Deconstructing Donald Trump - How Progressives Finally Get The Picture

Donald Trump is not exactly a recondite character.  What you see is what you get.  You may not like it, but there he is, all Sturm und Drang, braggadocio, outrageously incorrect, bombast, and snarky humor. 'Get over it', he says. 

In the decade that Trump has been on the political scene, the Left has tried to discredit him.  They have branded him a racist, homophobe, misogynist, rapist, and crook.  They have filed lawsuit after lawsuit to bring him down, to put him behind bars, to be done with him once and for all.  They have accused him of treason, Constitutional abuse, autocracy, and regal ambitions. 

Nothing has stuck.  Nothing has worked.  He gave Kamala Harris a thrashing at the polls, and in the seven months of his presidency, he has made good on every one of his promises.  He has slashed and burned the bloated, useless Washington bureaucracy.  He has ridiculed and removed absurdist woke notions of race, gender, and ethnicity.  

Voters are coming to realize that apart from the Left's wild, Trump-hating dances of doom, warnings of environmental incineration, and pulp fiction sexuality, there is nothing there.  A palsied St. Vitus' dance; a pie with no filling; a barque with rotting hawsers. 

Bob Muzelle, a social reformer, a dyed-in-the-wool progressive, the son of socialist garment worker activists, community organizers and blacklisted but proud seditionists, was unrepentant and unbowed in his determination to see justice done and to see the great defiler out of office, disgraced, and gone. 

Every day of Trump's presidency was painful to watch.  The more he saw blonde, blue-eyed white women go in and out of the White House, the Oval Office turned into a KKK meeting hall, and the cause of the oppressed black man dismissed and ignored, the more he hated the man and what he stood for. 

But Bob, a Yale man trained in Cartesian logic and the insights of Kant, Schopenhauer, and Paul Weiss, felt he should at least try to deconstruct the President, disassemble the man to make sense of his appeal.  How could such an intellectual fraud, such an imposter, a tout, a political pimp have gotten so far; and how could tens of millions of Americans have voted for him?

What Muzelle and his colleagues missed is that Donald Trump is the first real American president - a loud, uncultured, bullying, crass, and pushy example of the American ethos; a man of Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the streets of New York. A 'So, sue me, fuck you, prove it' kind of guy who escorts tarty women, has more palaces than a pasha, has unmitigated chutzpah and a Borscht Belt crippling humor, and believes in the Wild West. 

For a century, Americans were led by social elites - the Roosevelts of Hyde Park, the Kennedys of Hyannisport, the Bushes of Kennebunk - or political elites, insiders who made government their bread and butter, LBJ and Nixon, poor boys who resented the patrician Harvard Kennedys.  

Finally a real man of the people, Donald Trump, comes along - not only a political populist but a man who subscribes to every American dream - glitz, glamour, arm candy, sequins, and gawdy jewelry.  Fame, big showy, big-busted, silk-suited American fame. 

The Left simply does not to do with the man, so unlike any other politician that has come across their bow.  'Give 'em hell' Harry Truman, as outspokenly prairie as any, was never in the same league as Trump, as foul-mouthed as any barroom brawler, gunslinger, or teamster.  

While the Left desperately hoped for a Kamala Harris victory - not because of her progressive ideas but that she was a black woman, the very embodiment of the racial reconfiguration of America and another step up the social ladder for a black person to the top of the human pyramid - their hopes were dashed completely by this unabashedly white, European-loving, economic primitivist.  

It was not to be.  The Left is scattered, in disarray, and grasping for purchase on a sinking ship.  After decades of social nostrums, political larks, and self-righteous assumptions, they are scrambling for policy.  How indeed, and on what proven principles, historical precedent, philosophical logic would they lead the nation?

Yet, despite the urgency, the abysmal ratings in opinion polls, and the mid-term elections coming up soon, they can only come up with the impossibly unelectable has-beens Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders. 

 

Meanwhile the Trump juggernaut gains momentum with executive orders, political fiat, lawsuits, legislative initiatives, restatements of ethos and core foundational principles.  The country was changing right before Bob Muzelle's eyes and he could only stand by and watch.  He was tongue-tied and flummoxed. He sputtered.  He babbled. 

The cat was out of the bag.  The emperor had no clothes on. There were only two sexes, the black man had a long way to go before even touching the bottom rung of the social ladder, the free market, as old as Neanderthal trading of cowrie beads was still alive with a vengeance; and entitlement, racial preference, and feel-good giveaways were things of the past.  

Guns were back on the shelves and open-carry permits now available to all. The development of deadly modern armaments was underway, free speech was back, and the old incorrect Eddie Murphy 'Raw' live performances back in vogue. 

