This past week, we have once again, witnessed “bad acting.”
It is a broken record. Mediocre acting, bad role reprisals, weak dramatic presentation and an inability to take direction or listen to others is NOT the hallmark of a star or a leader.
I just wanted to be very clear about that.
I just wanted to begin by telling you, the reader, that “ad libbing” becomes tiresome when the quality of the ad lib deteriorates to drunk uncle, or Uncle Fester the Repeat Offender Molester.
And that’s what we’re getting. Mediocrity, more of the “shoot from the hip” attack dog, more of the exhausting demands of a worn-out, sad, dilapidated present version of a former self.
It is an uncomfortable truth. The lesson is that he will never, ever change.
Our lesson will be to learn how to move on, move away, move into our next phase of life. We have to let him go…
This guy is last week’s catch of the day, wrapped in yesterday’s newsprint, with birdcage droppings and seeds stuck on its outsides, and it has been sitting out stinking up the entire house.
Enough already.
There are third-rate comedians who never make it on the circuit. There are actors who never get more than one commercial. There are bit parts that should remain so, because all the person could do was stand in front of the camera and become the equivalent of a video game’s non-player character (NPC).
The uncomfortable truth is Life is full of “also-rans.”
None of them are “losers,” they’re just ordinary folk who have tried out but did not get picked. They’ll have to go back to waiting tables, driving vans, selling online subscriptions, or whatever we all have to do to raise cash so we can continue to eat and live indoors.The lesson is that we should not give up on our dreams, but that we shouldn’t rely on them to sustain us in life. Even when our dreams do come true, we still have to wake up and handle real life when the dream is over. We each need something grounded, something real, something everyone can recognize to fall back on. Sour-grapes complaining about the goals that escaped us is not productive.
Donald is who Donald was and likely always will be. He avoids all uncomfortable truths. He gets others to deal with reality for him, and his persistence isn’t about having a fall-back that he can earn a buck at. He has no real skill other than re-selling old, worn-out, overpriced crap that nobody but truly gullible folk will shell out good money for. He is a one-tool kind of guy, he wields a personality hammer that has one peen, one claw, one grip, one swing, one way of doing everything, never modulated for the type of project, fastener or tight corner. When pressed into a difficult situation, the hammer keeps going. The hammer doesn’t modulate or alter in its trajectory. The hammer is the most inappropriate tool to have brought to this task, because everything about where he finds himself is a case built with screws, rivets and heavy gauge steel panels.
Donald doesn’t learn his lessons. Apparently, neither do we, where he’s concerned.
Yes. This is all very, very uncomfortable.
Donald keeps attempting to reprise his role in “Home Alone 2”, except that in that movie, he had one cameo role, and all the director wanted was for him to wear clothes, mumble a few words, occupy space in the visual field, and then, call “CUT!”
Donald keeps trying to be the make-believe boss of a make-believe empire as depicted in “The Apprentice,” where everything was a made-for-TV show. Nothing ever came of the “winning,” it was all an attempt to get viewership and sell commercial airtime. Bill Rancic, the first contestant that Donald hired, stayed with the organization until he moved into his own business dealings in Chicago. He’s the only memorable character who got “hired.” The acting on that show was miserable, the roles were hideous, and Donald? Well, the stories of his behaviors off camera are legend.
Donald is trying to create a real-life reprisal of the late James Gandolfini’s role of fictitious mob boss Tony Soprano, another made-for-syndication series. The mythology of crime families, whether organized or not, is such an iconic element in the romantic view of our American 20th century that we have forgotten how much carnage and death the real crime families brought about. Running a “corporation” in the way we were shown an organized criminal enterprise works, glamorizing it, humanizing it, attempting to create the false equivalence of “sociopaths are people too...” has simply fed into the uncomfortable truth that is our daily reality as we attempt to say, “No, we really do not want criminality to run the show.” Criminals will ALWAYS try to make everyone else out to be the bad guys. That’s their justification for making criminality their daily activity.
More uncomfortable truth —
“"I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab 'em by the {inappropriate language}..”
