Donald Trump is a rageaholic. He lacks the normal filters that responsible adults possess to govern their actions in the real world because his trust fund insulated him from ever having to become a responsible adult and his real estate mogul/reality-TV-star lifestyle was scarcely the real world as that term is commonly understood. The recent firing of James Comey was just the most recent display of self will run riot in a life where unfettered liberty long ago became license to run amok. To add insult to that injury, Trump followed up with his usual tweet tempest, this one of hurricane 12 gale force. First, he accused Comey of being a “showboater,” and “grandstander.” Fellow kossack 4CasandChio posted this comment in response to those accusations, “BTW — “Comey is a grandstander ...” coming from Trump is irony in IV roids, pulsing through a T-Rex.” Touche.
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The level of Trump’s rage at Comey and more exactly, the Russia investigation, is like an atomic pile in meltdown. The nuclear core is in the oval office and the status is critical. Neither Trump’s campaign nor his administration has ever been lacking in theatrics but Tuesday's firing of James Comey by letter while Comey was making a speech 3,000 miles away was heralded as a "public execution," while Sean Spicer literally hid in the White House bushes trying to figure out what to do next. If the performance got out of control it's because the script was defective. Trump wrongly surmised that the Comey firing was going to be a win-win scenario. He desperately needed to get heat off of the Russian investigation and he wrongly assumed that the Democrats would back him, so after debating for a week he pulled the plug Tuesday with his tasteless firing of Comey, who found out about it like the rest of us, watching teevee. The goings on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have been many things, but never this low-life to a revered compatriot, (remember Trump blowing Comey a kiss in January?) -- not until now. Fukashima was a picnic in the park compared to the Russia-fueled meltdown at the White House this week.
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Donald Trump is upset. He’s not happy about America’s preoccupation with the “Russia narrative.” He’s angry that we’re bothered by the possible damning ties between his campaign and a hostile foreign power. He’s seething over the Senate Judiciary Committee’s insolent insistence on scrutinizing his people. “He would sometimes scream at television clips about the probe,”
Politico reports, in a piece that characterizes the president as “enraged” and “fuming.” He has sent
furious tweets. “The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax,” he
ranted during Sally Yates’ testimony on Monday. “When will this taxpayer funded charade end?”
It is such an odd, ubiquitous detail—that Trump is “enraged.” He is apoplectic, incensed, irate, vexed, sore, peeved, tantrum-y, mad online, mad offline, mad in a boat, mad with a goat, mad in the rain, mad on a train.
The president’s rage, his defining characteristic, is not of the contemporary political moment. It is something archaic, mythological, like the rage of Achilles. How can you be “enraged” about an investigation that has already found clear evidence of your team’s wrongdoing and yet that your allies have moved mountains to hinder?
Why is it infuriating that the American people want to resolve the question of whether an authoritarian country meddled in their election? A man with nothing to hide would feel indignant, surely, but not this all-consuming rage; a man with secrets would presumably feel dread or guilt. But Trump’s wrath is not the response of a conventional politician. It is the lashing out of a
mad king against the disobedience of his subjects.
[In another Slate article] Phillip Carter called the axing [of Comey] a “
public execution” and argued that POTUS had declared “war on justice … there are no shoes left to drop.” Press secretary Sean Spicer,
fumbling among the bushes on the darkened White House lawn, seemed
about as prepared as one might expect (from a person hiding among bushes) to explain his boss’s decision and assuage the public’s concerns.
Trump’s circle thought Republicans and Democrats would all rejoice to see Comey go.
It would be easy to blame such shortsightedness on stupidity or ignorance alone. But the motivations run far deeper than that. Trump wants the Russia story to go away. This is not simply a matter of political pragmatism. The allegations attack his legitimacy, striking at the tender root of his self-image. James Comey has the power to stop these blows; he hasn’t. Therefore,
Trump is angry at Comey, and his fury, like a molten reactor core, powers every impulse radiating from the West Wing.
Is Trump evil, or is he a moron? Is he the guy cannily dismantling checks on his power, or is he the old coot shaking his fist at CNN?It turns out this was always the wrong question to ask. We Trump-watchers have spent far too long trying to figure out whether he is a savant or a clown—whether he plays 11-dimensional chess in his leisure hours or drools onto his robe while turning the White House lights on and off.
The truth is that the president has one eternally rageful mode, which sometimes blows up in his face and sometimes greases the cogs of the highest office in the land.
Trump’s ire
is a form of genius, and not just because it made him a wild card that status-quo-weary Americans thrilled to empower. During the campaign he deployed his
permanent resentment as an effective showtime staple, railing against swamps and job-stealers. While his opponent ran on togetherness, he chanted “lock her up” and the rally-goers followed suit. He rolled the dice on repealing Obamacare (he hated Obama, his cool, constitutional opposite) and it sort of worked.
But Trump’s Achilles-like choler is also an Achilles heel. His hasty executive orders, his quick-twitch violations of diplomatic norms, have already tarnished his young presidency. There were the impotent ravings about inauguration crowds and embarrassing (to some, effective to others) cries of “fake news.”On the campaign trail, much was made of the Republican mogul’s fluency in the language of anger, his surprising and intuitive connection to a similarly inflamed white working class. We were slower to realize that his fury was no posture—that there was no “real” Trump preparing to take his solemn seat on Jan. 20. For better or for worse, being mad was his way of being in the world.
Yes, being mad, both angry mad and crazy mad, is definitely Trump's way of being in the world. And it is the way of his loyal supporters as well. He was and is their pied piper, singing to them a song only they hear, serenading their alienated and embittered hearts, furious at a world that gave them a raw deal, a world that they blame for leaving them behind. Yes, the disspirited and the malcontent heard Trump's clarion call and we are where we are because of it. Anger and fear are the common denominators of Trump's followers; add those two elements together and you get hate.
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We live in a world of political surrealism. Norman Rockwell may have captured the spirit of true Americana at one point; now the American psychic-political landscape looks more like something imagined by Salvador Dali. Karl Rove told journalist Ron Suskind in 2003,"We're [the Republican party] an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out." Rove makes politics sound like its being practiced by The Borg, doesn't he?
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The Borg used to declaim and hope that they were believed, that "Resistance Is Futile." But as we saw, resistance was not futile and it isn't with us either. Trump's supporters may be mad, but you know what? So are we. We're mad as hell and we're not going to take this anymore, either. The Borg, cockroaches and Republicans all have in common amazing adaptive and staying powers, I'll grant them that. But they can be defeated. They have been defeated. And they will be defeated again. We have had to drink from a very bitter cup this past election, the most bitter in the history of this republic since the Civil War, I believe it is safe to say, and the taste of victory will be that much sweeter, when we regain control. And we shall.
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For right now, I simply pray to God that H.R. McMaster is protecting the nuclear codes from the madman that is the sitting president because you and I are sitting ducks. The president is supposed to be our primary safeguard against all threats foreign and domestic. Right now the biggest threat to this nation, foreign or domestic, is coming from that very same president.
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Abraham Lincoln said, in his Lyceum address: "Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years.
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At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide."
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I believe that Lincoln was right, that we will never be defeated by outside forces. If government for the people, of the people and by the people shall perish from the earth it will be because we have destroyed ourselves from within. Donald Trump seems hell bent on accomplishing the very thing against which Lincoln cautioned us long ago.
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America has never been through anything like this before, even remotely. This president is our Mad King George. He’s totally out of control. May we find the wisdom and the strength to deal with the ongoing crisis that is Donald Trump. May God help us all.