A Prequel:
Nothing new here: We’ve seen prequels before: “The Young Sheldon”, “Star wars III - how Anakin becomes Darth Vader”, Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and recently, Rachel Maddow’s “Prequel”, a history of Nazi influences in America in the 1930s and the similarity to their influences in America today. (*)
Well, here’s my impression of a prequel, describing the earlier life of a certain person:
Once upon a time, there was small boy, not the most brilliant jewel in the tiara of his mother. His mother’s attempts to coax more out of this small boy, did not result in the improvements she sought, but resulted in his great resentment of his mother’s efforts. (This will be obvious from the clear hatred of ALL women exhibited by this “boy”). One assumes most of his teachers were women, and they also could not coax levels of competence that he would be prepared to work to achieve.
The “small boy,” in the meantime, grew and became larger than his classmates. Most people, in personal interactions, are looking to be friendly, and back off when they come across a physically large(r), angry and verbally abusive person. Thus, this no-longer “small boy” realized that, by being angry and a bully, most people would back off and no longer criticize him.
Somewhere, sometime, he had been told that if he told a lie, he would be struck by lightning. One day, in his anger and resentment, he told a lie, and he was not struck by lightning. He thus realized that now he could lie without any risk to himself. He suffered no pangs of conscience. And once he could lie to himself, without criticism, especially self-criticism, WHY would he have ANY difficulty in lying to ANYone else?
This was all the encouragement he needed to become a narcissist. All narcissists have an intense self-hatred, and project the faults their deep subconscious knows are theirs, onto others while, of course, denying possession of any such faults.
Back to our “small boy”: EVERYTHING he says or does, must be described as PERFECT. “I did NOTHING Wrong.” Also, his deep subconscious was keenly aware of his own limitations, and harbored a bottomless pit of furious anger that he would not be able to assuage. Thus, of course, he projected his own failures outwards; EVERYONE else suffered from those faults (especially his political “enemies,” meaning Democrats, but especially ANY Republicans who didn’t show him “loyalty”).
Examples:
“Democrats are pedophiles!” From Rolling Stone, Oct 12, 2016, “A Timeline of Donald Trump’s Creepiness While He Owned Miss Universe: From walking into a teen dressing room to joking about his obligation to sleep with contestants, Trump's a storied pageant creep.” (***)
“They’re not coming after me; they’re coming after YOU! I am YOUR retribution!” REALLY? Did you all (y’all?) abscond with Top Secret documents, and refuse to return them?
Did y’all “massage” the values of your properties, to reduce your tax obligations, while obtaining large loans, not remotely covered by the value of those same properties?
Did y’all plot, for the first time in American history, to hang on to the presidency, despite losing, not only the popular vote, but also the Electoral College vote? Hmmmm?
There is a sort of “Readers Digest” quote that describes him: “He is a self-made man, who worships his creator.” But his “creator” is a very flawed and scared still-small boy, who has to bluster his way through every situation, to cover up his fear. When he says “I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue, and wouldn’t lose a single vote.” But, here’s the thing, he is a coward, and personally wouldn’t shoot anyone; he’d get someone else to do it for him, because his subconscious knows he’d be arrested and face a murder charge. Remember, he fired Jim Comey, but COULD NOT do it in person. Instead, he sent a termination letter by courier to him, on May 9, 2017: “Dear Director Comey: I have received the attached letters from the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General of the United States recommending your dismissal as the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Trump instructed them what to say in the letters - it COULD NOT come directly from him, and thus he could dodge responsibility for the action.(****)
There is much more:
As examples, he says there is a “Deep State” working against him and the country. To explain, there is indeed a “Deep State,” working under the radar, and funded by huge amounts of Dark Money authorized by the passing of Citizens United (**) in 2010. The “Deep State” funds this narcissist; thus he accuses the “other side” of running a “Deep State.” Along these lines, it is very “popular” for his White-Supremacist, anti-Semitic, enablers to bad-mouth George Soros, whether what they say is true or not, but they NEVER say ANYTHING about the extremely wealthy people who have donated MILLIONS, if not BILLIONS, to “their” side, to run attack ads against Democrats. It doesn’t take much research to realize that these uber-wealthy people have NO interest in preserving America’s democracy.
Now that he has been indicted, multiple times, for his life of crime and faces many potential trials, he is becoming desperate, and is throwing out wilder and wilder claims to try to get more MAGA discontents to support and vote for him. His greatest fear is that he will end up in jail. This is his whole reason for running again to be president because, if he succeeds, all the charges against him will, magically, disappear.
He is quite transparent, really. When he accuses others of off-the-wall crimes, we tend to ignore them, because we know they don’t apply to us. But we shouldn’t do so, because he is really telling us all about his own, internal terror and what he intends to do if he gets back into power.
When he says:
“Muslim immigrants are rapists, and need to be banned from entering the United States.” Grumpy has been found guilty of sexual abuse by a jury of his peers, in the case of E. Jean Carroll, which he continues to deny. “I don’t know her; she’s not my type!” Thus, in his deepest subconscious, he feels HE deserves to be exiled from the US, and his citizenship revoked.
Immigrants are “Vermin”. His grandfather was an immigrant and, reportedly, was a pimp. In his subconscious, he really sees himself as “Vermin,” and should be destroyed. Can you imagine the furor if, during the Obama administration, that president had worn a (gasp) golf cap?
He says that Special Counsel Jack Smith and others should be in a mental institution. In his subconscious, he really feels HE himself is crazy and should be in a mental institution.