In that Access Hollywood utterance from October of 2016, the real person was fully visible. Nothing really horrible about that utterance, except that it was a conversation that was better saved for a guys-only-locker-room where moments of malcontented maleness slip out of the lips. No, this isn’t a reactivity to something that runs afoul of Diversity, Equity, Belonging and Inclusion, it is simply stating that there are conversations where it is so much better that the camera and the microphone are turned off. How is showing your most limited conversational skill a qualifier for running the most powerful nation in the free world?
More uncomfortable truth —
GOP officials, appointees and former associates who once supported him are largely distancing themselves from Donald because they see the reality of a man running from something, a man desperate in his need to gain levers of power, a man aging at a very alarming rate right before our eyes, and a man who cannot deal with those confrontations we all have in our lives, as we are handed daily doses of reality.
Another heavy dose of uncomfortable —
The people who still support him do so unconditionally. It is a variation on an old notion of “Stinkin’ thinkin’.”
They see themselves in him, they see their disgust, their anger, their lapses, their loss of control, their feebleness, their awkwardness, their ordinariness to the point of being humiliated regularly and harshly.
They see their animus, their bigotry, their intoxications, their delusions projected and licensed by his actions and words.
They see their indignation being released, they see a railing against all authority, they see a protestation against everything and everyone that ever held them back, guarded them from their own worst selves, restrained them, imprisoned them, regulated them.
They see him as a person who effectively subjugates everyone who ever criticized or mocked them. They see him acting as buffoon and assclown, and making it okay for them to be as publicly irresponsible as he is. He invites them to be rude, disresprectful, violent, small-minded and tribal.
They have taken him to be their house god, their statuary, their icon for permission to do whatever the hell they want, in public or in private, and they know he will never tell them, "No, you cannot do that."
They see all of what I just listed above as his "policies," a collection of disjointed nonsense and inconsistent thought and feelings, all jumbled together to make some sort of ghastly edible that they will consume with great relish, no matter how disgusting it looks or actually is. It isn't anything like a policy. It is just running of the mouth, ideating and jumping around on issues that bother them because they choose to be bothered by those things, and there's no excuse for their reasoning or pseudo-rational explanations for why they think and feel as they do.
I mention all of this uncomfortable stuff because, well, I get it. Our lessons come hard.
They make us struggle and suffer through another endless day of news cycle that will not stop putting his face and name out there. He keeps getting free publicity, even if it is notoriety. He converts that into meaningful commerce. That’s his skill. That’s his larceny. It is not a craft guild to be sending your sons and daughters out into the world to pursue.
We each have our form of stinkin’ thinkin. We all have our little delusional system to manage and resolve. Some have more delusions than others. Some are awash in the great morass of life’s daily miseries. Some of us get a break. Others do not.
Some folks dive deeper in. Some folks go for the looney tunes version, create their own cartoon self-image, turn themselves into a thing many of us might have watched on Saturday mornings a half a century ago, much to our parents’ dismay.
Some get there through liquor. Some arrive through party drugs. Some gamble their way in. Some are desperately trying to spend their way into financial success. Some cannot control their appetites, some cannot regulate their employment history and job-hop. Some folks “buy-high, sell-low” and cannot get on the right side of securities investing.
Stinkin Thinkin comes in all sorts of packages and all sorts of age groups. It gets into our heads, and it is no easy matter to alter the narrative or change the script.
We become NPCs in our own distorted game of Life.
I met one of Donald’s supporters four days ago. Nice old lady, 88 years of being full of life, she struck up the conversation because I was nice enough to simply smile and be kind. It was obvious from the contents of her shopping cart, and the amount of expense she was going to for a lovely tipple, that she doesn't deal in facts. Again I offer, what a nice old lady. But could she do much more than think and talk about the world that once was and no longer is?
We enjoyed a bit of conversation, and I was able to maintain my self-respect and keep our chat to the sort of things that people just chat about. Open, honest, real and able to leave each other intact. There was no need to shred her.
The lines on her face spoke to her many years.
The contents of her shopping cart said all the rest.
I bought one bottle of wine. Five bucks.
She dropped 20 times that on hard alcohol.
I make the liquor run once or twice a year. My guess is that this is at least a weekly adventure for her...
How much of her savings or Social Security does she drink up each week? It is really none of my business . . .until she gets behind the wheel of a car or truck and decides to operate in traffic. Then, we have a different discussion to choose.
