“Listen, Little Man!”
“Listen, Little Man!” Nancy and I were watching “The Crown” during this house bound time. There were lessons there for these, our political times. The abdicating King David’s betrayals were personal, but because of his position became treasonous. Princess Diana’s betrayals were all personal never treasonous. The Donald’s betrayals -Russia/Ukraine/Racism- are each personal but because of his position they are also, like David’s, treasonous. Only after all the details of the Donald’s Russia deal become known will we learn that the Donald’s betrayals were more than merely personal advantages, they were treasonous, like David’s collusion with Hitler.
The Trump Brand is corruption. There are too many examples (See: Trump’s evangelicals, the American Judiciary, and the Republican Party). Instead of excusing the Donald’s activity as simply his personal use of the corrupting influence of power, historians need to begin excavating beneath the personal to recognize the underlying corruption in the Donald’s influence peddling.
The American Founding Fathers [mostly rich guys] understood how a president could use the position of the Presidency to enrich themselves personally, which is why they made it unconstitutional [the Emoluments Clause: Article II, Section 1, paragraph 7 of the US Constitution]. To keep excusing the Donald’s personalizing of his position, (i.e., ‘treat me with deference or else Governors will not get the pandemic aid they need from my government,’ a paraphrase.) as the Donald just being the Donald is to ignore the position the Donald holds as President, something the Founders emphatically emphasized with the emoluments clause.
We call him the Donald because when he quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, and acts like a duck then he is the duck: both a Daffy Duck and a Donald Duck. With the Donald, we get both a Daffy Twittering away the presidency and a Donald Wannabee always 2nd best to some Mickey Mouse. In the Daffy corner the Donald is a looney tune-type character taking bizarre actions and using delusional words of excuse. In the Wannabee lane the Donald is always praising dictators and other authoritarians because the Donald is always wishing the Donald was free to be like them — silence all critics, exterminate all opposition, have all fearfully fawn over the Donald’s every airy sound released from the Donald’s sacred body — the body that the Donald does not exercise because it is too sacred for such mendacities having stored up within it the exact amount of sacred energy needed for the holy exhibiting of all that it is to be –the Donald.
Good Golly Miss America, sounds like the Donald’s hallucinating on Wilhelm Reich’s orgone energy! Is the Donald in the box? Or just gone? Yes, the Donald would be a joke; if people weren’t dying because of his need to corrupt everything he touches to turn it into his brand. Even a pandemic!
