Donald Trump has numerous shortcomings as a human being. Foremost is an extreme narcissism that requires that he be always at the center of the world. He does not recognize what he does not know or any reality that does not serve his self-fixation.
Trump’s extreme narcissism precludes a moral sense. Morality requires concern for others. Trump cares only for his material comfort, acquisitive efforts and exercise of control, of power. He was blind to the plight of tens of thousands of fliers suddenly stranded by his travel ban. He is oblivious to over 11 million Hispanics and Asians fearful of their families being torn apart at any moment. Touting Ryancare, he is blind to the tens of millions it will deny health care.
His vision as president extends only to an ignorant and racist notion of what is required for security – more military expenditures, saber rattling or war, a baseless presumption that Muslim immigrants threaten us and removal of any obstacle to pursuit of wealth. “Security” and laissez-faire capitalism will make America great again, however many are left out.
An elemental discovery in education is how important it is to understand the causes of things. Trump does not connect refugees’ desperation to the wars and chaos created by our attacks on Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya. The 64 million refugees today do not exist for him.
Trump notices that the North American Free Trade Agreement has exported American jobs but ignores the fact that we knew it would shut down millions of Mexican subsistence farms with government-subsidized U.S. grain. The 11 million or more undocumented immigrants here – and those who died en route – are the direct consequence. Our policies gave them no choice.
Undocumented Central American criminals in American cities are “bad.” But Trump has apparently resisted learning that U.S. support of oppressive Central American oligarchies, U.S. corporate ravaging of natural resources there and U.S.-funded repression of any organized resistance have obliged hundreds of thousands to flee to safety from conscription by drug dealers or murder at the hands of government death squads. He studiously fails to recognize that virtually all of them are hardworking and law-abiding.
Trump’s lack and shunning of education explain his approval of Ryancare. Navel-gazing, he cannot absorb reports that premium increases would eat away at the family income of middle-aged lower-income workers. Millions unable to afford such insurance increases would be at risk of dying. He sees only that reducing government’s health care burden will fund huge tax breaks for billionaires, himself included.
Trump’s narcissism also explains his sexism and racism. Lacking talent or intellectual ability, he boosts his ego in the racist superiority. He persisted with the birther charge to delegitimize a black president. He engages in misogynistic bullying and disrespect for women, even reducing his own daughter to a sex object. Women have value only if he finds them sexually attractive; his base instincts outweigh any claim that women have to dignity.
The injustice and suffering of deportations, hate crimes, vote suppression and unpaid wages and bills simply do not register in his vapid and conscienceless cocoon. Collateral damage is irrelevant.
After decades of Washington subservience to Wall Street that produced unprecedented economic inequality, Trump asked victims, “What do you have to lose?” This was not a promise to end their losses, only recognition that the Clintonistas would not rescue them. His super-rich Cabinet reflects a determination to make government a servant of greed above all else. What have you got to lose? What little you have left!
Finally, Trump’s fixation on greed requires dismissing what might well be the irrevocable fouling of our only habitat, Earth. Given the conclusive, inescapable evidence, this is treason.
Trump is not a solo act. For half a century now, Wall Street, corporations, their political servants and the mass media they own have been brainwashing the electorate, painting government regulations as the enemy, masking their abuses with spectator preoccupations. We are now a de facto jungle, not a society. Society necessarily serves others.
Donald Trump is the inevitable consequence of our wholesale abandonment of the common good – the promotion of “the general welfare” the Constitution promises. The new norm is a greedy posture of dog-eat-dog-survival. Unstopped, the present unprecedented maldistribution of wealth and growing neglect of the poor will only get worse until our violence turns upon ourselves, prompting revolution or fascist tyranny.
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