nurses grudges and slights to an almost pathological degree.
He refused to see the coronavirus as a dangerous reality, preferring instead to treat it as a political nuisance. Since it has killed about 170,000 Americans — in good part because there wasn’t a unified national strategy for dealing with it — I’d say it was more than a nuisance. But, it is what it is.
The man cannot control his worst impulses, and he actively invites the worst in all of us. Sometimes it comes out his way — such as when neo-Nazis and neo-rebels marched in the streets of Charlottesville, Va. He was fine with that. And sometimes, these things don’t come out his way, such as when protesters can become violent (which is unfortunate, and wrong). Then, he sends in federal troops, promises draconian responses (which is something he did not do in Charlottesville), or just bulldozes them out of his way for a photo op.
As far as I’m concerned, he can golf all he wants, his wife can get as many haircuts as she wants … I don’t care. We have bigger fish to fry. One of these days, his lack of impulse control will have serious repercussions. And I’ll have the smug satisfaction of saying “I told you so,” even though I hope to God it never happens.
