THE NEW NATIONAL SYMBOL: THE BALD EGO
Written By
David S. Simon
02/08/18
By now most of you saw the video of Trump scaling the staircase to Airflot One as the wind blew apart his hairdo, revealing the totally bald real estate on the back of his head which parted like, well, the Red Sea.
It was not subtle. It was Phantrump of the Opera exposed. It was Fire Marshall Bob/ burn victim bad.
Revealed at last: his mortal ego wound for the whole world to see.
Yet another cover-up undone and we didn’t need Bob Mueller to do it.
But I am not writing about him today. Not directly. I’m writing about us. Who we have become over the last year because of and despite him.
I have done a considerable amount of traveling this year, primarily along the southern states and wherever I landed the divide was palpable and the conversation was the same.
Those who prefer their flag Confederate and their gun supply ample, have been and continue to be robotically programmed, thanks to their severely limited, manipulative, propaganda news sources, like Fox and conservative talk radio, which keeps them narrowly focused, reactive and sadly, obedient
For the most part, these are not complicated people whose lives, in turn, are not very complicated. Unlike us of the big cities, they are not tethered to social media and news networks the way we are 24/7. They don’t hang on to every word by Ali Melber, Chris Mathews or Rachel Maddow.
They live in a shadow world where the past, which still has its roots firmly planted in the days when the first draft of the Bible was written, is not only viable but life critical.
We progressives are addicted to change and treat the everyday world like we were children visiting a pavilion at a World’s Fair, which in the day seduced us all with its magical gadgets of the future.
We simply cannot wait for the next announcement by Tim Cook or Elon Musk who have become our personal guides to the next big wow. On the downside, for me personally, that has taken the dreamy romance out of the future and made us lazy and self-entitled. Why lift a finger when everything that is coming your way is coming your way at the next Apple event?
This is why heroes are hard to come by these days. We have no astronauts to root for. No one to turn to whose vision and ideals inspires us to greatness. All we have are choices; a white or black Homepod. We even look for love like Rajahs, swiping away anyone who displeases us on Match.com.
Those of us in the dating pool all suffer from Tindernitis.
But still, by the very nature of who we are, we desperately want change. We want to deepen. To grow. To challenge. To help create the kind of world that John Lennon innocently imagined in his now go to anthem of wide-eyed optimism.
We are a forward-thinking people who are perpetually headed make the mistake way too often to head directly for our next Gold Rush by taking the easiest and fastest route that we can find.
In too many ways, we could not be more different than the rest of America.
A large swath of the people who I met in Oklahoma, Arkansas. Tennessee and Georgia were yes sir, no sir, Stepford Wives polite publicly but you could feel what was simmering beneath them. You could feel their resistance. How they were clinging to the edge of their present like protective mother tigresses full of potentially violent contempt.
To them we, you and I are a threat every bit as frightening and evil as ISIS.
I can’t help but think this is why the evangelicals despise evolution so much. Successful Evolution would mean way too many dangerous steps away from the cross that they need to bear, towards a threatening reality that they can’t even envision no less tolerate.
When you struggle for a living, when you feel helpless or ignored, you only have so many ways out. The lottery. Church. Or a disobedient, glamorous to them Andrew Jackson-style President who does not represent change, but rather a new and improved version of the same thing.
The same world with better benefits. A kind of heightened version of Medicare, Unemployment, Social Security or $1000 extra tax bill payout which will cover exactly what?
When someone like Barack Obama comes along, between his name, his looks and his eloquent speech, to them, since he is nothing like them on any level than it was easily determined that he surely must be the enemy and cannot be trusted. The GOP had no trouble turning the two terms of Obama into the equivalent of “Eight Years a Slave” because I know for a fact that in boardrooms in Austin, they referred to him as “the n*gger president.”
And who better than Trump to lead the birther movement?
What was really behind that was the fact that during a well-attended, public dinner, President Obama eviscerated Trump, who was in attendance, with a scathing comedy routine.
If you can find that on Youtube, you will watch Trump simmer and burn. Perhaps that’s what caused the back of his hair to fall off.
All of this anti-Obama retribution is nothing more than Trump getting even. It’s that primitive and that childish.
And who better to cheer him on, then the red states (and red countries) who understood the code? This is payback folks, pure and simple
To we who know better, who have been around Trump (he was even on Fresh Prince when I was a co-executive producer) have always known that he has never been anything more than a joke. A Page 6 clown whose antics were nothing short of the Kardashians. What we were not aware of was how damaging he was.
We are like the women of today who are now going back in time and exposing the evil that men do to them. And get away with it.
