Donald’s no trust in others cost him bigly — us, too
“I am proudly putting America first, just as you should be putting your countries first.”
Those were words from President Donald Trump at the 75th-year celebration of the United Nations. Well, it’s true that the U.S. has always put itself first and at a guess other countries have done likewise.
But Donald’s first was different. It was a selfishness that seldom wins at an intimate person-to-person level or in the global world of nation-to-nation. The vital building block is trust — without this, valuable relationships don’t form or are not maintained.
I was brought up with a guy called James Wattie. He was a particular favorite with my mother. She reached for his green peas and canned spaghetti when in a fix to feed us hungry kids. James was a very successful New Zealander who owned not only food canning factories but also in my young mind practically everything in the country, including “Rising Fast” — a race horse and winner of the Melbourne Cup.
It turned out when James died that he didn’t have much of a pile after all. What he did have however were mountains of trust which he had steadfastly built up over the time I was growing tall — or at least trying to. It was trust in other people who in turn trusted him. This was his “where-with-all” to build what he did.
Unfortunately our Donald never gained any of this currency because his behavior simply wouldn’t allow it. He demanded complete trust from others, but rarely reciprocated. As a result, the one-way streets quickly narrowed to dead ends. The loving “touches” tried by Emmanuel Macron and the “come over to my side” of Kim Jongun came to no consummations — that we know of. Even the more enduring romances with people more of Donald’s kind, Michael Cohen and Jeff Sessions, eventually broke off when unappreciated loyalty became too difficult to shrug off.
Gestures made without the anticipation of immediate reward, often open the doors for good things to happen beyond the initial need or exchange — a relationship as opposed to sleep-over for a single night, if you like. It doesn’t have to involve gushes of unconditional love, but simply good intent, perhaps coupled with an imagination for what may be achieved on another day.
Anwar Sadat’s offer to Menachem Begin to address the Israeli Knesset comes to mind, and Bill Clinton’s welcome of Mexico to join the North American trading party. The gestures began to end the conflict between two countries and raised the living standards of three. It’s interesting that Donald made no great use of a time-worn system championed by his personal sculptor, Roy Cohn — the Favor Bank (Tom Wolfe’s book “The Bonfire of the Vanities”) where deposited and withdrawals of “help” could be made without cumbersome documentation. Donald I guess, considered it too much putting out up front with no sure return — and hey, there was trust involved. The ponderings of one man were never moved to the competent hands of others where they could have been molded into plans and possibly progress. Donald woke to the same day, every day, because any achievement of his 24 hours was seldom entrusted, secured or stored for the day after — never to become the property of others because Donald held the strings tight to yank back, or cut them loose on a whim. It is a puzzle to me that Donald achieved such prominence in the construction and development business by building so little.
Think of a see-saw, Janet and John at either end going up and down, and you get the picture of Donald’s world. Energy is obviously being spent and Janet and John get their thrills, but the whole “kids” and caboodle achieves little and goes absolutely nowhere. The see-saw was Donald’s apparatus, place and day — and so, so limiting. The simple system demonstrates his understanding of trade and security as games played by no more than two and the gains on one side equal to the losses on the other. The opportunity for lift for both ends at the same time is not possible. The same mechanics he also applied to people and may explain his general disdain for bodies and institutions as they were in different parks played in by others. Donald appeared to understand the pluses and minuses of arithmetic but not the multiplication of multiplication.
Donald always fancied the big castle with moat and drawbridge as opposed to scattered households in open fields — the neat vertical with him on top versus the lateral flow of the mixing many — the feudalism of centuries back rather than the democracy we need.