Sep 24, 2020
The Diatribe I’ve Been Avoiding
I didn’t want to do this. This presidency seems like a series of flaming bags of dog shit placed on my porch. So far I’ve resisted stomping them out because that would be fun for everybody but me.
Well things are about to get entertaining.
This President was just asked if he’d ensure a peaceful transition of power if he was not elected. He refused to do so and instead talks about getting rid of ballots. That got my attention. I’ve had this essay in rough form on my desk waiting for him to say that.
Since he’s ready to burn it all down just hold on a damn minute.
A while ago I mentioned our current President’s name critically in a comment on someone’s social media post. It had to do with my trying to consciously ignore his massive inanity. Somebody answered back to the effect that, “For someone who ignores him you seem to spend a lot of time on him.” So I went back to look at my posting history. I mentioned him exactly twice in the previous two months.
Sure, I talked a lot about our current state of politics but only in general terms and this person probably read into that. My underlying drift and my implicit target got through somehow. I thanked the guy for being so attentive to my social media behavior.
But I’m done with that approach. Because while Trump’s buffoonish amorality was never benign I thought it might be survivable. And the dynamic of “any attention is good attention” played right into Trump’s wheelhouse and I was determined not to feed into that. I’m a positivity guy. That requires ignoring much of the negative static that surrounds us.
That attitude has become unsupportable. Now all these flaming bags of dog poo are about to start a house fire.
Those of us who choose to speak out get accused of Trump Derangement Syndrome. What a tidy little phrase. All the alarms that are set off in the process of this man burning it all down are silenced and the ones who pulled the alarms are accused of arson. Meanwhile the fire burns.
A more apt description might be Trump Clarity Syndrome. It is time to see clearly and speak clearly. What is most clear to me is that this deranged man is causing derangement in this world. To point that out is not derangement. It is perfect clarity.
I was determined not to plug into that descending cycle. The unending parade of tweets and incendiary drivel seemed only to screen his pernicious agenda. I was hardly obsessed with the man. I was however concerned with what he was doing. Up until now the person himself seemed contemptuous and undeserving of much attention.
Then I began to see another syndrome, Trump Spinal Removal Syndrome. I realized that my silence is not circumspection, it’s not judiciousness, it’s not deference. It’s spineless.
This is what changed.
We are seeing the perverse machine built around the cult of Trump kick into a higher gear. The machine is designed solely to demonstrate its own power which means the single product it creates is authoritarianism. And with the coming election cycle, that machine has a very real chance of becoming fully operational as tyranny.
His alliance with William Barr (the evilest Attorney General to ever walk this planet), the synchophantic party he has now infested and subdued, to the point of vaporizing their integrity over ramming through a Supreme Court nominee during an election cycle, has put the vital checks of our democracy in peril. This is about as far from hyperbole as I am from sainthood.
So here is what I think of him.
I need to study up on my stupid to understand what he says.
People who find him charming have a chunk of ice that serves as their heart.
He is the King of the Land of Crazy Uncles. Individual congressional districts occasionally elect some nutball. That effect is localized. We elected one as President resulting in a nationwide modeling of that behavior. Instead of getting the same eye-rolls that a nutty uncle would get at the holiday table we now have three or four crazy uncles who seriously think they are contributing to the conversation.
And their champion is who? This man?
He wanders around in a chasm that is his self-serving brain and what comes out of his mouth is assembled into the character of political genius by the nihilistic forces of political entropy.
The desperation that surrounds his supporter’s impulse to achieve their vision of national purity results in tragic consequence. The immense fantasy that is evident in his supporter’s projection of noble intention onto him is astounding. He has been characterized as a prophet. I’ve even read a jaw-dropping piece of philosophical hubris that borrows Max Weber’s contrasting categories of “Emissary” and “Exemplary” prophets to establish his bona fide as an Emissary Phophet; corrupt as hell but who cares?
He is the antinomian devil child.
They point to the Old Testament and argue that God didn’t always require men of virtue to be his prophets. And so it seems any old vacuous narcissist will do for this purpose. Let’s just go with the guy who uses his blunt version of charisma like a psychic stun gun to incapacitate normal powers of discernment.
He is thought of as our nation’s savior. His morally compromised character and the vacuum chamber that serves as his soul become solid evidence of some miraculous wonder that God can even use such a man and that we are by glory witnessing some kind of spiritually and politically fused avatar.
People who make the argument that all politics is evil and so I want my evil guy to dominate at the evil game have completed their cycle of descent into the nether regions, home to only those who demonstrate their moral vacuity and evaporated integrity. And there they rally. Their nihilistic cynicism provide them with their odd knowing smiles, their sloganized cheers of hate, the gapes of fealty that blind them to what should be shame and banishment as they cling to their hero.
And yet the glimmer of insight that history is replete with walking disasters who play that role and leave desolation in their wake is lost to them.
What else do I think of him?
He is the nightmare that doesn’t dissipate with wakefulness. He is the spirit come true of every dark and fevered lie we’ve ever been told about who we are. He is mendacity in human form. He is that pernicious pustule that gives evidence of the lack of our attendance to the health of the civic body.
The trick of the tyrant is first a mental seduction. It is not the physical force we generally assume. We are persuaded that the source of darkness and threat lie around us, in targets of the tyrants own choosing and not where it truly lies, in the black heart of the tyrant.
He is a trifling character of pure id that we have allowed to become a consequential cult leader.
People who join cults don’t ever call their leader a “cult leader”. They don’t even know they are in a cult. They walk the true path. The mental manipulation is so complete that the observation that they might be in some kind of danger is shocking and traitorous.
I will not convince them, because I am their traitor. And they would be right about that. But those of us who are traitors to false causes will have our day. And traitors who defeat tyrants have been known to become patriots.
