The Trump Captain Queeg meltdown

I rewatched the great Humphrey Bogart movie last night - "The Caine Mutiny".  Bogart played the part or Captain Queeg who had spiraled down into a mental state of paranoia and life threatening delusion.  Over two years ago I wrote that Trump's mental state was Queeg's.  It has become worse now that he is unable to accept his loss of the 2020 election.  

The climactic scene of the movie was watching Queeg unravel before the eyes of the military jury when pressed to explain some of his crazier acts.  We are all seeing that unraveling now as Trump rails against the fair and accurate counts of elections in key states, insisting that they are fraudulent, and having his deluded accusations repeatedly proven false.

Some think that all he is doing is priming his loyal base to follow him as he builds a right wing media empire to replace Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.  Some think he is preparing his base for a run for president in 2024.  Some think he is trying to rouse his base for a military coup on January 20th to refuse to leave office.  Some think he is bluffing (with an powerless hand) to make a deal to become free of prosecutions of his lifetime of crime after he leaves office.  Some think he is doing something rational in preparation for his post presidential life.

Or, he could just be bat shit crazy and unraveling before our eyes just as Humphrey Bogart did so brilliantly as Captain Queeg in the movie.

I think that not only has he lost, but that he is lost, lost in a fantasy world that he cannot impose on the real world.  He has a long history of conning people into believing delusional worlds that he constructs - from giving him money for charities that aren't charities but are just ways to line his greedy pockets, to getting people to invest in his Trump University where there is no teaching or learning at all, to getting people to work on his real estate projects and find out that he refuses to pay for their work, to getting people to vote for him for building a wall to keep brown people out that never gets built, to getting people to buy into the deadly fantasy that COVID-19 is just a harmless illness so they dutifully refuse to wear masks and socially distance - and end up in hospitals - and some end up dead.

In the movie we have compassion for Queeg who has been at war too long and has been battle shocked into fear and paranoia and delusion.  And I suppose it is possible to have some compassion for this terrible president who has been responsible for many scores of thousands of needless COVID-19 deaths if we consider the terrible effect his heartless father had on him and on his brother - who died of alcoholism as his way to escape the sickness of that terrible man. I feel sorry for Trump's lost soul, but the amount of damage he has done to the country and the world is too great for legal pardons.

I hope and pray that his final act of paranoid delusion does not include war against Iran.  If it does, his cabinet will be in the same spot that the officers on the deck of the Caine during the typhoon that was about to sink the ship and kill all on board - they will have to mutiny, to relieve him of command, declare the 25th amendment and pronounce him incapable of rational thought and incapable of carrying out his constitutional duties.  

I don't think that will be necessary, but I will bet that there are people in the White House right now who are thinking about this.  

The appeal of Trump to his cult – a twisted version of manhood

What explains the election and remaining support for Trump?   Many things, but I think there is an underlying energy that helps understand the rest.

Too much of the support for Trump comes from those who want authoritarian leadership, or who are overtly or covertly racist, or who are desperately trying to preserve white supremacy and preserve white rule in the country.  But….

All that is true, but I think there is something underneath that which gets more to the heart of it – a twisted idea of manhood – domination, crushing your opponents, making people afraid of you, macho man, chauvinism. (Not everyone, of course, many just want tax cuts, or deregulation of business and industry, or want Christian judges to promote their version of family values, but here I am thinking of the underpinning of the Trump Cult which leans pretty hard toward fascism)

I point to football as an expression and promotion of this misunderstanding of manhood.  Red Sanders and Vince Lombardi said “Winning isn’t the most important thing, it is the ONLY thing.”  The despicable Al Davis said “Just win, baby”.  Football - Throw the bomb, blitz, ground attack, aerial assault.  A big man on the line when I was in high school was 250 pounds, now they are 320 – a caricature of a big man. Football has affected the way men see themselves and we have a nation of obese men who measure themselves against the super-sized football players.  And, of course, tragically, football itself damages the brains of the players, many of whom end their lives in a nightmare of the brain damage of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE).  Steroids in baseball and football, blood doping in cycling, anything to win. Anything, including cheating.  Cheating to win for some is a sign of manhood.  Tragic.

We have come a long way from the Grantland Rice quote about the aesthetic and purpose of sports about 100 years ago – “It is not whether you win or lose but how you play the game that counts.”  Sport is supposed to build men of character, and it has been twisted into encouraging men of corruption.

So, we have a president who is a caricature of this twisted cartoonish version of chauvinist fear inducing masculinity.  A “man” who is an overgrown child who thinks being a man is scaring people and dominating them. And he is a pitiable. 

Time to move out of this old, obsolete and dysfunctional version of manhood.  Being a man is not about dominating.  Leading is very different.  Humaneness is as much a part of manhood as it is a part of womanhood.  Manliness is not about frightening and destroying, but about caring and building.