Still Bob hesitated - understanding all this seemed just within his reach when the old bile seeped up his esophagus and choked him.  The old Trump hatred would simply not go away.  It had become so much a part of his personal zeitgeist that he couldn't let go. 

It remains to be seen whether he will at some point look at the parade of white, blonde, spectacularly nubile and beautiful young things walking down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House and want to join them.  At his age desire is about all he will have, but a man is not a man if he doesn't always want sweet, young, blonde things in bed with him. 

Can You Love A Racist? Of Course You Can

Writing in the New York Times Jennifer Finney Boylan, a transgender woman, wonders whether the Salvation Army should be universally condemned for its conservative views on gender and LGBTQ.  Or, should this one ‘fault’ be overlooked in light of the decades of selfless service to the poor?

We have all been faced with this dilemma one way or another.  After years of bad haircuts, a man finally found a barber who could deal with his wild, curly hair. The problem with the barber, however, was that he was a racist – so instinctively and angrily so that he simply assumed that his client agreed with him.  Every time he got into the chair, the barber started in on on blacks.  There wasn’t an epithet invented that he didn’t use, no stereotype left behind; no story of rape, assault, irresponsibility, and laziness untold.  It was 45 minutes of vitriol and hate.

Yet, despite and through this assault, he was as magical as Edward Scissorhands.  He was a master.

After a year of this, the client had had enough. His unease at hearing the fevered rants of Tony the barber trumped his delight at having a decent haircut.  No matter how good he was a cutting hair – and he was a genius – the client judged him to be a bad person.

Yet this judgement might be the first slide on a slippery slope.  If one judged the Tonys of the world on just one thing, no matter how reprehensible it may seem, then why shouldn’t one judge others in the same way?  It takes all kinds, and clients sit in Tony’s chair to get a haircut, not to engage him in racial politics.  Why not simply tune him out?

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a great, courageous man; but he was also a Lothario who cheated on his wife and was more of a sexual wastrel than JFK.  Did these moral failings disqualify both men from leadership or high public office?

Many women immediately disqualified Bill Clinton from any further political consideration after he had sex with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office. If he cheated on his wife, they said, he will most certainly cheat on us. Yet the Bill Clinton years look good in the light of recent White House debacles.

Ezra Pound and H.L. Mencken were both rabid anti-Semites, but their work was notable.  Immanuel Kant said, “'The Jews still cannot claim any true genius, any truly great man. All their talents and skills revolve around stratagems and low cunning ... They are a nation of swindlers.”

George Bernard Shaw said, “Stop being Jews and start being human beings”. Theodore Dreiser said, “New York is a 'kike's dream of a ghetto,' and Jews are not 'pure Americans' and 'lack integrity”.
Are we to burn their books? Consign them to the trash heaps of literary history? 

It doesn’t take much scraping of the surface to find something in public, literary, scientific, sports, or Hollywood to offend our current sensibilities. Mel Gibson, a decent actor, is also a raging anti-Semite. Gay slurs are common in our football and basketball heroes.  

Wilt Chamberlain boasted of the fact that he had slept with 1000 women and the clock was still ticking.  In many people’s mind he was a degenerate, a profligate, and irresponsible.  Yet, he was one of the greatest basketball players ever and changed forever the way the game of professional basketball was played.

Most people have some prejudice somewhere. While we may not like to admit it, there is some irrational, unfounded, and totally unnecessarily negative feelings about others lurking inside us.
It is often hard to distinguish between prejudice and strongly-held and rational belief.  The progressive Left in America has been at the forefront of the cancel culture - personality, character, courage, honesty, fidelity, humor are of no concern, relevance, or interest if someone is on the wrong side of the race-gender-ethnicity canon. 

Thomas Jefferson has been cancelled because of his slaveholding and worse, his affair with a slave. In fact everyone of the slaveholding era from Washington to Franklin, New Bedford shippers involved in the Three Cornered Trade, New England contractors who built the ships carrying slaves, molasses, and rum, Wall Street investors who lent the money for the enterprise has been cancelled and their achievements, historical significance, social status and recognition all dismissed. 

Slavery is as old as civilization itself and every race - black, white, Asian, African, European - has at one time been enslaved.  It has always been the prerogative of the victor, the conqueror, the ruler.  How and why should Americans living within this millennia-old context be cancelled for their participation in it.  If Aristotle, Plato, Aeschylus, and Socrates had slaves; if Caesar Augustus, Xerxes II, and the great Gupta and Mauryan kings have slaves, why should Jefferson be singled out? 

Without the active participation of African tribal leaders who routinely took, captured and sold slaves taken in warfare, and who saw great profit in selling them to European trades, there would be no Transatlantic slave market.

