by Frank Thomas
(Comment to CD Article: ‘I Approve This Message’: Trump Releases 2020 Campaign Ad With Completely ‘Fabricated’ Lie About Biden, by Jon Queally, Sept. 28, 2019)
The Common Dreams article and many constructive comments thereto address well the main issue noted above and the incredibly serious charge laid out by a U.S. CIA whistle-blower, namely: Trump’s apparently used the presidential office and his private lawyer to encourage Ukraine’s country leader to create ‘dirt’ on Joe Biden as a reciprocal ‘Favor’ in exchange for U.S. financial assistance of $390 million – thus leveraging his power to sponsor foreign interference in U.S. federal elections in violation of our Constitution.
It’s as if we don’t have enough evidence already to verify how mentally incompetent Trump is for the presidency. At the risk of being repetitious, I’d like to focus less on Trump’s playing with the law (the Trump-Biden issue) and his endless diverting off-the-cuff ‘conspiracy theories’ and focus more on the insufferable character traits that define his reckless, chaotic, soul-less governing style.
Maureen Dowd sent a lightning strike to Trump’s unhinged presidency when she simply summed it up by reversing Abraham Lincoln’s brilliant proverb of good governance - "with malice for all; with charity for none."
The bloody tragedy confronting us every day for almost 700 days now is that Trump is an inveterate Egoist, Liar, Divider. From day one of his presidency, he has been grimly appallingly non-presidential. The only reality he’s shown himself capable of embracing revolves around his own self - his constant protecting and inflating his own self. A president who’s so obsessed with this detached ‘selfness’ reality - our ‘Great Leader and Saviour’ - that’s he’s rapidly becoming a cause for alarm. He exemplifies the philosophical concept, ‘solipsism’ - an extreme egocentricity with authoritarian tendencies. The ‘solipsist’ has trouble attaching any meaning at all to the possibility there could be thoughts, emotions, or experiences other than his own.
Trump can’t critically think, read, reflect or admit a mistake. His mind circles around his latest daily ‘urges’ - that nakedly reveal how the egocentric certainties of a ‘narcissistic psychopath’ can overpower his reason, span of attention, civility. Trump exhibits time and again these distorted character and psychological traits :
His incessant lying or war on the truth is so ingrained that the distinction between truth and fabrication doesn’t exist – anything not jiving with his preconceptions and assumptions is 'Fake.'
His ignoring or playing around with constitutional law, manipulation of the Judiciary, attacks on the Free Press (calling journalists ‘animals,’ the CIA whistle-blower and his informers ‘spies’ who ‘usually were executed’ in the past), his debasing attacks on Congressional representatives, are all attacks on the fundamental bases of our Republic.
His obvious pleasure in setting people against each other, in spreading ugliness and vitriolic charges against almost anyone he disagrees with or opposes him is intensifying the poisoning and depth of our already horrendous societal divisions and distrust.
How does a president so deceitful, uncivil, divisive, manipulative – diagnosed as a disturbed ‘narcissistic psychopath’ in a letter by 27 reputable psychologists and psychiatrists - suddenly transform himself into a more presidential leader?
The answer is he doesn’t change. Trump is what he is and has been for most of his life - exhibiting extremely egocentric, demagogic, duplicitous, legally underhanded, self-enriching tendencies much to the dislike and distrust of many he comes in contact with. He sorely misses the qualities of some true presidential leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower. He misses the qualities that set the true leader apart from the false prophet, from the self-righteous, self-serving, deceiving manipulator. On the positive side his incompetence, disruptive, disingenuous mind-set, inability to reach or move a broader number of the electorate will likely end up mitigating his undermining of the nation’s unity and stability. His egregious leadership weaknesses are exposing him for the charlatan he is, a man who relies on 35% of the public to believe everything he says.
Given his glaring character deficiencies, I don’t see Trump as our nation’s God-given Saviour. Clearly, significant changes/reforms are required to our social, economic, market-capitalistic, democratic system. Very serious unsolved societal problems are taking us down, down, down: the on-going massive income /wealth gap, the Trump administration’s rejection of the science of fundamental climate change, an obsolete 3rd world infrastructure and weak pre-college education and trade school systems, soaring college costs, an insanely costly, poor coverage healthcare system the average American family can’t afford, extremely high Defence spending, tax revenue stagnation and thus steeply rising federal deficits and debt.
Constructive, creative, compromise changes/reforms wisely funded (e.g., by progressive taxation, a financial transactions tax, higher gasoline tax, carbon tax, etc.) that markedly improve the well-being of all Americans will not be achieved by a polarizing, chaotic, autocratic, egocentric, one-man show president.
NOTE:
Let’s not forget president Obama inherited the Great Recession that nearly matched the Great Depression with unemployment skyrocketing under Bush to 9.7% in 2008. The Obama administration remarkably brought this rate down to 4.7% in 2016 with $8 trillion of federal money injections – in disastrous economic times when his every recovery step was blocked by the Republican Congress; Trump’s administration has brought Obama’s 4.7% unemployment rate down to 4% today adding over $2 trillion to our federal debt in good times. But Trump employed massive corporate and individual tax cuts, over 85% of which have gone to the top 5% and corporations. Result? Huge annual federal deficits and debt that the CBO office is now saying will result in $1 trillion annual deficits over the next 6 years and add $8 trillion to our federal debt - equal to Obama’s $8 trillion debt increase in very bad economic times.
So the deficit and debt explosions are both happening in relatively good times for Trump through 2020 compared to Obama’s inheritance of the Great Recession. In our current and forecast high deficit and debt situation, GDP and consumption slowdown, how is our nation going to finance the critical investments needed in infrastructure, healthcare, education, environment? Trump and his purest supply-sider economists are inept for this complex challenging task. Already GDP growth is falling from the 3.0% in 2018 to ±2.1% in 2019 and expected to remain at low 2.5% levels in subsequent years. Trump and his supply-sider economists will not be up to the task of handling the big economic and investment challenges arising 2020-2026 - and do so in a sound, progressive manner that markedly improves the lot of the middle and lower working classes as opposed to first and foremost enriching ever more the top 5% - as did Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.
Frank Thomas, The Netherlands, Sept. 30, 2019
