By Paul Edwards
May 25, 2018 "Information Clearing House" - Efforts at taxonomy of the creature Trump have failed. Vituperation and execration have exhausted their utility. Define the beast by its behavior.
Taking him at his word--absurd, of course--that his actions are intended to make America great again--has to show what that must mean for him.
His triumphs, then: to favor obscene wealth in taxation; to scrap diplomacy and bait Russia; to fund military horrors he vowed to reduce; to vilify and punish Islamic and Latino vulnerables; to spurn the world effort to reverse climate change; to reject the Iran nuclear deal; to threaten North Korea with nukes; and to decapitate regimes in Syria, Venezuela, and fill in the blank.
Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda? |
Each of
these bizarre acts had to be based on
his conviction of their supreme
importance and his expectation of
“winning” outcomes. Each had to be
carried out against resistance by
misguided “losers” and perverse and
deluded enemies. The fact that his
appalled opposition comprised the vast
majority of the conscious, sentient
human race carried no weight with him.
What can be
concluded from this? How to comprehend
it? Athenians had a name for it.
Sophocles and Euripedes examined it in
their dramas in detail, viz.: “Hubris:
a personality quality of extreme or
foolish pride or dangerous
overconfidence, often in combination
with arrogance.” It was hubris that
blinded Oedipus, burned Troy, and killed
Achilles.
What made
tragedy poignant for the Greeks was that
the protagonist never realized his
hubris until the horrors he provoked
brought Nemesis, goddess of retribution,
down hard to crush him and his world.
If, perhaps, that old inevitability of
doom is still operative, it’s
inclusiveness must disturb us.
Multitudes would rejoice at Trump’s downfall, imprisonment, even death, but the prospect of living in the disaster of his crash prompts only dread. Suppose his tax lunacy or trade madness triggers the titanic meltdown in our Funhouse Finance Economy that cognoscenti know is in the cards? Suppose his Middle School Macho provocations of Iran, or Korea, start a complex, irreversible slide to world war as the Serb ultimatum did in 1914?
The
probability of unimaginable disaster due
directly to his bedlamite hipshooting is
very high in the short run through
financial implosion or world war, and
higher yet in the long, from likely
irreversible global warming.
What, as
Lenin asked, is to be done? The
political party responsible for his rise
and election urges you passionately, as
a decent person, to get thee to a voting
booth soonest and vote for them. Hell,
no, not the Republicans! They feared
him like the plague. Doing all they
feebly could to deny and derail him,
they opposed him righteously, wimpily,
to the very moment when they didn’t.
When he won... Then they genuflected
and kowtowed.
No, no, mes
amis: the Dems. It was the Democrats
who gave you Trump. It was decades of
their cynical, contemptible sellout of
labor and working people, of students,
children, the elderly and sick, for big
chips from the putrescent Vampire Squids
of Wall Street that greased the skids
for the odious grotesque who controls of
our collective fate. And now the party
that has conned and screwed you,
torpedoed its chance to beat Trump and
lied about it, that is doing all in its
sleazy power to promote annihilating war
with Russia, asks you to drop trou, bend
over, and hold your nose again?
One school
of thought faults the people for having
taken the pretty poison of
Exceptionalism and the gospel of
Imperialist Proxy Murder of the Deep
State’s brain-training game. Another
lays all blame on the profound iniquity
of the purveyors of that toxic bullshit
that has blasted and burnt so much of
the world. It no longer matters. The
deed is done. The fait is accompli.
However you
parse it, an infernal terminal box has
been built for America from which there
is no exit. It was done with
astonishing want of wisdom, a staggering
parochial stupidity and solipsistic
blindness that, ignoring all options for
correcting our fatal vector, proceeded
as inexorably as sunset.
The sorry
history of our imperial suicide will be
the stuff of legend one day if there are
still organs of cognition to receive
it. It will rank right up there with
the Pelopponesian War, the Anabasis, and
Hitler’s attack on the USSR.
Evolution shows very clearly that only life forms that adjust and adapt survive. Those that don’t decay and disappear. Jeffers said it a century ago, before this country had hardened in its fatal mold: “Shine, Perishing Republic”.
Paul Edwards is a writer and film-maker in Montana. He can be reached at: hgmnude@bresnan.net
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
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