 

What about the ‘disqualification clause’? Should one cut off communication with a friend because his political views are radically different? Perhaps such difference is not just a matter of political opinion, but one of morals and ethics.  One’s political philosophy, according to this view, is a defining personal characteristic.  A conservative is not simply one who believes in small government and individual enterprise but someone who has a cribbed and narrow view of life, lacks generosity and compassion, and is cynical about human potential.

Yet, despite political differences, if two friends have known each other since childhood and have always liked each other for reasons discovered at age twelve – energy, enthusiasm, brains, allure, adventure - why should one thing – political philosophy – get in the way of love, passion, and insight?

There are Northerners who condemn anyone visiting the Deep South - traitors to liberalism, giving succor to still unrepentant racists.  Yet without understanding the South, one can never understand American history.

 

Is it wrong to have friends who persistently harbor racist beliefs? Or whose political views are so far to the left or right on one's own that they are dismissed out of hand?

Which brings us to the question of Ms. Boylan, LGBTQ, and the Salvation Army. While her experience is upfront and personal, it raises once again the issue of ‘unique wrong’. Without a doubt the Salvation Army – a Christian conservative church – holds traditional views of sexuality which have little or nothing to do with the performance of their mission.  The Boy Scouts also have a conservatively Christian foundation, and their views are predictably similar to those of the Salvation Army. 

The Catholic Church is very open about its views of traditional marriage, sex, and sexuality. Should these organizations be ignored?  A dismissal of homosexuality on Biblical grounds is not homophobia.  If the Salvation Army and its leadership were openly hostile to LGBTQ, and displayed hatred, anger, and virulence towards gays; and if this emotional and irrational stance were clearly that of the organization, then one might consider withholding contributions, but not before.

Ms. Boylan illustrates the difference well:

That knowledge put an end to my days as one of their [Salvation Army] volunteers. The organization advocated celibacy for homosexuals and resisted offering benefits to employees’ same-sex partners. Then, shockingly, a major in an Australian branch of the Salvation Army appeared to suggest in an interview that putting gay people to death was “part of our belief system.”

The American Salvation Army was acting on principle, whether or not one agreed with it.  The branch of the Australian Army exhibited hatred, prejudice, and unacceptable behavior. Ms. Boylan, or any reasonable person would keep them at arm’s length.

One issue morality like single-issue politics is never good for it  ignores complexity, the ability to hold conflicting views, to be inconsistent, and to be ignorant and brilliant at the same time.

The Man With The Big Brain - A Cautionary Tale

Bob Holsom was proud of his big brain - not his intelligence per se, but the size of his brain which he thought was remarkable, for he had developed this theory that the larger the frontal lobes, the greater the intellectual capacity. 

He was proud of his large forehead, accentuated by a receding hairline, and was quick to share his theory with anyone who would listen.  He had a parlor game - although with very serious intent - that he liked to play with colleagues.  The one who could take the longest time to draw a straight line from Point A to Point B, a few inches only, would be the smartest. 

Bob had devised the theory based on his 'Concentration Paradigm' which stated that people with the mental discipline to focus on small tasks and continue to do so until their completion, were of higher intelligence. 

Christopher Barkley, for example, spent whole nights in his basement studio drawing intricate pine trees, each needle done with one, irreversible stroke.  He had learned this technique in China where he had studied classical painting with Liu Tze Xi - a technique that combined traditional Chinese ink drawing with Zen Buddhism.

 

Christopher had read everything he could on the martial arts and especially swordsmanship, the highest expression of pure Zen concentration.  For hours he would sit in the lotus position in his room reading  Haiku and imagining the sound of one hand clapping, the paradoxical Zen koan which symbolized the evanescent nature of reality; and then start work on his trees. 

Each branch took hours, for the concentration and mental preparation for each stroke took time - the stoke must be accurate, perfect, and pure.  When he emerged from his studio into the bright light of morning, tired and unfocussed from the effort of such miniscule, close work, he pulled down the shades.  He needed time and space to adjust to the transition from pure concentration to the diffuse, random sights and sounds of the day. 

 

Christopher was not only a gifted Zen artist, but a mathematician and musician.  There was obviously some carryover, some neurological links between the parts of he brain responsible for each discipline, or perhaps all three were part of the same brain architecture and all subject to his recall. 

In any case Bob was fascinated by Christopher, the son of one of his colleagues, and asked if he could observe him for scientific reasons, nothing more.  At first the young man hesitated, for it would mean that he would be observed during his long nights at his drawing board and followed during his recitals and MIT classes in logarithmic calculus; but after little persuasion agreed. 

Now, there was no scientific research on record that made any association between frontal lobes, concentration, and high intelligence, so Bob, rather than undeterred, undertook his own observations with renewed vigor.  He found, recruited, and paid volunteers with prominent foreheads - the external sign of large frontal lobes - reviewed their academic records and gave them the line test. 

