gracchusdixit

It was not my intention to discuss, yet again, the alternately bizarre and disturbing Presidential candidacy of Donald J. Trump.  Having devoted more than a few words to this phenomenon, I had pledged to myself to let it rest a while and turn, instead, to more salubrious subjects. Alas, Trump makes this impossible.  As each new day dawns, he surprises us with another bombshell.

The latest was the announcement that his second campaign manager in as many months—a smarmy lobbyist named Paul Manafort, who has made millions representing dictators, oligarchs, and political criminals around the world—had been kicked upstairs to make room for a replacement.  It took Manafort less than 48 hours to conclude that he was being shoved aside, whereupon he promptly resigned.

Manafort’s successor is an even smarmier character named Steve Bannon, who has been running Breibart News since the death of its founder four years ago.  In case you aren’t accustomed to wading through the murky world that is the “alt-right” corner of the internet, Breitbart is a rabidly right-wing website, favored by racists of all kinds, including white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Muslim haters, and anti-Semites.  It specializes in peddling conspiracy theories dedicated to the proposition that, under every liberal rock, there is a scandal to be found.

On occasion, there actually is a scandal to be found.  It was Breitbart that hounded New York Congressman Anthony Wiener for posting seminude photographs of himself on the internet—a distasteful proclivity, no doubt, but scarcely a threat to the future of the Republic.  On the other hand, it was also Breitbart that advanced the far more serious, but utterly loony notion, that Wiener’s wife and longtime Hillary Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, is a secret agent in the service of Al Qaida.  For Breitbart, the difference between fact and fantasy appears to be irrelevant, as long as “the narrative” embarrasses a Democrat.  Now, the man who has been in charge of this scandal factory for the last four years is running Donald Trump’s campaign.

All this comes as numerous Trump advisors, the elected leaders of the Republican Party, and the Republican National Committee have been trying to rein in their unruly candidate, urging him to become more “Presidential,” desperately hoping that he may thereby win back the millions of moderate voters he appears to have alienated.  In shuffling his campaign staff, Trump has quite simply thumbed his nose at the Republican powers that be—or were.  His explanation was to say:

I am who I am.  It’s me.  I don’t want to change…I don’t want to pivot…If you start pivoting, you’re not being honest with people.  

This would be an admirable thought if it weren’t for the fact that Trump is as dishonest as they come, a serial liar, who either can’t tell the difference between truth and falsehood or doesn’t care.  It also raises the question: Who is the “me” Donald Trump feels compelled to be?

The answer seems to be that the pathetic man-child the Republican Party has made its nominee feels comfortable only in the deferential and self-referential world of  people who shore up his fragile ego—a world of adoring audiences, sycophantic and subservient advisors, and fawning factotums, all eager to validate his every gut instinct, applaud his every outrage, and explain away his every stupid utterance as an antidote to “political correctness,” as if being “politically correct” were somehow a greater crime than being a racist, a sexist, a charlatan, and a liar.

Steve Bannon got the nod, not because of his political savvy—he has no political experience to speak of—but rather because he was an “all in” Trump supporter from the get-go and because one of few confidants Trump seems to trust, Roger Stone, is a frequent Breitbart contributor.  Stone himself is one of the most vicious and dishonest demagogues of the “alt-right.”  It was Stone who recently tried to smear the personal integrity of the Khan family, whose moving appearance at the Democratic National Conventional may have done more than any other single event to kick the legs out from under Trump’s candidacy.

Apart from his staff choices, Trump appears to confuse a Presidential campaign with a beauty pageant.  He goes, not where he needs to go to change the minds of skeptical voters, but rather where already committed crowds will reliably gather to hoot, holler, and stomp their feet at his every incoherent word.  Thus, he recently wasted time at friendly venues in Maine, Connecticut, and Wisconsin, states he does not have the slightest chance of winning in November.   He showed up at those venues, because he was guaranteed approving crowds.  Trump seems incapable of accepting, or even understanding, that a room filled with vocal supporters does not represent the electorate at large.  Thus it was, at a recent rally in Western Pennsylvania, that he declared the only possible explanation for a loss in that state would be a “rigged election,” ignoring the reality that he is 15 points behind in all the Pennsylvania polls.

All this finally reveals Trump for the pathological narcissist that we have long suspected him to be.   When he cannot reconcile adoring rallies with electoral reality, he ignores the latter and creates his own reality.  He is like a petulant, puling newborn who doesn’t find much to like in the world outside the womb.  Since he can no longer return to that warm, safe place, he has decided to make his own.

It might be an act of common decency to pity this sad and pathetic man-child, but it would be an act of irresponsibility to elect him.