We did not know that he was involved in the biggest class action suit in New York history when it was discovered that he would not rent to black folks. We did not know that Trump University was a scam that was ripping off little people. We did not know that he was a colossal failure in business who gamed the system via bankruptcy courts, to make himself a tidy profit on the backs of day workers. We did not know that all of his products were made in sweatshops in third world countries. We did not know that he was money laundering. We did not know that he was renting Trump Tower apartments to the Russian mob. We did not know that he was scamming the IRS. We did not know that he was taking massive loans from the Russians.
When you believe that you are a victim of the system, like most Americans do, then who better to represent them than someone who refuses to cooperate, honor the rule of law or treat people with respect? This is Bas(tard)tille Day.
That is why none of them care and in fact, are thrilled by his porn star affairs, pussy grabbing sense of entitlement, pathological lies and refusal to cooperate.
They don’t care about the collusion, the Russian tampering and as we are now finding out, their ability to get inside voting machines in certain districts.
This their Commander and Cheat. This is their shortcut key. This is someone slipping them the answers to the final.
Trump is them via his abhorrent behavior.
He is the new national symbol: the bald Their ego. Their id.
Years ago, we progressives were not unlike them. We were amused by Trump. We gathered around the hearth and listened to him talk about his lurking around beauty pageant dressing rooms and his snickering fantasies about wanting to date his daughter on the Howard Stern program, whose other guests include High Pitched Eric and Beetlejuice. Trump was the rich man’s version of the wack pack freak.
Trump’s entire campaign was based entirely on the Howard Stern playbook. Say outrageous things, get all the morons to follow you and then cash in.
It wasn’t take the money and run. It was run and take the money.
The difference is, behind closed doors, Howard knew the difference. We all know him now to be a rather and shockingly evolved guy. A devoted father and husband. He was a marginally successful local jock who one day accidentally realized you could shock the audience by saying filthy, insane things, create an immoral freak/sideshow and your reward will be a billion-dollar contract at Sirius.
But Howard was in on the joke. In fact he spends too much time making fun of himself and his body parts.
Trump would never, ever make fun of himself and that is and will his fatal flaw.
He has no sense of humor about his failings or his shortcomings.
Because we pay attention, especially when a clueless moron becomes President of the United States, (Yes, I’ll have a Bush Lite?) we start to dig in like anthropologists in an effort to try and decode the mystery of our civilization.
We listen to the sane. Read. Create perspective.
And when we have had enough like we did with Nixon, we take to the streets and we demonstrate until we take down the evil empire.
For me what I fret about is, what will life be like until then?
Trump’s lawyers will not let him sit down with Bob Mueller EVER. They’ll take that to the Supreme Court first.
And Bob Mueller is not bound by law to reveal his findings. That will be up to Ron Rosenstein, which is why Trump is hell-bent on getting rid of him.
The White House defense is all about Donald O.J. Trump. The evidence, no matter how DNA revealing it is, becomes meaningless when you turn the cops into the bad guys. They are desperately looking for A Furh Good Man.
Which is what Trump is having Devin Nunes do.
But here is the thing: you have a choice, America.
You can either be a member of the jury who sleeps, spaces out and ignores the hard facts, like most of your other American jurors will do.
Of you will stop screaming (like I do) at the TV every time Trump or that inconceivable, bumpkin/trailer trash woman, Sarah Huckabee opens up her pie hole to talk directly to the sub-culture of America who will believe anything that she says, because it’s not about fairness or the law. It’s about them and them alone.
They want chaos. They want him to be insulting and outrageous. Impossibly arrogant and rude. They have themselves their brand of superhero.
To them, orange is the new Black Panther.
We are talking about tens of millions of people here, people.
But we cannot become like them.
We have to resist the temptation to get online and tell them how stupid and fucked up they are.
That is literally a fool’s errand.
Be better.
Be a Woodward.
Be a Bernstein.
Be a Ben Bradlee or Virginia Graham.
Good has already started. We can’t nail him, but the #metoo movement is taking down really powerful Trump surrogates like Harvey Weinstein and Steve Wynn. Even Charles won’t be in charge too much longer.
More women are going to run for office than any point in American history.
Other benefits: thanks to Trump, we are all far more knowledgeable about how government works than ever before and we know now what every player actually does.
We need to become the American ideal, not the American disgrace. For now, we need to draw the line in the sane and become divisible in order to effect powerful change. Temporarily.
We need to have a higher standard.
An ongoing, I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore, organized revolution.
The only thing that ever brings us together is a national tragedy or war.
Don’t think Trump doesn’t know that.
Do not let that happen.
Revolt. Clench your fists and fight for this country.
Become the patriots that the GOP pretends to be---while they blatantly obstruct justice in the Mueller investigation just like Trump and his Johnny Cochran style lawyers.
Those are all Un-American activities of the highest order.
We the people have a moral and ethical responsibility to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity and most importantly, ordain and establish the Constitution of the United States.
America.
Take it back.
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