From concern to alarm
There's no longer any ignoring the poisoning effect on our politics and culture
I was never a fence-sitter regarding Donald Trump, let alone an enthusiast.
The unpalatable traits we see on display were apparent from the time he first became a national figure and released his first book, The Art of the Deal. At that point, he was still trying to pass himself off as suave. The cover photo shows him in his trademark full-length overcoat, sporting a half-smile, couching his intent to intimidate in a suave presentation of himself. The scandals and messiness - bankruptcies, affairs and divorces, failed ventures - started to unfold in the ensuing years. Then came the reality show, which was arguably fun for those into that sort of thing, but served notice in the way it was structured that the intimidation would no longer be of the soft-focus type. It was also apparent, from the titles of subsequent books, that ghostwriters and editors no longer exerted much influence. We went from Art of the Deal to Think Big and Kick Ass! and Time To Get Tough!
He’s been scattershot in his praise for public figures. In 2008, he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that Nancy Pelosi was “impressive” and said he “like[d] her a lot.” He even opined that she should have impeached then-president George W. Bush. He’s called Hillary Clinton “terrific” on a couple of occasions, once in the context of being torn between voting for her for president or Rudy Giuliani in 2008, and in 2012, in the context of her then-recent stint as secretary of state.
Recall that he had a lengthy phone conversation with Bill Clinton in the spring of 2015 about how to get involved in the upcoming election cycle.
By August 2015, mere weeks after the descent on the Trump Tower escalator, expressions of trepidation were surfacing. Thomas Sowell, writing at National Review, said:
The danger is not that he will get the nomination, but that his irresponsible talk will become the image of the Republican party, and that his bombast will drown out more sober voices that need to be heard, thereby making it harder to select the best candidate.
and:
A shoot-from-the-hip, bombastic show-off is the last thing we need or can afford.
Obviously, Sowell was mistaken about Trump’s prospects of winning the GOP nomination and the presidency, but so were a great many others. It only reinforces what he had to say about what a dreadful prospect that was.
We know all too well what manner of chaos has ensued from that point. And we’re at the point of near-exhaustion going round and round with Trumpists regarding whether the good moves, which have happened because sane, wise, principled people have had his ear (such as the Federalist Society when it has come to judges) do or do not outweigh the cringe-worthy and disgusting developments.
The Leftist / Democrat view that Trump is unacceptable only shares the most general and superficial similarity to conservative ire (and I insist on taking the term “conservative” back from the Trumpists). Progressives would have been 95 percent as determined to hobble and, if possible, remove an actual conservative president. For one thing, we’d have had the above-mentioned good moves, which would have whipped them into a frenzy. The repellant nature of Trump’s personality has just provided the other five percent of their rage.
And, as we know, that rage has made for a backdrop of a Mueller investigation and an impeachment as our nation has conducted its business since Trump took office.
But since his acquittal, the bombast we’d already seen has taken an unprecedentedly dark turn.
It began with his two appearances two days after the vote.
The National Prayer Breakfast provided a stark study in contrasts. Trump followed the keynote address given by former American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks. Now, Brooks is not only a scholar of impeccable credentials. He has more depth and humanity in his little finger that Trump could ever aspire to. Brooks’s speech was about involving the heart in one’s transactions, about extending grace. Trump took the podium, after strutting around the stage holding high the above-the-fold headline in that morning’s USA Today (“Acquitted”), and spoke directly to Mr. Brooks, telling him he wasn’t sure he agreed and that Brooks might not like what he was going to have to say. Trump then went into attack mode.
In the East Room of the White House a short time later, Trump gathered supporters for what he called a “celebration,” and made a little history by being the first president to publicly use the word “bullshit” in that space.
Since then, it’s only gotten more troubling.
It’s clear that he doesn’t subscribe to the notion of extending grace. He has no comprehension of the power inherent in leaving well enough alone. He cannot let anyone’s remarks go unanswered. No sooner had John Kelly given his talk at Drew University, where he said, among other things, that the summits with Kim Jong-Un were pointless and that Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman had responded to his concern about the July 25 phone call with Zelensky in a textbook manner, Trump's tweeted that he couldn’t terminate his chief of staff fast enough and that Kelly had been in over his head.
There have been some other unprecedentedly disturbing tweets of late, but this one is downright sinister:
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“Ralph Waldo Emerson seemed to foresee the lesson of the Senate Impeachment Trial of President Trump. ‘When you strike at the King, Emerson famously said, “you must kill him.’ Mr. Trump’s foes struck at him but did not take him down. A triumphant Mr.Trump emerges from the.....
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.....biggest test of his presidency emboldened, ready to claim exoneration, and take his case of grievance, persecution and resentment to the campaign trail.” Peter Baker @nytimes The Greatest Witch Hunt In American History!
King.
The use of the term is supremely creepy, but consider the overall message. Even Peter Baker, writing in the Times, and setting the table for his point with an objective observation, now acknowledges that I am invincible! “Emboldened"!”
Then there is the intensified venom of Trump’s slavish devotees. In Jeanine Pirro’s opening monologue the Frebruary 8 edition of her FNC show, she excoriated Mitt Romney for his impeachment vote, calling him a “snake in the grass” and couching it as a matter of disloyalty to the Republican Party and, of course, Donald Trump. Again, no extension of grace, no respect for Romney’s consulting his conscience and coming to a heartfelt conclusion. The abrupt about-face Lou Dobbs did in the space of 24 hours on his Fox Business Channel program, going from saying on Wednesday that Attorney General Bill Barr was doing “the Lord’s work” to saying on Thursday that Barr “doesn’t get what the president has been through.”
What we have in Trumpism is such a devotion to one person that he is permitted not only to be as inconsistent and incoherent as he pleases, but that the movement takes its cue from him as to the acceptability of being mean and nasty over any degree of taking exception to the person or his “agenda,” such as it is.
We’re in a new phase. Trump’s intensified hubris, coupled with Bernie Sanders’s frontrunner status among Democratic candidates, has greatly darkened the horizon for our nation.
I remain unwilling to be forced by the binary-choice argument to pick a side or a brand. All our options are unacceptable.
That’s not a pleasant juncture at which to find ourselves, but the alternative reaction would be to become a cult-worshipper, out of desperation, for one form of poison of the other.