Most of the volunteers quit after ten or fifteen minutes - Bob paid them regardless of how long they held the pen - and were convinced that he was 'a little off', happy to have some spending money but deciding never to return to Bob's makeshift laboratory - a windowless room in the basement of Markum Hall. 

In fact Bob, who was convinced that he was the example of frontal lobe intelligence, was alien-looking in appearance - an exceedingly large head and unusually prominent forehead set atop a long neck and bony body - but he was proud of it and did everything possible to accentuate it. He would tilt his head at just the right moments in the right light and shadows, sweep his hair theatrically back in a gesture which would expose the wide reaches of his forehead, and hold his head in his hands, covering all but his forehead. 

Christopher, like Bob's laboratory volunteers, found his presence annoying and his premise doubtful, and politely told him that his busy schedule could no longer accommodate this additional responsibility. 

Word of Bob's obsession spread in the small town where he lived, and before long, he was passed by.  Small towns are like that, enclosures of settled propriety; but Bob was still surprised at how he became a laughing stock.  When children passed him on the street, they pointed to their foreheads, googled their eyes and stuck out their tongues, and adults in line at the post office couldn't help but stare at his head, now appearing even larger thanks to the distortions of gossip and fable-telling. 

Bob's job as Senior Accountancy Clerk at the New Brighton National Bank was perfect for him, for his days were spent in the minutiae of adding and subtracting.  Although he felt that his intelligence was far greater than what was required of him at the bank, he found his ability to concentrate on the smallest, most insignificant details of money transfers, deposits, and withdrawals satisfying and proof of his uniqueness. 

At first Bob had looked for girlfriends with large foreheads - mating with a like individual would be sure to produce the first of a long lineage of superiorly endowed children - but those that met his stringent criteria were so ashamed of what they considered their deformity, that they hid in the shadows, wallflowers by choice.  Homeliness is as homeliness does, and these women because of their misshapenness became homely in spirit - a humorless, dour lot. 

Bob, despite his peculiar and particular anatomical focus, had been brought up in a traditional home - pretty mom, and especially good-looking dad who had an eye for the ladies and one of whose first bits of wisdom passed on to his son was, 'Women want it as much as we do, Bob' a homily meant to discourage usual male adolescent timidity. 

Bob's father in fact felt under special obligation to encourage his son who had unfortunately inherited none of the attractive genes of his parents and looked sadly like his Uncle Harry, a misshapen thing with a basso profundo voice who ruined every Christmas dinner with his stories of Borneo. 

So it was no surprise that Bob was attracted to the prettiest girls in his class, and although he had no success with them, he never lost interest.  So, scientific inquiry, self-image, and sexual desire all conflicted and in the usual approach-avoidance situations (Havelock Ellis) he pined for female company but spent nights alone. 

If he was to be an eccentric recluse, then he might as well take advantage of the isolation that came with it.  He applied to a number of graduate school departments of Neuro-psychology and sent them examples of his work.  Not surprisingly he heard back from none of them. 

Undaunted Bob kept up his work and after a year completed 'On Frontal Lobe Pathology - Pathway To Genius', a four-hundred page self-published book he hoped would gain him the recognition he had always expected and felt he deserved. 

Amazon took it for a fee - in these days of AI and electronic marketing, it cost them nothing to put the book for sale - but interest was desultory at best and trickled off to nothing. 

So, old Triple B (Big Brained Bob) kept on at the bank.  The New Brighton Herald did a Style Section piece on Bob - 'How Big Is Your Brain - Time To Measure Up' and for a time he was in the spotlight but not exactly the Nobel variety he wished. In fact because the piece was a tongue-in-cheek bit of snarky journalistic bravado, he was even more of a side show attraction than before. 

Somewhere along the way he got religion.  He had been taken by the physiognomy of some of the Church's most revered, although lesser known saints, all of whom were noted for their miracles and their unusual appearance.  St. Lucinda Parra de Montoya had been a nun in the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Quito when the Virgin Mary appeared to her and told her to go out among the people, which she did and cured a mortally ill girl of twelve.  Her miracle and - to Bob - her phrenology, were impressive. Maybe there was a link between spiritual destiny and the frontal lobes as well. 

Bob never did find a suitable mate, and was supposedly seen in Coeur d'Alene in a forest community of 'anti-socialists', men and women who rejected bourgeois America and lived in an environment of complete intellectual fantasy where any idea was given attention and immediately absorbed as received wisdom. 

A fitting end to his life if it was true - finally a congenial home for a man with unusual ideas that fit nowhere except in a place where that was exactly the point.