A Left-Handed Defense of Donald Trump

President Donald Trump Is Not Responsible

Although this blog is entitled “Trump and All the Rest,” what you will read here in the coming weeks and months won’t be mainly about Donald Trump. There are lots of other issues we need to look at. Nevertheless, some reference to the most recent US president is unavoidable. Donald Trump is as ubiquitous as ants at a picnic. I’m not, however, as down on him as most of my friends, who blame him for everything and want his head.

The bottom line here is, I think, that Donald Trump is not responsible.  In the first place he has neither the intelligence nor the professional level to be responsible for much of anything. He is burdened as well by a narcissistic, egocentric and truculent character that may actually be pathological. Add to this the fact that he delegates so many of his duties and decisions that we suspect that he’s not actually in charge, that he’s being “handled,” first by Steve Bannon, then by we’re not sure who else.

Did Trump Create America? No, Vice Versa

Trump didn’t create America, rather vice versa. He seems to be fully congruent with 21^st-century America’s prevailing tastes and values. Like most red-blooded American boys he believes in America first (after Me) and the lie of the self-made man. He became famous conducting a television show about business deals and ever since has had trouble distinguishing between “reality show” and reality. He likes being famous, coming out in the papers and grabbing girls. He embraces a particularly crass version of “luxury” and does business selling it. He’s fond of fancy cars and expensive geegaws. He likes easy money and fast women, and vice versa.

President Trump loves being seen to be the boss. He’s unscrupulous and seems to consider money the measure of everything. He has a curious concept of the truth as something he can remold and remodel. (He actually attempts to redefine it, apparently unaware that a redefined truth is a lie.) He just happened to step into the Okefenokee blackwater of American politics (careful, there be scary critters in there) at a propitious moment, a moment of negative serendipity that permitted him to get 1,000% of his limited power on the ground. White trash America was ripe for some simple-minded answers from the mouth of an oafish presidential candidate. Never mind that he was in way over his head and patently inadequate for the job.

President Trump Is Not Alone

In short, here we’ll be reflecting less on what President Trump is doing to America and more about what America has done to President Trump. Because he’s not alone. America has done the same thing, in greater or lesser degree, to all of us.

Thanks for commenting and sharing.
.

Read the full story in my ebook, The Turncoat Chronicles.

Author: Michael Booth

Michael Booth, the creator of TrumpAndAllTheRest.com, is a US-born publicist, author and online publisher who has lived in a Spanish village in the foothills of Sierra Nevada for the past five decades. Though better known abroad for his fine-art printmaking sites and online magazine, Booth's day job for the past decade and a half, until recently, was his communications agency, dedicated principally to designing and implementing Internet strategies for Spanish companies and institutions. It took him a long time to get out of publicity and into writing but it was worth the wait. View all posts by Michael Booth