Understanding Trump
From this morning’s Los Angles Times: Time and again, President Trump has made clear that he doesn’t like Sen. John McCain, the late Republican war hero. How is that playing with those who have served their country? Columnist Steve Lopez paid a visit to the Veterans Administration’s Sepulveda Ambulatory Care Center to find out. “Even veterans who support the president told me they can’t understand why the president would speak with such contempt about a man who devoted his life to public service, endured years as a prisoner of war after his plane was shot down in Vietnam, and died of brain cancer seven months ago,” Lopez writes.
Let me see if I can offer an explanation to these veterans who seem to be having trouble understanding why the president would speak with such contempt. He is forced to act that way. His psychological make up, at this point at least, gives him very little latitude in the choices he makes. He is literally incapable of making statements or taking actions that would confer respect, support or admiration onto a person, regardless of who he is/was or what he may have done for our country, if that person is not acting in Trump’s personal interests right this very minute.
If Trump has any interest in the well-being of this country and its people (of which there is zero evidence whatsoever), that interest is entirely subjugated to his compulsion to punish and demean anyone who acts to question Trump’s authority or counter his intention to become America’s supreme ruler.
I would love to believe that these words would lead to an “aha moment” for some of the veterans mentioned above, but I don’t. That’s because, it’s not clear to you at this point who Trumps really is, it will never become so. As Trump himself pointed out, he could walk down Fifth Avenue in New York City, blow the head off a random passer-by, and not lose a single vote; that is the pull Trump has over his supporters. Thus my words should not be interpreted as a slight against the intelligence of the veterans surveyed by the Los Angeles Times.
I feel the frustration and pounding sorrow that the father of a kid involved in a religious cult must be experiencing. It “has” you, and there is nothing I can do or say to shake you out of it. Maybe you’ll outgrow it; maybe something will expose the cult for what it is. Until then, I’m powerless. All I can do is wait for that beautiful light to start shining again.
Craig,
Well that’s your opinion and you’re entitled to your opinion.
Every veteran, including myself, served to ensure you have the right to continue freely expressing your opinion.
Like most veterans, I liked and admired John McCain. However, like most veterans, (especially heroes) John McCain was no saint!
He was a human being with flaws, both personally and politically. For his stirling war service and many accomplishments in public life he deserves to be remembered as a fine American, but not except from criticism.
President Trump certainly has at times displayed flamboyant turns of speech. His phraseology and candor is not what we have come to expect from a modern, careful, spin-doctored, politically correct politician.
This leaves him open to attack from an army of rabid critics and opponents who decry his speaking in the commonplace vernacular of the ordinary working man.
For a guy who doesn’t drink, on occasion the President sounds more like a guy in bar, than a careful image conscious politician.
The President is a man with many facets to his personality. By concentrating solely on his many flaws, while exaggerating and distorting everything he says to produce the worst possible interpretation, his opponents and the main stream media simply come across as elitist hypocrites.
These vicious, but repetitively shallow attacks only serve to strengthen the President’s support among his supporters.
The more rabid the attacks against the President’s personality, and manner stand in stark contrast to lack of reporting on the success of his policies, his record of keeping election promises and fearlessness to be himself in an age where hypocrisy is the norm in both public life and media coverage.
His supporters feel the President often says what everyone really believes, but is too afraid to say in public for fear of being attacked by the “politically correct police”.
To use an overworked expression, the President “is, what he is”. He often employs ill-chosen, exuberant expressions able to be re-interpreted by opponents to create a different meaning, because that’s the way “real’ people express themselves.
There can be no question that some of this President’s decisions reveal inexperience and lack understanding of the political process. That’s only to be expected in a President with no previous political experience.
However, for a first time politician, President Trump has proved to be shrewd and astute in foreign affairs, adept in economic matters (especially for blue collar Americans), and determined to keep his election commitments.
His lack of hypocrisy and empty symbolic gestures, endears him to his his supporters, while outraging the old entrenched professional political class and mainstream media who believed American politics was a game reserved for ‘elite’ players and only those who played by their rules were entitled to play.
I believe I speak for many veterans who can respect and support the best qualities of both John McCain and Donald Trump, without ignoring both men’s flaws and foibles.
Craig, at times, you express the sort of unconsciously patronizing hypocrisy so alienating to the ordinary man, and especially Veterans.
Consider your comment;
“my words should not be interpreted as a slight against the intelligence of the veterans”.
Followed by;
“father of a kid involved in a religious cult must be experiencing. It “has” you, and there is nothing I can do or say to shake you out of it. Maybe you’ll outgrow it; maybe something will expose the cult for what it is.”
On the one hand you say you “don’t want to slight the intelligence of Trump supporting veterans, while in the next sentence you do exactly that, by comparing them to brainwashed members of a cult!
Just to patronize Trump supporters even further, you patronizingly inform them of your superiority by offering them redemption if they abjure from their “childish” political convictions and follow your far more mature, superior, wise “fatherly” beliefs !
Unfortunately, like the NYT, WP and CNN etc, you seem blind to your own arrogance, hypocrisy and insufferable smugness.
The endless and unrelenting hatred by the opponents of this President, coupled with their obsession and outrage that he obtained office at all, has lead to a deluge of pointless investigations, speculation, and endless media reportage focused on his personality, personal life or behaviour before becoming President.
This leaves almost no room for serious evaluations or analysis of his policies or decisions as President.
As a result the general public have developed a deep mistrust and antipathy toward mainstream media and a deep chasm has been created in American politics, from which radical element are emorging.
President Trump is not the evil incarnate, nor is he a saint. But he is the American President.
Executive Presidents exist in an awkward dichotomy. In other forms of democratic systems, such as Constitutional monarchies or non-executive presidents, the “dignified role” as Head of State is occupied by person without ‘executive’ or political obligations.
In such systems, the office of Head of State is largely ceremonial and a constitutional safeguard.
US Presidents must be both “head of State” and “executive” head of government,with an unelected executive cabinet.
It’s very hard to be be an impartial, “dignified” head of state, when the President is also an active day-today politician who must fight daily political battles, compromises, dirty(but often necessary) deeds etc.
It’s an office that automatically attracts a certain degree of hypocrisy.