Tell me we don't have a chemical dependence problem in this country, go on, try...
"Stinkin thinkin" is a very real thing, indeed.
Let’s touch on alcohol consumption just a bit, because it is still the most readily available drug of abuse. You might even have a beer or two in your refrigerator right now! CDC reports that 17% of Americans experienced binge drinking and 7% are heavy drinkers. 753,000 teens (12-17) report alcohol use disorder. Alcohol-related motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of death among teens.
The adult beverage industry was concerned that legalization of cannabis would take away from their business. It hasn’t. In fact, where numbers did not hold steady, the amount of alcohol people buy has increased. Factoring down for increased use during the lockdown years of the pandemic, there is still a net increase in liquor sales in the United States. We’re buying more, drinking more, looking for stronger and stronger alcoholic formulations. That’s an uncomfortable truth for everyone except the drinker.
Alcohol use is associated with stinkin thinkin. Permanent changes in thought, mood and physiology follow lifelong use of alcohol. Individuals with mental health issues who drink become “dually diagnosed,”, meaning they not only must deal with their mental health, but they must also recover from using alcohol to attempt to self-medicate.
According to Donald’s niece, Mary Trump, in her book, “Too Much and Never Enough,” the Trump family system is an alcoholic one. The thought processes that follow these families are often defective, and the behaviors, repetitive in nature, are passed down generationally. Donald might not drink any more, but his thought and mood are certainly affected by this family system’s influence. How many other Americans have seen this aspect and not understood what they were seeing? How many have come from this kind of family system and had no idea why he resonates with them? How many are attempting to unconditionally support a fellow who will not deal with his disordered personality and behavioral set, because unconsciously, they are attempting to be the “Hero” family member, and rescue him from his own worst self?
Uncomfortable truths, indeed.
No part of this lesson we are being taught is simple. No part of it is straightforward. It is, however, a most necessary course in the schoolhouse to take to heart, and take notes on.
I’ll offer some basic, possibly challenging, maybe uncomfortable bullet points that we should all remember, in the event we find ourselves in trouble with the law:
- When you are interrogated by friends, family, press, or anyone except your attorney, use these two words — “No Comment!”
- When a police officer arrests you, stop arguing.
- When you are offered an attorney, take one.
- When you have the option to speak or say nothing, say nothing.
- Texting is exactly the same as speaking. So is Instagram or Tik-Tok. Just, don’t.
- If your brain starts saying the words, “Yeah-But” — take three slow, deep breaths. Do not argue.
- Be on time for court. Wear nicer clothes. Don’t overdo it. Don’t try to put on a show. It isn’t your house, it is not your stage.
- Be respectful. Everyone is there trying to do a job. Be sober. Don’t show up high or drunk.
- Here are words you may say to the judge — “Yes, Your Honor;” “No, Your Honor;” “Thank You, Your Honor.” Don’t get cute, flippant, sarcastic or clever. Don’t act like an ass.
- If your lawyer tells you to shut up, LISTEN TO THEM!
- The judge is NOT YOUR FRIEND. Don’t pretend you know anything about them.
- Being humble, being contrite and being honest do not require you to argue with anyone in that courtroom, nor on the courthouse steps.
- Leave the jury alone! Again, not your friends. These are just people who want to go back to their lives after performing a civic duty.
- If you are found guilty, let your attorneys handle your appeal. If you are found innocent, shut up, move on, learn from your lesson, accept your gift with gratitude, and stop putting yourself in harm’s way.
- Remember bullet point number one in all things, at all times.
When you must deal with uncomfortable truth, there is a natural tendency to argue and attempt to hide it or bury it. Much better to allow the process to clean up your uncomfortable truth than to keep stirring everything up and acting chaotically. If your uncomfortable truth involves alcohol, drugs, mental health, please seek out someone who will listen to you and advise you wisely.
I am quite certain our time in this schoolhouse of Life is far from over. In many ways, his trials are our trials, too. They will reveal how far we have deviated off a reasonable highway of life, and how far our off-roading wild ride has taken us away from the ability to live side-by-side with our fellow man. Let’s make the best of it, and let’s learn how to have civil discourse with one another again.