The Washington Post has two featured articles running right now that demonstrate this diary’s heading. The first one is almost touching for those who can suspend all that they feel about Donald J. Trump as a political actor, to see him as a person, the same empathy that allows us see human emotions in the most universally reviled individuals.
Here’s the link which deserves to be read in the entirety,Donald Trump is in a funk: Bitter, hoarse and pondering, ‘If I lose. . .’
I watched every debate and was especially anticipating the Al Smith dinner, actually fearing that our candidate would make the error that Trump actually did. Hillary Clinton’s presentation was so skilled, so well done, that for me, she is no longer primarily Bill’s wife, or even the first woman president, but an individual with the poise, control and depth of knowledge to engage the unimaginably difficult task of being President at this most challenging time.
The above Post article indicates that Trump got the same message. And by realizing that others have too, he sees an inglorious ending approaching, and he has no idea how to handle it. Just as he thrived on his cheering crowd, the very thought of this adulation not only ending but he being seen by them as a failure, is so devastating because in his entire life he has never experienced it. From a child he was the winner, if it meant creating his own reality, that’s what he did. His corporate bankruptcies that destroyed contractors and investors become personal victories as he made money on all of them. Empathy for losers, those who trusted him, not only did he not buy into this concept, but they are the thinking of a lower order of human beings. Now the specter of he being one of the losers, which must for him mean the death of all he has been and hoped to become by capping it with the Presidency of the United States of America.
But, just this morning to illustrate the interpersonal conflict, he gave a speech at the scene of the pivotal battle of the Civil war described here in the Post, In historic Gettysburg, Lincoln spoke of unity; Trump complained of a ‘totally rigged’ system.
“It is my privilege to be here in Gettysburg, hallowed ground where so many lives were given in service to freedom — amazing place,” ... “President Lincoln served in a time of division like we've never seen before. It is my hope that we can look at his example to heal the divisions we are living through right now. We are a very divided nation.”
It was an expansion of his castigating the enemy and promising the simplistic solutions that only he could deliver, as though his failed debates and the Al Smith dinner never happened. Here's my take which, started as a comment to the article about his return to hubris in the second Post article:
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Since Trump really is immersed in the closed feedback loop with his "true believers," in that cloistered world he is correct, and just as Lincoln's victory precipitated the Civil War, Trump sees himself in Lincoln’s position -- but in a distorted confused way. The closer analogy is that he is of the South during the election of 1860. The old Democratic party had already left the main party, just as he sees his Trump party leaving the current Republican party, with him as the absolute leader.
From the first article, Trump is vacillating between despair, but not like the historical Lincoln, but of the war the President elect tried to prevent over what would have been Lincoln’s (Clinton) hope being realized "the better angels of our nature" prevailing and the Union being preserved.
This would have meant the failure of the radical secessionists who became 1860 Southern Democrats, with they, and now Trump, their modern incarnation, being dumped in the ashcan of history, --— or else his success, a new Civil war either with words or guns, with he in the forefront. His description of a country in collapse with outsiders raping and murdering real Americans — echoes the fomentors of secession, the only difference is then the place of the dangerous outsiders were the slaves who by their emancipation would destroy the country.
Today we have people made of the same stuff as Southern secessionists of 1860, only with different names; to HRC they are depicted as a basket of deplorables, while to Trump they are the ones who would cheer him on if he murdered an innocent random person on busy Fifth Avenue. Trump may have no choice when he loses based on his deep emotional makeup but to attempt to rally those people to revolution, or chaos or second amendment solutions.
My fear is that the election in November, as it was in 1860; may not be the end, but only the beginning.