A walking, tweeting IED saddles up for summer of hate
As U.S. President Donald Trump increasingly fears he might not win re-election in November, so does the world increasingly fear that he will not go quietly. In fact, he will go violently, possibly extremely so.
Over the course of the summer, he will turn the violence up to nine until he reaches historic race-riot and Vietnam War student-protest levels — this time with a 2020 militarized police force and enraged hillbilly civilians loaded with weaponry — and then he’ll take it up to 11. What could 11 possibly be? The only bright spot for civilized Americans is that Trump is now fighting on so many fronts of his own creation that his scattered mind will strategize badly on all of them. His anger and dread are so huge that he will fritter them away on everything that crosses his field of vision.
Trump’s improvised explosive devices include the media, fake news, “Chi-nah,” dodgy COVID-19 tonics, his tax returns, hotel profiteering, Republican insider trading, a teetering stock market, a global economic collapse, angry seniors, Black and brown rage, rising coronavirus deaths, medical shortages and coming second-wave infections, his own physical and mental frailty, war against global institutions like NATO and the World Health Organization, weird hires like Kayleigh McEnany and Mike Pompeo, the everlasting ongoing Jared Kushner, perhaps the hottest summer in human history, that Mexican border wall, his wife’s apparent hatred and … this list alone could fill the column space.
Trump has faced crises before, but they came in twos and threes, not by the dozen. He can’t concentrate on the Minneapolis demonstrators he advocated shooting now that he has started a border skirmish with Twitter. Social media like Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook found Trump useful while they destroyed the legacy media he hated; by threatening Twitter, he has turned those big guns on himself.
Twitter was right not to delete Trump’s account; how better to track presidential intentions than through his private-public line to his toxic base. His tweets are cartoons, or a graphic novel without the attendant charm.
It’s fascinating to see that Trump has no one to give him accurate legal advice about his so-called executive order trying to narrow legal protections that prevent lawsuits against social media companies. As a Washington Post commentator wrote with some astonishment, the First Amendment, which protects free speech, applies to government, as in Trump. Trump threatening to shut down Twitter means that Trump, not Twitter, is violating the First Amendment.
Twitter attaching a factual note (on voting by mail) to a Trump tweet is Twitter enacting the First Amendment.
This means Trump has still not been disabused of his notion that laws don’t apply to the president. They certainly do, especially after he leaves office.
It doesn’t matter that this latest Trump beat down is, as is said, intended solely to distract from COVID news. Although I question this truism. Perhaps White House staff who failed to instruct Trump have decided to poke him with a red-hot stick to enrage him on particular issues.
In Trump’s mind, all such issues are simultaneously burning. He holds grudges; he nurses hates; he never lets go, and then they pop up randomly in his disconnected brain.
Toddlers throw tantrums because they have so many emotions that they can’t identify or cope with. I see no Trump intent. I see an evil toddler.
New York Magazine columnist Frank Rich, always an entertaining Trump read, repeats the idea from a Republican turned Never Trumper that Trump has moved into his “Late Elvis” phase with “everyone around him trying to make as much money as they can fast,” with doctors “giving him whatever he orders up.”
It’s possible. Why else would Trump encourage violence against demonstrators? American business doesn’t like rioting, it likes predictability. Their efforts are directed toward COVID and taking advantage of Trump ravaging environmental regulations and other rules, a free shot at rapaciousness, and an end to trade unions.
Rioting is messy. The U.S. is coated in mess right now. When Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden says to a radio host, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black,” things get messier still.
Biden gets points for apologizing, something Trump never does. Voters know Biden has more bumps and apologies ahead of him. It’s what he does. All it reveals is that Biden will have to work day and night to repel voters the way Trump does so earnestly.
But we are back to the main point. If Trump wins, all bets are off. We’re done, and that means globally. The question is: Will Trump turn his rage up to 11 before he loses the election, or after? Again, what is 11?
I say it’s war. And the next question is: Will it be a foreign war? A nuclear standoff?
Most likely it will be a civil war. One wonders if it has already begun.