Trump is a narcissistic dangerous man. We don’t know how long the vigil will last. But we and many others are in danger from Donald Trump. We are waiting for we know not what. He loves that he is putting us through whatever he is going through.
Eventually, with a weakened presidency, the public senses that a president’s capacity to serve them is connected to his most basic human capacities. It makes sense to try to understand these capacities. But unlike the dying President Harrison, Trump knows that we are trapped in this vigil, and derives satisfaction from his own desperation, which becomes our desperation. He is concerned not with the nation as a responsibility but as a collection of sensory beings in legitimate fear of his fear and impulses.
On March 26, 1841, Harrison became ill with a cold after being caught in a torrential downpour without cover. His symptoms grew progressively worse over the next two days, at which time a team of doctors was called in to treat him.[112] The prevailing misconception at the time was that his illness had been caused by the bad weather at his inauguration three weeks earlier.[113] The doctors diagnosed him with right lower lobe pneumonia, then placed heated suction cups on his bare torso and administered a series of bloodlettings to draw out the disease.[114]Those procedures failed to bring about improvement, so the doctors treated him with ipecac, castor oil, calomel, and finally with a boiled mixture of crude petroleum and Virginia snakeroot. All this only weakened Harrison further.[112]
Initially, no official announcement was made concerning Harrison's illness, which fueled public speculation and concern the longer he remained out of public view. By the end of the month, large crowds were gathering outside the White House, holding vigil while awaiting any news about the president's condition.[112] Harrison died on April 4, 1841, nine days after becoming ill[115] and exactly one month after taking the oath of office; he was the first president to die in office.[114] Jane McHugh and Philip A. Mackowiak did an analysis in Clinical Infectious Diseases (2014), examining Dr. Miller's notes and records of the White House water supply being downstream of public sewage, and they concluded that he likely died of septic shock due to "enteric fever" (typhoid or paratyphoid fever).[116][117] His last words were to his attending doctor, though assumed to be directed at Vice President John Tyler:
Sir, I wish you to understand the true principles of the government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more.[118]
(en.m.wikipedia.org/...)
How does it feel to be Trump? Who cares you say? But when we see Kurds slaughtered and their lands ethnically cleansed in a matter of days from a precipitous presidential decision, we must consider what motivates such a person, and on a most essential level it is how he feels. He acts impulsively based on his feelings. When he feels fear he acts more impulsively not less, heightening his compensatory pleasure at the attention, and making him desire still greater impulsiveness. Twitter is his pulling the feathers off a live bird.
Until Trump leaves office, he will be the commander in chief, and our safety and that of many others around the world will be in his “hands,” which really means in his feelings, and he loves the forced intimacy of the nation and the world, held captive to his feelings.
No Darth Vader, he ignores his breath—hwooooooo haaaa—except when he breathes on a nearby victim or calms himself for a golf shot. We will never forget in a debate when he drew near to Secretary Clinton, and we could hear his nasal breath. It seemed almost like he was going to assault her. One sensed his violence, his love of torturing others. In this predator and prey dynamic, Trump is most himself and most in touch with his breath.
His love for golfing since his youth is probably because here he must approach a competitive form of mindfulness. Mindfulness without competition might bear human growth. The scorekeeping and cheating ensures that the breath will be stilled for narcissistic reasons.
In his most quiet moments, late at night or early in this the morning, the heart beat is his most basic feeling: lub-dub lub-dub lub-dub... He senses his approaching death with each heart beat. He rises early to escape this feeling. With lighting the first tweet, he gets a rush and the perception of heart beat disappears, and he escapes death.
With each day his fear of impeachment and removal from office grows. Impulse comes to address the feeling. The 25th Amendment is not going to save us from his fear and impulses any more than it has saved the Kurds. We are being betrayed, and he loves that he can do this to us as much as he can love anything.
We owe it to ourselves to try to be as healthy and nice to each other as possible. Trump is not our father, and he may never have heartfelt mercy on anyone, even with his last breath. If he was ever on the Light Side of the Force, his fear of death probably will never cause him to see the simple light of true friendship. Let us make our vigil be for the light, even as we seek his swift removal from office. We will breathe breathe. Our vigil is one of love, and he can’t take our love away from us with his forced intimacy.