No Comparison

 “Whether you are the criminal or the captive, there are few things more disconcerting than learning that the rescue crew is in on the plot.” Sarah Kendzior, Vanity Fair

The way Donald Trump evades accountability for his many transgressions is astonishing. Whether this is a result of Trump’s evil genius or simply the weakness of our institutions and the people who sit atop them, I can’t say, though I imagine it’s a little of both. That the people who write and administer the laws are rarely held accountable by them, even after swearing an oath to faithfully obey and uphold them, is a maddening axiom. Maddening because average people have no capacity to play hide and seek with the law; average people can’t ignore subpoenas or demand that their case be heard by their own hand-picked judge. Only the wealthy and powerful and politically-connected are allowed to play the legal game this way. 

I sounded the alarm about Trump early and often on this blog, my long-running vanity project that resides on the fringes of total anonymity. One small voice drowned by the noise of the world. I had been aware of Trump for many years and considered him an obnoxious buffoon, the worst kind of rich asshole because of his insatiable insecurity and blinding need to always be the center of attention, even as he failed at one business venture after another. Bright lights, glitz, famous people, and braggadocio was what Trump had, and it was enough for the New York real estate world. But Trump was never the business whiz he claimed to be; you have to be a particular kind of fuck-up to run a casino into the ground. It’s telling that the only thing Trump excelled at was the make-believe of “reality” television, where he controlled the script, the lighting and camera angles, final edit approval, and all the make-up and hair people he needed. When he entered politics in 2015 he did so on the wings of television which he understood how to manipulate better than any other figure, perhaps any American, ever. The Republican field was crowded but weak in 2016, and none of the candidates knew how to deal with someone like Trump, who lied and exaggerated and accused and humiliated others as casually as a bully on an elementary school playground. The corporate media -- ABC, NBC, CBS, and the cable networks -- aided Trump, of course, because he was good for ratings and strong ratings juice ad revenue. Trump had the full-throated backing of Fox News, whose on-air “personalities” and performers rushed to defend, explain, excuse, and interpret him for its viewers nearly all day, every day. Trump was making money for the media CEO’s, so it’s no surprise that they stayed seated for the ride. After Trump’s shock victory by way of the absurd Electoral College the same media outlets bent over backwards to normalize Trump and treat him like a serious man -- like he had a clue about what being President of the United States meant. 

He didn’t. All Trump knew was that he was going to have a lot of power. 

With great solemnity many pundits predicted that the office would change Trump, temper his baser instincts and coarse behavior, but the opposite happened; Trump turned the office into a burlesque, an extension of reality television, complete with wicked villains (Democrats, the Deep State, Hillary Clinton, anyone who opposed him or said unkind things about him) and outrageous claims of his own greatness, omniscience and popularity. Better than Obama, always, because Obama was bad juju for Trump, the one man Trump couldn’t cow, bully, humiliate or denigrate. He tried to erase as many of Obama’s accomplishments as he could with his executive pen, but largely failed. There’s no comparison between the two men: one is a successful human, the other a sociopath; one is respected for his calm mind, intelligence, eloquence and reason, and the other spews outrageous lies like a busted sewer line; one possesses a moral and ethical center, the other is amoral and only admires raw power. Despite laws and norms, precedent and tradition that existed to prohibit such behavior, Trump set out to profit from his office, to monetize it as much as possible, only in scale and technique different from the kleptocrats of the former Soviet republics. Trump had no concept of being a servant of the people or the American state: he was the state, and the people were his subjects. The system of laws and norms and precedent and tradition failed to stop Trump, and once Trump saw how porous the guardrails were he knew the field was wide open. Start with relatively minor stuff like blatant violations of the Hatch Act and the Emolument clause of the Constitution, and if no alarm is raised, go further; if alarm is raised, issue a flat denial, accuse the Democrats of what-aboutism, and attack the accuser. This works very well if you have a massive social media following and a cable network willing to carry your freight. 

When Barack and Michelle Obama’s official White House portraits were unveiled this week I thought again of the contrast between Trump and Obama, the criminal narcissist and the half-black man of immense cool and class. Now, I was very critical of Barack Obama -- during the first half of his first term in particular -- that two-year period when he had congressional majorities and could have acted boldly and instead tried to play the game with the GOP, which wasn’t interested. Obama had it rough, especially after the 2010 midterms. I still think that not going after the CEO’s of the big banks for their role in the financial crash hurt him with Americans who lost their homes, jobs, health insurance, and hope. His foreign policy always disappointed me as it was in alignment with the Council on Foreign Relations, though he managed to sound more conflicted about the deployment of US power than his predecessor, the faux cowboy who plunged the US into a disastrous, stunningly stupid War on Terror, never ending, and ever changing. What I more clearly appreciate in retrospect is how skilled a politician Obama was, and how much abuse he endured. There’s more class in Barack Obama’s pinky than in all of Trump’s bloated body. 

The ground for an unscrupulous someone like Donald Trump was prepared over many years. The GOP has long harbored anti-democratic, racist, white supremacist, misogynistic and authoritarian figures, Christian nationalists and rabid anti-Communists. This is the modern GOP’s DNA, what they believe. Trump gave the entire party permission to unfurl and wave the MAGA flag of hatred.