Both Barack Obama and Donald Trump announced assassinations.
Jimmy Kimmel played it for laughs.
Take one minute and 24 seconds.
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| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsBOWSjOLsE |
The difference between them is dramatic. I was reminded of Obama's grace and seriousness. I was reminded of Trump's narcissism and lack of class.
And yet.
And yet about half of our fellow Americans choose Trump, and a great many of them refuse to believe anyone so wonderful could possibly have lost an election.
Try watching the video a second time, this time ignoring the Kimmel audience laughter. Look at Trump.
Watch his gestures and demeanor, and compare it to Obama's. Trump is animated. His gestures are big and loud. Face, hands, and arms are all part of the big show. His words are the language of tabloid newspapers and casual speech. In one sense, it is utterly inappropriate for the circumstance. As his former Chief of Staff, Attorney General, and other top Cabinet officers have said, Trump is "unfit" for the presidency. But he is relatable as a peer to the demographic that has become the centerpiece of the GOP base.
"Easy Sunday" is intended to be a lighthearted post, but take a moment to remember the culmination event in the oldest story in Western Civilization, The Iliad. Achilles, after defeating Hector in battle, celebrated by dragging his body behind his chariot. The gods were offended, disgusted. It was unseemly. Yet what Achilles did was all-too-human, the victor spiking the football. It was the behavior of the self-centered, prima-donna hero. A star.
Trump told us about stars. When you are a star you can do what you want. Women let you fondle them. Men let you shoot someone on Fifth Avenue. Circumstances reveal Trump is largely correct, alas. White women voted for Trump, even after the Access Hollywood revelation. His supporters laughed along with him when he called E. Jean Carroll a whack job. The many legal cases against him appear to be increasing his support.
Trump is a star. He is heroic, not in the Bible sense of good, evil, and obedience to God, but in the Iliad sense of warrior culture, glory, and willfulness.
He is not elected by the Greek Gods, nor by modern arbiters of decorum. Trump condemns those do-gooder arbiters as elitists, fake, the swamp, and woke. Trump is elected by people who considered Obama an imposter who rose above his true station in life. A great many Americans see Trump for exactly who he is, and prefer him. They resent the fact that people laugh at Trump for being plain spoken. It means the audience is laughing at them, too.
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13 comments:
Apples and Oranges...(ta tum!)
Barack Obama and Donald Trump should not be in the same paragraph. This is a distinction without a difference. It's actually kind of insulting to President Obama to compare them at all.
These two individuals only similarity is that they both were elected president. The reasons for this are complex and varied, with racial paranoia and a backlash against the first African American president being the most prevalent.
Saying that, it's a reflection of the audience. A full third of Americans hold racist and bigoted attitudes. The question we have to face is whether or not as a society we will allow these beliefs, a minority, to be tolerated.
No joke...
Yes, I am laughing at supporter’s of Trump. Especially the people who do things like buy Trump dollars and then go to the bank to cash them in.
Peter, you say Trump is heroic in the Iliad sense of warrior culture, glory and willfulness, but you’re giving him way too much credit. Trump bragged to Howard Stern that while others were dodging bullets, he was back home dodging STDs and called that his “personal Vietnam.” Later he mocked POWs, saying he likes people who weren’t captured. I can’t imagine Achilles making such craven comments even in private, much less on the air.
What’s all too true is that Trump was elected by people who believed his racist bullshit about President Obama – in other words, by people as crazy as he is. Trump is Republican payback for electing a Black president, as well as the cheapest but most destructive sabotage against the U.S. that Putin ever launched.
We are all extremely familiar with former president National Disgrace. Apparently he is a sick fascination of yours. The problem is that he loves the attention. It is oxygen to him. You are giving him extra oxygen, beyond just covering the campaign. You elevate him. It must be related to your fascination with power, political theater and domination.
There are many other more interesting subjects than that repulsive sexual predator, traitor and crook. I have begun to doubt the state of your mental health.
Peter is correct that Trump fits a particular (mythological) archetype. Obama fits another: “elite liberal snob“.
* He hobnobs with the liberal elites on Martha’s Vineyard.
* He called a cop “stupid” for being suspicious of a black guy trying to break into a house. It turned out that the black guy owned the house and was a liberal elite professor, but how was the cop supposed to know that in the moment? (Obama had to backtrack from his implicit and unjustified accusations of racism and conduct a ridiculous “beer summit“ to try to get out from under that one.)
* He famously referred to those occupying the lower rungs of the hierarchy of elitism he occupies the pinnacle of as “bitter clingers“, referring to their unfortunate (in his opinion) attachment to their guns and their religion.
