The Absurd Obscenity of the Current President of the United States

 

The Absurd Obscenity of the Current President of the United States

The presidency of Donald J. Trump is simultaneously absurd and obscene in more ways than I could ever recount—absurd in that this reality TV star has become President of the United States by insulting his way into the White House, obscene in his vaunted ignorance of history, culture, and knowledge in any meaningful sense of the term, and in his cruelty, lies, and dangerous narcissistic compulsions. Matt Taibbi, refers to the demagogic Trump as an “insane clown” who has attained the highest office in the land—this man, by temperament, by character, by his vast ignorance, garnered the votes of 62 million citizens based on his ersatz promise to make America great again. Absurdity and obscenity comingle in the very notion of a Trump presidency, while obscenity prevails—the obscenity of his racism, his misogyny, his continuous lying and his need to shape policy by the whims of his fragile ego and compelling need for a win—any win—at any cost.  How’s that working out for you?

Examples abound. Racism, a pervasive Trumpian social value for decades, reached a crescendo in his birtherized effort to de-legitimize the very presidency of Barack Obama in his spurious claim that the then president could not prove the legitimacy of his US birth and was likely born in Kenya. It is not clear whether Trump believed the claim or played this card because of the susceptibility of a most gullible base. Either way, Trump’s advocacy of this obscenity speaks to his amoral depravity, a core characteristic identified by Ted Cruz, which he later recanted.

There’s more. His lying about the claim that Hillary Clinton’s almost three million popular vote victory resulted from millions of illegal immigrant voters would surely be absurd if this specious charge led to no other consequences. Where this fiction transmutes into obscenity is when this “scandal” serves as the pretext to set up the so-called voter commission that plays directly into the non-issue of large-scale voting fraud. Through this, Trump’s lie is transformed into a political weapon which flows directly into a broader Republican narrative utilized to suppress the voting rights of largely Democratic citizens throughout large sectors of this county.  Consequently, Trump’s (absurd) lie becomes an insidious political weapon that shoots an arrow right into the heart of the nation’s core democratic value—the same intended effect of birtherism, expressed by other means.  Bad, so bad, so very bad.

There is also the charge that the American press—the so-called “fake media”—is the “enemy of the American people.” Given the Mueller investigation on the Trump campaign team’s relationship to Russia, to call the press the enemy of the American people is especially ironic when the accusatory arrow of probable obstruction and more than possible collusion point to the laceration of the Trumpian vacuous public conscience. There is more than ignorance at work here. There is an effort to derail the First Amendment, a reflection of Trump’s authoritarian impulse that extends well beyond his civic (il)literacy to a more sinister set of motives.

In his recent United Nations speech, Trump’s referred to the multi-national nuclear disarmament agreement with Iran as the “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.”  One can argue the merits of the policy, a debate that Trump dismisses with his undisciplined rhetoric. The likely result is that derailment of the agreement will only lead to an unneeded intensification of hostilities with Iran, in which the last thing needed by the US is another unmanageable Middle East crisis—that, on top of the intensifying conflict with North Korea. What makes this obscene is Trump’s use of an international forum to attempt to publicly humiliate another US administration—specifically, President Obama, who Trump spares no effort to one-upmanship with every opportunity he gets.  Imagine President Obama publicly castigating the GW Bush administration at the UN for its misguided 2003 invasion of Iraq.  Imagine the response of the Republican Party and a good portion of the mainstream press, which would spare no criticism of Obama for tarnishing the intent and reasoned judgment of the previous administration in an international forum.  The outrage would be unending for violating such an honored tradition of bipartisan respect expected of any president speaking in an international setting.

Finally, consider the absurdity of Trump’s bogus contention that “only I can fix it,” whatever “it” may be.  Consider the intellectual poverty of Trump’s understanding of policy, foreign and domestic, at any level of reasonable complexity, and of the narcissistic fantasy that leads him to such a ludicrous conclusion.

Benjamin Franklin was once asked to define the nature of the US government after the signing of the Constitution.  His response: “A republic, if we can keep it.”  There is nothing to guarantee that we will and much in the current administration to suggest that, with the exception of the Civil War, the nation is as close to losing it as it ever has.  

Sad, so very sad, so truly sad.

2017