Sometime in the next couple of weeks, I'll read Mary Trump's Too Much and Never Enough. Based on some reviews, I'm going to be enormously thankful for her book.
Mary Trump is a clinical psychologist, and she evidently brings insights regarding concerns that have given me the willies. Dahlia Lithwick of Slate offers a fine July 13 column that highlights one of these concerns. Why did people glom onto Donald Trump as a presidential candidate, and how can intelligent, presumably clear-eyed Republican politicians enable what is nation-damaging presidential behavior?
I've often attended speeches or events featuring an outlier, anti-science speaker. What chills me isn't listening to Count Dracula at the podium. It's glancing around and realizing that most of the audience has bite marks in their necks. The idea that education and critical thinking has somehow failed for a large chunk of the U.S. population is always unnerving. What's worse in the case of President Trump is that it was only after the 2016 election that I understood the citizenry I thought I knew had become pod people, hijacked by some deep need to believe in a person obviously ill equipped to do what they wanted him to do. At the time, I found it as amusing as scary. Maybe all those MAGA folks had a deep seated need to live vicariously through someone who could "grab them by the pussy." Now, however, in the middle of a pandemic, it's not so amusing. Mary Trump promises to provide some understanding.
Another reason Mary Trump's book may alleviate some concerns is that I've had a real difficult time coming up with any reasonable explanation for President Trump's recent behaviors. I read a couple of Trump biographies before his Art of the Deal days, and I followed him in the east coast tabloids. Yes, he was rude and a bit of a fraud, but I never had the sense that he hated the United States. Almost all of his actions in the last six months have been serious sabotage. If he were a reasoning, self-aware man, I was at a loss as to why he was ignoring the pandemic, why the U.S. failed to simply copy the templates other nations had used to handle the virus, why he would gas peaceful protesters for a Bible photo-op that looked terribly insincere, and why he would focus on Confederate statues. Why do these things?
The obvious Ockham's Razor conclusion would be that he's some kind of Russian asset, doing as much damage to the country as possible before losing his re-election campaign. Fortunately, Mary Trump's book may provide some explanatory options other than the simple, elegant "Russian asset" theory.
That being said, when the commander-in-chief as self-destructive sociopath voted in by 60 million people is the reasonable alternative to his being a Russian asset, you know 2020 would be a tough time for William of Ockham.
Bob Dietz
July 19, 2020