* Upon leaving the presidency, he vacationed in the South Pacific on a mega-yacht owned by a liberal elite movie mogul.
Obama was very good at projecting the simage of “bringer of the light of enlightenment“. Trump is very good at projecting “man of the people“. In neither case is that the true nature of the man behind the curtain.
Dear Anonymous
Thanks for your concern about my mental health. I worry that I am no longer able to retain 7-digit numbers in my head, e.g. unfamiliar telephone numbers, something that used to be easy. Part of why I write every day is to test my own mental health.
Trump remains the head of one of America's two great political parties, and he has an approximately 50-50 chance of being the president again. I consider him like a cancer. The cancer might only be 5% of a person's body, yet a body with such a cancer mass is very, very ill indeed. Especially if the cancer is spreading to adjacent cells that welcome it. So, I write about the cancer, not the rest of the body.
But I take your point. Please list for me in a comment, signed or anonymous, your choice, the topics that face America that you think are more interesting and relevant than the Trump cancer. I can compartmentalize. I observed during my long brokerage career that some clients who told me about their cancer diagnosis then changed their life focus to very different things. Hobbies. Travel between infusion sessions. Other distractions. It had a kind of desperation to it, to my mind, but I fully understood it. They were MORE than the cancer. They had full lives.
You are right. America is more than the Trump cancer. Tell me, please, the direction I should be looking.
Peter Sage
Contrary to what the anonymous commenter says, Trump is the leader of the Republican Party and frontrunner to be their presidential nominee. He also represents everything that is sick and wrong about America. We would be idiots to ignore him.
According to Pew Research, 55% of women voters voted for Joe Biden in 2020. Only 48% of men voters voted for Joe Biden in 2020. A big thanks to the ladies!
Apparently these facts do not fit the blogger's political agenda and are not tabloid enough to be included in the blog.
Every vote is important, but with the unfair and undemocratic Electoral College, we need to focus on winning purple, swing states.
We will see how the GQP's war on women works for them in 2024.
Dear Anonymous
Please read carefully before you post a comment. I am well aware of the votes for Biden and Trump, and for Hillary and Trump in 2016. I specified WHITE women. Not women. I was and remain dismayed that a majority of White women voted for Trump in stead of Hillary, even in the aftermath of the Access Hollywood video release. I thought there would be more feminist solidarity and identification with Hillary.
I attempt to avoid a tabloid tone and that isn't my political agenda.
This comment has a similar "feel" and tone of several other anonymous comments, each written from the point of view of a put-upon, under-appreciated woman, unhappy that for some reason I don't hit the correct notes on behalf of women that the commenter thinks I should have. Well, I do my best. May I suggest that instead of imagining what political agenda I surely have in order to be so wrongheaded about women, please write the Guest Post that says what YOU think I SHOULD have said, if I weren't so wrongheaded and my motives so bad.
Write what you think the truth is. Put it out there. About half my readers are female. Maybe there will be an outpouring of applause for your guest post.
Peter Sage
Rick pointed out that Barack Obama and Donald Trump should not be in the same paragraph. However, people who see themselves as innocent victims of Blacks pursuing social justice regard Obama as comparable to Trump, if not worse. Not that he bragged about grabbing women by the pussy or tried to overthrow the government, but he “hobnobs with the liberal elites” or, as Peter put it, he “rose above his true station in life.”
people who see themselves as innocent victims of Blacks pursuing social justice
That would be, people who dislike racial discrimination in any direction.
“hobnobs with the liberal elites” or, as Peter put it, he “rose above his true station in life”
Obama presented himself as a “bringer of the light of enlightenment“. But Obama’s “true station in life” turned out to be as a virtue signaling member of the liberal elite.
You don’t see the Dalai Lama yukking it up with the elites on Martha’s Vineyard or vacationing on David Geffen’s 454 foot yacht. He’s too busy bringing the light.
Sure, Barack Obama is the ‘bringer of light,’ or ‘Lucifer’ as it’s called in the Latin. My brother-in-law thought he was the anti-Christ but he was an Oath Keeper, so he didn’t really know any better.
I'm not a single issue voter.
Our elected leaders - Senators, Representatives, Presidents, and Governors - aren't perfect, regardless of party affiliation.
I have never hated any of them in my lifetime.
Since I'm a Pollyanna, a half-full kind of guy, I know there is some good in each and everyone of them. I accept that good from each of them, knowing that there will also be some bad along the way.
Yes, both Presidents Obama and Trump delivered some good to the people in the US and the rest of the world.
I owe my success to finding the good in people.
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