Politicium #1: I didn't get Donald Trump. Not until now.
{1300 words, 6 minutes}
"Politicium" is a spontaneous, irregularly featured essay about a deadly and often delirium-inducing element present in society: politics. Seek immediate professional help if inhaled, consumed, or otherwise exposed.
I didn't get Donald Trump. Not until now.
After watching the Presidential Debate and thinking about the post-debate coverage, analysis, and podcasts, I think I finally get it. I finally understand why Trump acts the way he does. Trump is someone who cannot "be" wrong ("be" in the existential sense, not the factual sense). He cannot accept losing and he cannot accept that he makes mistakes. If he realizes he's wrong, he pivots to shift focus onto the flaws or alleged underhandedness of his opponent. It's a bait-and-switch sandwiched with lots of weasel words for lubrication (side note: Trump says, without provocation by inquiry, "I don't know" a lot when weaseling. Sorry, if you are running from President, the standard of evidence for claims against your opponent must be greater than "I don't know". If you wouldn't accept "I don't know" from Hillary Clinton, don't accept it from Trump.). Since his opponent isn't expecting this non sequitur pivot as it is uncommonly irrational in politics, they get caught off-guard. They look off-balance, unprepared for the hip shot, and Trump looks better, like a winner.
In one way, that makes him appear to be immensely strong and charismatic. To the untrained eye and the instinctive thinker, this is an indicator of someone who appears to know how to win and who appears to always win. Domestically, segments of the U.S. population have seriously suffered from the recession and someone like Trump who hates losing and asserts greatness as a self-made image speaks to these people. These people on the losing end of a complex mixture of tax policies, trade agreements, wealth inequality, and globalized free market capitalism, don't want to accept their failure as their own or as random chance and instead want to blame someone else (the immigrants, the government, the Muslims, etc.). They want a winner to represent them and solve their problems for them.
There are advantages to having ridiculous levels of self-esteem and confidence. "Fake it until you make it" is grounded in this attitude. Confidence enables risk-taking and risk-taking is disproportionately rewarding to those who have safety nets to protect them during cold streaks. The pain of losing, and even the fact of losing, can be dampened by denying the actual outcome. But there is a flaw in having this attitude in perpetuity: if you've never accepted that you failed, you don’t know how to handle it. You never grow from failures you don't accept, especially if you are always scapegoating the results onto someone else and changing the terms of victory after the fact to paint yourself as the winner. Failure is inescapable for all of us and neither Trump (bankruptcies) nor Clinton (2008) are exempted.
You want to talk about who has strength and stamina? It's people who have suffered and acknowledged their failures that know how to rebound, how to become truly stronger. Because failure is the check against strength, it shines a light where weakness exists and with the truth of that knowledge, the next step of growth can begin in the right direction. This process is repeated again and again, and those who can self-identify their flaws and find ways to improve themselves again and again become very successful as a result. Perseverance thus arises out of failure, not in the absence of failure. When others give in to or deny their failures, they deny themselves the opportunity to grow.
Clinton has a significant number of scandals and mistakes on her record. Trump has as long of a record that is just as marred by scandal. But the difference is that she owns up to her mistakes, she acknowledges her failures. She knows how to improve, what works and what doesn't, and even at her age, despite her mistakes and instead of giving up, she's working so hard that at times she neglects her own health. For making society, government, and the world better, I think it is imperative for a President to be able to identify what's wrong before he or she goes about attempting to fix it. Every President faces mistakes and loss (of life, of justice, of economic stability, etc.) and denying loss or deflecting blame does nothing to change the actual outcomes for the victims.
Trump doesn't understand this. That's why everything he does is about negotiating down and pivoting to throw his opponents off balance. It explains so much about him. Why he offered to trade his tax returns for Clinton's emails, why he criticized the Khan Gold Star family, why he attacked Alicia Machado, why he claims he finished the birther movement, why he bulldozed over unpaid employees and contractors with lawyers, and why he in general tries to discredit everyone in his way, no matter how ridiculous he sounds or how much he lies. Veracity is worthless to Trump compared to winning.
Notice a pattern? I'm not the first one to figure this out; his flaw is also why Clinton and her campaign are so good at baiting him into trap after trap. When I thought the Khan Gold Star family at the DNC might be the last good trap, Clinton plays the Machado trap and Trump eats it hook, line, and sinker. In his mind, Trump only knows how to play offense and thinks that as long as he's throwing the punches and attacks, it means he's winning. Because his attitude and thus media strategy is so linear, predictable, and transparent, every trap that Clinton's campaign lays is so effective.
Looking back at the debate, the first time that Clinton went head-to-head with Trump, you could tell she already knew this and "the shimmy" was the giveaway. Clinton was steady as a rock, smiling, unfazed by his rambling discrediting rant. She carried on past his constant interruptions, knowing that stopping to engage him would mean a series of pivot punches that would give him the pretense of winning. As much as I want to credit Clinton and her campaign for their brilliance and preparation, Trump deserves as much credit for enabling them. It's easy to play rope-a-dope when your opponent telephones every wind-up punch and bites down hard on every juke. Then again, none of the Republican primary opponents seemed to figure that out and they all fell to his trap. We'll see if Trump's campaign makes any second-quarter adjustments, if they even can, but if they keep up at this pace, I expect a landslide in November.
Despite what he said at the debate (which he will no doubt deny in a future interview), we already know that if Trump loses, he will resort to accusations of Clinton rigging the election process. Again, when he realizes he can't win, he pivots to discrediting his opponent and crying foul play. Trump is the sorest of all sore losers and I truly fear to see what his reaction will be when/if he truly experiences the realization of losing for the first time, the way we all did when we were children. After decades of successful denial, the whiplash would probably be fatal.
I know this is mostly irrelevant for many of my friends on facebook, as its algorithms wittingly or unwittingly are boosting content I interact with and I am implicitly biased to mostly interact with what I agree. But Trump's actions have really puzzled me this entire election season and it's a relief to me to have that mystery solved. If you've been boggled by the same things, I hope this provides some clarity on why Trump is the way he is.