He says that General Milley should be executed as a traitor. Guess what? In his subconscious, he really feels HE is the traitor that should be executed.
“I am your retribution” he says, often. In the deepest recesses of his subconscious, he knows that he deserves retribution for his lifetime of crime.
Even his blog “Truth Social”: you know everything he says on it is an anti-social lie.
This man is a sicko and, under no circumstances, should he ever be allowed to hold office again.
Back to the subject of the narcissist: He has no firmly held beliefs; his political “platform” becomes what those around him react to, positively, when he bumbles on, throwing out test balloons, to see which ideas get cheers. (He used to donate to the Democratic Party, when it was advantageous to him).
My summary of DJT, in a nutshell: He is consumed by an enormous self-hatred. His anger is uncontrollable. Since he is a narcissist, he cannot be angry with himself, and cannot destroy himself. (A “normal” person would commit suicide). The narcissist projects his fury outwards, and he will devote his energies to destroying the world, starting with the American Justice System, since it is clearly his “enemy”. The only person who “REALLY” loves him is Uncle Vladimir Putin. If Trump ever does get back to the White House, he will hand over power to Uncle Vlad, who may yet become Emperor of the World.
As an aside, Trump is supported by an infrastructure; he is not doing all this on his own. His supporters are Fox “news”, OAN, The Federalist Society and the billionaires who fund them (where did Leonard Leo get his $1.6 billion stash?)
Two appropriate reads, at this point, would be Jane Mayer’s 2016 book “Dark Money — The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.” She mentions billionaires by name and, surprise, George Soros is not among them. The other very worthwhile book, is Nancy MacLean’s 2017 “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America.” This, too, mentions billionaires by name who finance their cause and, again, George Soros is not one of them. Another source of “encouragement” to many millions of right-wing voters is the decades-long brainwashing by the Fox “News” empire sustained by the anti-democratic Rupert Murdoch and his family and likewise, with their 1,500 AM radio stations, the Sinclair Communications Group (who syndicated Rush Limbaugh and his alt-Right buddies).
Fox, after their jaw-dropping $787.5 Million settlement with Dominion in 2023, stated that their policy of “fair and balanced” reporting would continue!
Oh, Right!
It wasn’t that before, and it isn’t that now! To show a complete picture in a court of law, one swears to tell “The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth.” Thus Fox fails on all five criteria!
“Faux News” really needs to shut down, to allow all their brainwashed watchers to re-enter the real world.
So then, how do we explain to enough potential voters that Donald J. Trump, the “totally achieved” con-man, is the LAST person in the world that we should allow to occupy, not only the White House, but ANY position in Government in the United States of America? Do we use crowd funding to establish a PAC to run our own attack ads on TV? I will be interested in your comments.
(*) Remember the tiki-torch wielding “fine people” in Charlottesville who chanted, “Jews Will Not Replace Us.” Trump encouraged them and recently, invited rabid anti-Semites “Ye” (previously Kanye West) and Fuente to lunch at Mar-A-Lago.
Longest serving SCOTUS justice Clarence Thomas is flown around on vacations by billionaire Harlan Crow, who has a personally signed copy of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and other Nazi “mementoes”. Do you think that Thomas does not, perhaps, have even a little anti-Semitic sympathy?
(**) President Jimmy Carter referred to the passing of Citizens United as one of the most stupid decisions in the history of the Supreme Court. I guess it depends on your perspective. For President Carter and for practically ALL of the 300+ million population of America, he was right. But for the small cabal of unbelievably wealthy multi-BILLIONAIRES, it was a way to control the outcome of elections in key areas. As an example, remember poor Kelly Ayotte, Republican Senator for New Hampshire, from 2011 - 2017, who was a shoo-in for re-election. The Koch money machine was “donating” $10-million “gifts” to fund attack ads, to each of many people “they” wanted in high profile positions in government. Then, Kelly, in an unguarded moment, said she believed that global warming was happening. “Her” $10-million was cut off, immediately and totally, and she lost to Gov. Maggie Hassan (D) by approx 1,000 votes.
(***) From the Rolling Stone article:
"Donald Trump was forced to sell the Miss Universe Organization – which also includes sister scholarship programs Miss USA and Miss Teen USA – in 2015 after his incendiary comments about Mexicans drove away broadcasters NBC and Univision. But Trump owned the pageant for nearly two decades, during which time he would have had the opportunity to come into contact with nearly 4,000 beauty queens.
On the heels of the damaging videotape on which Trump and former Access Hollywood host Billy Bush salivated over Days of Our Lives actress Arianne Zucker, and joked about sexually assaulting women, came allegations that Trump entered the Miss Teen USA changing room where girls as young as 15 were in various states of undress.
Mariah Billado, Miss Teen Vermont 1997 told BuzzFeed, “I remember putting on my dress really quick because I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s a man in here.'” Three other teenage contestants from the same year confirmed the story. The former pageant contestants discussed their memories of the incident after former Miss Arizona Tasha Dixon told Los Angeles’ CBS affiliate that Trump entered the Miss USA dressing room in 2001 when she was a contestant.”
(****) Search results for “Who Fired Jim Comey” yields a reference to an AP News article from Apr 23, 2019, by Eric Tucker: “The Comey firing, as retold by the Mueller report.” Please access the article, it makes for fascinating reading; a window into the seething anger of the then-president. The article goes into great detail, underlining that it was not Rod Rosenstein’s decision to can Comey - it was entirely Trump’s.