Received Wisdom - Donald Trump And The Addling Of The Mediocre Mind

Esta Grand liked to talk about 'modernity' and the downfall of America and launched into a screed about Elon Musk's racism, the seminal, forward-looking nature of transgenderism, the insights and profound principles of Joe Biden, and the horrifying, bullying nature of the high-tech billionaires who were foisting AI on the country to create a rich man's club that far outdistanced the International Jewish Conspiracy for its deceitful, insurrectionist designs. 

Nothing stopped the woman once she got going, a thuddingly boring pedant who couldn't wait to share her obvious truths with the rest of the guests sitting around the dinner table.  A smile here and an 'As Bob rightly said...' nod to dissidence, she was insufferable.  

Hammering on without an original thought in her head, a mighty wind of suppositions and received wisdom, she ruined the foie gras, spoiled the pot-au-feu, and wrecked the creme brulee. 

 

As she warmed up, her asides about Trump's low-brow, smarmy, anti-Americanism became more wrought, febrile, and fantastical.  His wrestling event, the arch, the reflecting pool, the ballroom were all examples of his idiocy and his dangerously seditious mind.  She flailed at his wars.  

He was killing innocent Iranians to enrich his cronies with oil wealth, murdering Palestinian children to support the savage, occupying regime of Israel, ready to bomb Cuba the only country in the hemisphere with generous social services for its people, and deporting millions of needy asylees to return to the gulags they fled. 

Esta paused for a moment to catch her breath.  Her complaisant, nodding, silent husband could only smile at what was a soaring aria, the plaintive but angry convictions of a saintly woman. 

The guests, off their food thanks to her increasingly bellowing accusations, shuffled in their chairs, wondering when the woman would stop; but they had hours to go before she was finished.  There was no end to her fury, he adamantine purpose, and her wild assumptions.  

If the guests had not been so hammered by this fool, they might have seen it as the grand guignol that it was, full of Sturm und Drang.  They might have been impressed by the full tidal bore of her hatred, that rush of venomous bile - the performance was indeed quite something - but they just sat and waited for the fury to end. 

Dinners were usually ordinary, predictable affairs at the Fentons who were gracious, accommodating hosts who set a good table - the foie gras-to-Camembert meals were always appreciated - so the guests were taken aback by the unhinged episode unfolding before them. 

At first they thought that with a few nominal, polite nudges from others, she might turn to other matters; but they couldn't have been more wrong. It was a miserable, frightful evening. 

So, back to 'modernity' which Esta obviously thought was a new idea, a new concept, a catch-all notion that captured the horrendously awry zeitgeist of Trump's America.  She rambled among bits of the Enlightenment, Ancient Greece, the Founding Fathers and the gross insolent ignorance of the American electorate, and made no sense at all.  

Yet, for her the idea not only had traction but salience.  It was the essential go-to idea of all, the one overarching theme that encapsulated the 'boobocracy' of Donald Trump and his sycophantic followers. 

'When will you make an end?'' shouted an exasperated Pope Julius to Michelangelo, high up on a scaffold near the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel putting final touches on God; and the patient, respectful group around the dining room table sympathized.  When would the woman shut up?

It was not meant to be.  Esta was on a roll; but just like a good preacher, skilled in the variations of a good sermon - quietly intimating, imploring, then accusing the congregation with fiery admonitions - Esta adjusted her napkin ring, took a sip of Chardonnay, and smiled. 'It is hope for the future that fills my heart', she said. 'A verdant, peaceful, congenial place of shared values and aspirations without anger or resentment.  If we all just pull together and...'

This was more than Anton Mills could stand.  He had patiently suffered through Esta's harangues, lectures, and flailing summations; but this little homily took the cake. It was the last straw, the hole in the dike, the final calamitous howl of a blowhard. 

 'Excuse me' he said, but there was no holding her back.  She didn't even notice the empty chair and the half-drunk glass of wine that Anton had left.   

Anton stayed in the bathroom more than any healthy person would hoping that by the time he returned to the table, the woman would have finished, but she was still at it, whaling away at Trump, Musk, Bezos, Huang and all the other 'predacious, greedy despots claiming patriotism'. 

It is hard to imagine that this same scene could be playing out in other homes in this leafy upscale neighborhood of Washington, that there could be any one else like Esta Grand, but the neighborhood was in lockstep in their adamant progressivism. To a person they were climate change activists, champions of the black man, promoters of gays and lesbians, advocates for open borders, and for the immediate demission of the demon of 1700.  

One would think that in such a tight, closed band of neighborhood brothers there would be any need to yell and scream about the President; but there it was on Albemarle Street, Davenport Street, and Ellicott Street at that very moment. 

Princeton Sociologist Harper Braun noted:

This phenomenon, a neo-Orwellian groupthink, has a far more insidious character, for it comes from within.  There is no Big Brother enforcing political uniformity.  As a class, the residents of communities like University Park, have created this internal rage themselves. Feeding off each other, they become progressively insular, angry, and implacable in their beliefs.  Reason, moderation, sense and sensibility out the window. 

 

Anton Mills thanked God that she had finally stopped talking and he could say his adieus and make his way home; but it would take more than a good night's sleep to rid him of the aftereffects of the evening's bludgeoning. 

 He had kept his own counsel and said nothing in response to Esta Grand's increasingly outrageous claims - he had promised his wife to keep the peace - but perhaps a good drubbing was exactly what the woman needed.  

Coming from University Park and so immured in a rabid progressivism, she had never met anyone who disagreed with her, let alone a political conservative, and God forbid anyone who gave the current President any respect. So a good whopping might do the trick - shut up this abominable bore and liberate dinner parties from her scourge. 

But he pulled up, drank more of the Chardonnay that he should have, imagined busty Annabelle from Accounting, and dreamt of swimming in the Caribbean; but such was the awful battering he was taking, that even those pleasant thoughts had no effect. 

It has a name - Trump Derangement Syndrome or TDS - but that did no justice to the particular frenzy of Esta Grand who was a bolus of unhinged, insufferable hatred.  It defined her, it characterized her, it was her indelible meme.  It was terrible. 

It is hard to imagine such unmoored, wild animus for the Republican President Eisenhower or even the quietly patrician and patriotic George H.W. Bush, and observers have looked for answers but come up with none. 

Was it culture? A bourgeois, lowbrow, thug? Was it one-of-a-kind, never seen before circus clown, not 'acting presidential'? Or was it simply that he finally and once and for all called out the faux idealism, self-assuredness, and bombastic righteousness of the Left? 

All of the above, most likely, but the event at the Fenton household was indeed something to see, hopefully never to be repeated, but sadly not so.