It's not Trump Vs. Biden; It's Trump Vs. Democracy

 

Mary Trump’s book, Too Much and Never Enough, describes Donald Trump as a wounded soul who never develops the capacity for intimacy, empathy, compassion, or understanding. He’s not a fully developed human being; he is stunted emotionally and psychologically. But the most fascinating dynamic revealed in the book is the one controlling the monumental effort that has gone into fooling the world into believing the book’s subject, Donald J. Trump, is some sort of genius.

It’s not a new thing to take the weakest, least capable family members and keep them hidden or send them away. The rich and famous have done that for centuries. What’s new is rather than send Donald away, his family chose to prop him up. As Mary Trump, Donald Trump’s niece, makes clear in various ways throughout her book, the Trump family dynamic was such that their survival as a business (which is what this family is and was from the moment Fred Trump and his wife created their dynasty) required a front man to make it successful, and Donald fit that bill.

Donald’s incessant need for attention has always made it impossible to ignore him, so people enabled him instead. For the family, there was no upside to confronting Donald with the truth, so nobody did. They’d experienced the tantrums and cruelty Donald was capable of when he was still a child. They knew his propensity for holding grudges and punishing those he perceived as having slighted him. Donald always won. He had to. His ego required it and his ego is the single thing Donald Trump is trained to defend, at all costs.

By the time he became President, he’d been protected from his own ignorance, incompetence and failures for over 70 years. The Trump family never imagined that the more rich and powerful Donald Trump appeared, the more people outside the Trump family would be willing to suspend their own disbelief and go along with the façade. 

It never occurred to his family that the rest of the world would not only accept their damaged offspring as capable but would deify him as the new leader of the Christian right. The Trump family pretended Donald Trump was everything he said he was because their business depended on it. They had no idea where their conspiracy to defraud the public would take them.

Donald Trump does not run a successful family business, contrary to popular belief. His father, Fred Trump did that. Fred’s eldest son, Fred Jr. (Freddie) wasn’t cutthroat enough for his father, and his innate sense of humanity made him uncomfortable with his father’s “kill or be killed” mentality. Freddie’s failure became Donald’s opportunity. It didn’t matter that Donald was an undisciplined underachiever; what mattered was he had confidence, and with confidence you can convince people of anything.

Donald is no scholar; he barely reads. He doesn’t remember anything that doesn’t facilitate the only feelings he is capable of: superiority, self-importance, entitlement, lust for power. He says, does and thinks whatever his mind tells him will make him appear smarter, more interesting and more powerful than he is. The compulsive need to feed his ego is constant and can never be sated. Donald Trump is not well; he is broken. Everyone who works closely with him can see it, but nobody seems to know what to do about it.

For years the media has been saying Trump just needs to “be more presidential” or “stop saying the quiet part out loud." They assume he can grow, learn, change. He can’t. He is a shell of a man whose entire existence is based on lies. Donald Trump is not really the President; he just plays one on TV.

Don McGahan chose the judges Trump appointed to the Supreme Court and formed the team that filled all the judicial vacancies. Putin guides Trump’s international diplomacy and, Mitch McConnell blocks any legislation that his cronies might not like. Donald Trump has somehow become the de facto leader of the Christian right.

But Trump is not their Chosen One; he’s their Golden Calf.

We must stop comparing Trump to normal people. Normal people with dementia may sound like Trump sounds, but Trump does not have dementia, he is simply making everything up as he goes along. He hears things; he repeats them; he embellishes; he fabricates. He spews nonsense because that’s what’s in his head.

Trumps has no policy; there is no big plan; there is no consistency. There is only a steady move toward chaos that will allow Trump to claim more and more power until he can justify taking all the control from the rioting, undeserving American public, leaving our once great democracy in tatters.

If you’ve assumed Trump’s willingness to appoint right-wing judges makes up for all his other failings, you are mistaken. Trump has systematically dismantled our environmental protections and regulations designed to protect consumers, depleted our federal government infrastructure and is doing his best to destroy the postal service while encouraging his own supporters to commit election fraud.

Whatever you like about what Trump has done, it cannot outweigh the failure to protect the American people from Covid-19, or the damage he’s doing to our system of government. And whatever you dislike about Joe Biden, he will never leave the American people at the mercy of chance when it comes to protecting us from danger. The choice is clear.

This election isn’t about Trump vs. Biden; it’s Trump vs. Democracy. If Trump wins, we lose. It’s that simple.

--Laurie Fosner