Peak lunacy?
Trump embraces his dark impulses.
It’s possible Donald Trump hit peak lunacy this week.
Then again, there is always next week. And if we’ve learned anything since the radicalized mogul embarked upon a deranged odyssey to become leader of the free world, it is this: there will be no rock bottom in this campaign. There is only quick sand and frozen time and perfidious rhetoric and a sinking feeling. How much lower can the man descend before the flaxen mop atop his barking skull vanishes in the abyss and his final, burbling words — “Make . . . America . . . Great. Again” — get snuffed out by a rush of mud into the mouth? How much more harm can he do?
This week, after playing footsies with his inner bigot for months, Trump decided to bear-hug his own dark impulses.
He called for a “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
Leaving aside the moral, legal and constitutional concerns, how America might go about banning roughly a quarter of the world’s population was not explained. The country can’t even keep out counterfeit purses. But then, policy details never factor into the cynical game of chicken Trump is playing with decency and common sense.
When he screams, “the sky is falling,” he doesn’t expect his followers to ask for gravitational specifics or even look up. He just wants them to duck and point fingers.
Irrational fear translates into a ratings uptick.
Still, the blowback on his hypothetical religious profiling was swift. It sliced across the polarized aisle as both Democrats and Republicans excoriated the snivelling billionaire for once again proving his two cents are rusted with bile.
On Tuesday, during a phone interview on ABC’s Good Morning America, Trump was given multiple chances to express “any second thoughts” in the event he “may have gone too far.” He declined by way of changing the subject. Then he cited the measures Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized during the Second World War, as if the times were similar or the two were akin as clear-eyed statesmen.
When asked if he was worried that people were comparing him to Hitler, Trump replied with the kind of casual “no” usually reserved for restaurant servers after they ask, “Can I get you anything else?” “We are now at war,” Trump said. All of which raises a question: which side is he on?
Has anyone seen Trump’s birth certificate? Are we even sure he was born on American soil? What about the lucrative real estate deals he’s inked with tycoons in the Middle East? Will those Muslims be permitted to enter America on their private jets? If intelligence agents were to analyze the money sources used to pay Trump, would they find ancillary outflows to extremist groups? Is Donald Trump a terrorist? Hey, calm down, as the man is fond of saying. Relax. I’m just asking irresponsible questions. This is just my opinion. I’m speculating, tossing out conspiracy theories, painting with a wide brush, firing murky insinuations into the air with no facts to back me up. I’m pulling a Trump. But you have to wonder, don’t you? I mean, how is this hate speech helping anyone except the enemy? Does Trump not realize he is making America less safe? Does he not realize he is doing the work of a thousand ISIS propagandists? Does he feel no shame in creating an image of America as a paranoid, reactionary, intellectually dishonest land that is teeming with skittish isolationists who are so full of resentments and anti-Muslim hate they are blind to the very qualities that made the country great in the first place?
These are rhetorical questions. No, of course Trump does not care that he is part of the problem. This presidential campaign was never about becoming part of any solution. It was always a power play, a selfish lunge at pure ego gratification.
Trump doesn’t care about America or the world, only his exalted place in both. If a magic genie popped out of a bottle and presented him with two options — you can be president or you will never be president and there will never be another terrorist attack — which option would he pick?
When author J.K. Rowling tweets out Voldemort was “nowhere as bad” as Trump, that pretty much says it all. This really does feel like fiction. Sadly, the businessman villain in this grim tale is real.
And if his hostile takeover bid for America goes ahead against all odds, the losers are all of us. vmenon@thestar.ca