When Trump was first elected in 2016--a surprise to almost everyone including Trump himself--many thought that his offensive bluster was just that, that he would be “humbled” by the enormity of his new position and largely follow the advice of professionals in formulating policy, for which he was clearly a novice. Instead, Trump eventually banished from his presence all those who tried to remind him that he was supposed to be president of all the people in this country, not just his rabid, feral dog base.
But Trump couldn’t change who he was: an overgrown brat perpetually “high” on himself, born into money and apparently never worked an honest day in his life, making a living bullying and cheating associates, business partners, contractors and “reality” show contestants, refusing to honor his obligations as shown by frequent trips to bankruptcy court, paying off bad news, and through whatever means fair or (mostly) foul keeping himself in the “news.”
Let’s not con ourselves about why Trump even ran for president. This bigoted man had been the subject of a civil rights lawsuit for discriminating against black renters in his properties, a man who refused to employ blacks in jobs of any consequence in his business (especially in jobs that required them to handle “his” money), a man who put out a full-page advertisement calling for the death penalty for five black males who turned out to be innocent of the crime they were convicted of, could not accept the notion of a black man being president of this country, and when Trump’s |”birther” sham failed, he decided that if a black man could be elected president, then why couldn’t he? He was a “bigger” man than anyone who was really from a “shithole” country.
Once he was elected, Trump’s hatred of Obama simply because he was a black was manifest by spending his four years in office doing mostly one thing: erasing not just any trace of Obama’s legacy, but oppose any policy that Democrats supported simply because they did, out of pure petty spite. Anyone or anything that proposed to do something contrary to his petty personal grievances was an impediment that must be removed or moved around. If the “impediment” could not be eliminated legally, then it became subject to an endless barrage of personal insults, threats and defamation.
From the very beginning, Trump had opportunities to prove that he wasn’t a highly disturbed man. One month after his inauguration he said he was going show he had a “great heart” toward DACA recipients; we saw how that turned out. Two years later he was handed on a silver planter the opportunity to again show that he was a moral man at heart after the Charlottesville incident; he again failed miserably, and the result was the constant street protests we have seen, because only his racist base trusted him anymore to do right, as if anyone ever believed that was possible in the first place.
And now we see Trump, having clearly been defeated in the election, and given the opportunity to be both human and magnanimous at once, predictably once more failed abjectly, dementedly refusing to face reality, digging up any and every outrageous conspiracy fantasy to stave off the inevitable. He could have stopped the behavior of his most demented supporters in and out of the media who refuse to accept reality, but he has proven himself the most narcissistic megalomaniac this country has ever seen; no sitting president or presidential candidate has ever behaved in the fashion as we have seen Trump.
Trump has long since passed the point of no return; his behavior cannot be forgiven or forgotten. As far as his “legacy” is concerned, he dug his own grave, and now he has to lay in it for all time. Anyone who actually believes Trump has a “future” in politics is kidding themselves; once he is out of office, people will have time reflect, and they will not want any more of this—at least we can hope that is the case. He will have lots more time to waste on his twitter account, but perhaps far fewer people will take his pronouncements seriously, and may even take the time to digest just how “weird” this man actually is. And he may yet wind up in a prison cell, where he can do some self-reflection of his own.
I am reminded of the 1982 Wes Craven film The Swamp Thing, in which some secret government bioengineering project goes awry and causes anyone ingesting it to be transformed into some monstrosity that reveals their true natures. After “testing” the formula on a muscleman henchman, which reduces him into a misshapen midget because by “nature” he is really a weak little man, the main villain takes a dose himself, believing he will turn into some kind of super villain befitting DC Comics. Despite warnings from the Swamp Thing not to take the potion, the villain is transformed into an overgrown lizard; having become the victim of his own evil megalomania, he fights the Swamp Thing to the death, and eventually meeting his deserved end.
Is Trump the evil super-villain wannabe, or the muscleman turned misshapen midget because he is in reality a pathetic, weak little man inside? He may prefer to think of himself as the former, but the truth is the latter, since we see now how Trump, confronted with a reality he is unable to comprehend, and stripped of the power of the office, has nothing left inside of him to support the fraudulent facade he has presented to the world. Inside, he is a weak little midget of a human being. A “businessman” of debatable competence, he treated the presidency as some powerful elixir to bloat himself into a “great” man worthy of a Trump Tower-size mausoleum for readers of history to worship; but instead, his legacy will be just a mass of ashes in a sunken, unmarked grave. Trump deserves only to be remembered as a footnote when future historians rank the worst presidents in this country’s history.
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