 

Why falsely claim fraud?

Why is Trump refusing to concede the election?

His ego can’t admit a loss?

He thinks if he can get to his Supreme Court they will give it to him?

He is setting himself up to replace Fox News and Rush Limbaugh as right wing media?

He wants to foment right wing rage and violence for his armed coup?

He is just too stupid to know what’s going on?

He is so mentally ill that he is delusional and thinks ha can overturn an American election?

Maybe all of those, but my bet is that what he is really doing is undermining elections themselves - making huge percentages of the country disbelieve and distrust democracy itself.

Why?

Because Putin told him too. And he does what Putin tells him to do.  Because he has to.  Because Putin has something on him that will crush him and send him to prison for life.  Because he works for Putin. And he is a traitor. And Putin is trying to destroy America, American democracy, and the entire concept of democracy itself.

George W Bush wanted to make the world safe for democracy (and blew it, but...), but Putin wants to make the world safe for Kleptocracy, Oligarchy, Plutocracy, Autocracy.

Or, maybe it is just taking time for this mentally ill man in the White House who has lived his entire life in a self delusional bubble to face up to reality when it finally hits him over the head. 

Whichever, he lost, and he won’t be able to stay, and he is a very sad little man.  How many people will he try to hurt in his last days? 

Fuck the law, who are the judges?

Joseph McCarthy’s repugnant lawyer, Roy Cohn, was to have said “Fuck the law, who are the judges?”  Cohn was a mentor to the repugnant Donald Trump, who seems to be acting out that approach to the “law”.  

Trump knew he was going to lose the vote long ago, so he went on a months’ long campaign to suppress and invalidate the votes.  This evil campaign has failed to keep the Biden vote below his own,  but....he is throwing as many lawsuits as it takes to get the election before the Supreme Court.  False claims of voter fraud (which Reps have been trying to prove for decades and can’t because it is just a fantasy and an excuse, not a reality)

So, he has just appointed a sixth “conservative” judge, Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court on the clear understanding that she would rule in his favor on the election.

So, Trump is saying that the law doesn’t matter if you have the judges in your hip pocket.  I think he may be in for a big surprise and discover that at least a couple of “his” judges won’t ignore the law for him.

And then he gets to deal with lots of judges as a private citizen for a multitude of financial crimes and corruption.  

It's not about policy this time

This election is not about policy this time.  It’s about the battle between democracy and despotism. Many life long Republicans know this and are voting for Biden in order to save the American experiment of democracy even though they don't like the policy.

It’s about whether America survives as a democratic Republic, or if it degenerates into an authoritarian dictatorship. It’s about whether Americans choose America’s destiny or whether Putin continues to direct his puppet in the White House to destroy America, destroy democracy, and destroy America’s leadership in the world.

As I wrote in earlier posts this last week, under Donald Trump and his craven Republican Party, America has abandoned decency, abandoned science, abandoned the rule of law, and abandoned its leadership standing in the world. 

And, oh yes, it has sickened and killed probably four or five times as many as would have been sickened and killed because of their refusal to lead a nationwide, world wide, federally led response to COVID-19.

It is time to renew America, renew America’s goodness, renew America’s actual greatness.

The leader makes a difference

A few decades back, a friend of mine was upset that his manager was losing his job.  He was ranting and raving about what a big mistake upper management was making in not realizing what a good job his soon to be departed manager was doing.  That manager calmed him down and told him not to worry, both of them would be just fine.  He would find a new job and do fine.  And my friend would have a new boss and all would be well.

He said that a manager was like putting a hand in a bucket of water.  The hand is in the bucket and the water rises to a certain level.  Take that hand out and replace it with a different hand and the water rises again to a new level, maybe not quite as high, maybe about the same, maybe higher. He said that it doesn’t really matter whose hand is in the bucket. 

Well, I thought that was true for quite some time, but with Donald Trump as president it has been vividly proven to me that the hand in the bucket theory is not always true.  It is probably true for middle management in a corporation, but we have seen that this president has gone a long way to destroying so much of America and America’s influence and leadership in the world – loss of decency, turning away from science, attacking the rule of law, failing to handle a pandemic, and withdrawing American leadership in the world. 

The person at the top can sometimes make a huge difference. 

In the private sector another example might be Steve Jobs and Apple – after he was let go the company floundered and was failing.  When he came back in he got it focused and visionary again.  And can there be any doubt that Elon Musk is not replaceable at Tesla? 

So, I no longer am able to take comfort in the idea that different hands in the bucket don’t make all that much difference.  The current hand in the American bucket is there with a drill to poke holes and drain the bucket.

Plug the leak.  Vote for Biden, please.