Trumpeting The Demise Of Trump
Payback’s A Bitch
Donald Trump is like no other American President. He has mocked the disabled, talked openly of treating women like shit (his words not mine) and how he enjoys groping the female sex. He has called black people lazy and Mexican people rapists.
He is also, by all objective accounts, one of the least intelligent men to ever be repeatedly bankrupted, and has doggedly concealed his taxes and academic records for years, for obvious reasons.
I could go on, but we already know his manifold defects.
I’m Scottish by birth and Australian by citizenship, but yes of course I have a vested interest in the tantrums and treacheries of the ostensible leader of one of the most powerful nations in the world. America has nuclear capability and a dodgy toddler with his fat finger on the button, and the next American election could have global repercussions. If you claim otherwise you are being, at best, disingenuous.
Recently, prayers to the Goddess of Irony were answered when Mr Trump was taken to hospital, infected with the virus which he repeatedly downplayed.
Gaslighting is a technique employed by abusers. Trump’s use of gaslighting appears to be instinctual.
Gaslighting is one of the most insidious and deadly of all emotional manipulation techniques. It distorts your actual sense of self and reality. To have someone point to the sky and insist it is pink when you can clearly see it is blue, is at first frustrating and irritating. Over time it becomes deeply distressing. Given enough time, and particularly if the gaslighter wields any power over their victim, the technique of gaslighting can literally drive people to madness and can sometimes result in some appearing to believe blatant falsehoods.
To an extent, all politicians lie. A desperately sad statement, but true. They all refuse to admit the extent of their own misjudgements and attempt to take credit where it’s not due. They deflect like it’s an Olympic Sport.
“He who controls the language controls the masses.” — Saul Alinsky
But few, outside the realm of dictators, flatly look you straight in the eye and claim a crowd was huge, when it clearly wasn’t. From the beginning, Trump has believed he has the right to use words to suit his goals, rather than adhering to the meaning of the language, which we must all do.
Words do not just reflect reality, reality can be distorted by misusing words.
To have a President who dismisses the concerns and rights of women and people of colour is very bad indeed. To have one who simply lies, lies again, then lies about lying, one who is the embodiment of denial and making counter-allegations, is psychological torture on a mass scale.
No President in American history has lied the way Donald Trump lies.
The other real difference between Mr Trump and all his predecessors is his willingness to mock his own people.
He has made it apparent that he is not the President of the United States, he is the President of Trump Supporters, and only Trump Supporters, and even then only if suits his purposes. Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear that the first and most important matter in the world is the well-being, ego and happiness of Donald Trump.
Better Than Trump?
In the interests of clarity, I don’t particularly admire Joe Biden. While he would undoubtedly be a more pleasing dinner companion than Trump, that’s a very low bar to set. Mr Biden’s tactile behaviours, his age and general apparent infirmity, and his actual politics don’t inspire me at all. The very fact that people think you can point to his penchant for touching women as a product of a bygone age means he’s just too old to be in politics, in my personal opinion. Neither do I embrace the notion that men who behaved inappropriately in years past weren’t aware that what they were doing was inappropriate. Rather, they just knew they could get away with it. And besides all of this, Mr Biden has embraced the synthetic woke-bro lefty culture and seems anaemic on real issues such as health care reform.
Joe Biden’s best hope for election seems to be “Better Than Trump”. But then again, so is nearly everybody. I’m not saying don’t vote for him, if you want Trump out you’re just going to have to hold your nose and vote for Biden. I’m just a bit flabbergasted by the thought that Grabby Old Rambling Joe was the best they could muster.
I mention all of this merely to show my ability to summon up some objectivity. Unlike the rampant right and left, who seem unable to offer any objectivity at all, I’m not a raving Biden supporter seeking a way to amplify anti-Trump sentiment.
My sympathies lie, as they usually do, with the abused.
For the last four years, millions have cried out in agony and torture. To a person who is informed about trauma behaviours, it’s very clear how some of the actions and even overreactions of US citizens to Mr Trump’s various misdeeds are those of traumatised people shouting out their agony in desperation.
When he did nothing to help his fellow Americans make it through the pandemic, when he instigated and encouraged behaviours that would deepen the crisis, he became responsible for unnecessary deaths. Nobody can know how many people died unnecessarily as a result of Trump’s inactions, mockery and prevarications, but if even one American died for no reason, that is an absolute tragedy. And we can safely guess, at a modest estimate, that thousands of the people he swore to protect are dead because he chose not to protect them.
But, when it comes to Trump, this British author summed up how most of the world views him, and did so far more eloquently than I ever could. So I leave you with his brilliant words:
Addendum — I don’t trust Biden one bit either. And I wrote about why here:
Copyright Alison Tennent 2020, all rights reserved. Scottish by birth, upbringing and bloodline, Australian by citizenship. If you’re reading this anywhere but Medium, this work may have been plagiarized.