To Chuck Todd about Something Trump Did

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This is the second installment of what likely will become a regular feature of this blog: translating Trump for the glorious make-benefit of Chuck Todd, an overexcitable host of Meet the Press, whose heart, I believe, is in the right place, even though his mind cannot always keep up. Snarky as that sounds, I have great — well, ok, moderate– hopes for the man, as I watch his growing spine, strengthened after every encounter with Kellyanne Goebbels Conway and other representatives of Agent Orange.

Chuck is quickly discovering the WTF Zone, in which most Americans have lived their lives, watching in mute horror the disaster developing in and around them thanks to the political grandmasters who use them as fodder for their profiteering schemes.

WTF Zone is like The Twilight Zone, minus its whimsy and uplifting message. There is no way out of it, other than (falsely) through numbing the pain it creates with mind-altering substances (and/or virtual reality), which for most Americans lead to more alienation, suffering and, increasingly, death; or (authentically) through a radical self-transformation, which is rare and seemingly — so far at least, though this may change — beyond the reach for most.

On today’s MTP, Chuck tried to get an answer from Mrs. Goebbels to a simple but loaded question: why Trump sent his  press secretary Sean Spicer — a small man in every sense of the term, who always looks as though he’s seconds away from blowing his gasket along with the collar of his tight-fitting shirt — to lie, shamelessly and angrily, about something as silly as the size of his inauguration crowd.

Of course Chuck got no answer, but instead a stream of obfuscations and deflections which are the specialty of the Agent Orange Propaganda Corp, and in which Kellyanne excels like no others. That’s Psychopathic Lying 101: no sweat, no conflictual emotion, no whiff of discomfort or scruple over one’s smoothly delivered “alternative facts” (she actually used that very term).

Chuck later tried to extract the answer from another of Trump’s snake-like surrogates, Tom “Soft Sensuality” Barrack.

The SS moniker comes from Barrack’s creative and jaw-dropping spin of the impossibility to secure A-list celebrities for Trump’s inauguration. Instead of confirming what’s obvious to everyone — that no person with a conscience and a right mind would want to associate with Trumputin — Barrack ventured that Donald prefers the soft sensuality of the surroundings free of A-listers and other such nuisances. What a great example of the forked golden tongue at work.

If we are to associate Trump — or Barrack himself, for that matter — with soft sensuality, then we may as well grandfather Marquise de Sade into that exclusive club, and seriously consider Jack the Ripper’s application too.

Anyway, back to the purpose of this post, which is helping Chuck Todd understand Trump.

The reason why Trump sent Spicer to bark lies at the press about the size of his inauguration package is the same reason why he, Trump, always brags about the size of his anything. His malignant narcissism demands to assert at every opportunity that he is the bestest, most tremendousest, huugest, and amazingest, bar none, and crush anyone who may disagree. (And I suspect you know it already, but bless you for asking anyway.)

Having had pictures of his meager inauguration crowds, much smaller than those of Obama (an unforgivable slight), circulated by the media, and then being upstaged by the world-wide women’s march must have been an intolerable injury to his ego.

And we know what happens when a narcissist’s ego is injured: hell hath no fury.

You could see that fury, by proxy, twisting Spicer’s tongue, making him avoid eye contact with the audience, trip over his words, and bring him close to apoplexy, averted only by his scurrying, cowardly exit that prevented taking and answering any questions from the journalists. (That’s what “press conferences” under Trump will look like. Get used to it –or, better yet, not.)

Some folks on twitter used the term Pravda-esque to describe this “press conference,” but I don’t remember such levels of aggression and contempt during communist pressers way back when. This is really more Hitler, from what I saw, than placid Kosygin or clueless Brezhnev, although Stalin may have qualified — but that was before my time.

The Orange One, meanwhile, had a disgraceful in person “meeting” with the intelligence community, which he used to (yes, you guessed it) brag about the size of his inauguration crowds and peddle other lies to a seemingly shocking — until we remember that Trumpists hire cheerleaders for his public performances — applause from the audience. He also told the intel people “I’m so behind you,” which sounded more like a threat than support (and you can bet that this is what it really was), reminiscent of his stalking behavior during the second debate with Hillary.

This is what Trump’s increasingly staged and choreographed contacts with the public will look like from now on, as the man continues to become more withdrawn from reality and consumed by his dreams of glory, supported in this dangerous but inevitable development by his sycophants, but also by his opportunistic enemies who are already plotting his demise.

It will be important for his loyalists to keep him isolated and protected from facts, because as his grandiosity, now fully validated, intensifies, so will his rage whenever the unpleasant truth breaks through the veil of his narcissistic delusions.

When that happens, anyone in his vicinity is vulnerable.

This aspect of his decompensating psyche will be carefully — well, as carefully as it is possible — hidden from the public; but we will see reflections of it in the behavior of his proxies — not the smooth snaky, softly sensual (gaah) Barracks, but the bull-terrier Spicers and Piersons (yes, she’s still around). As they deliver his messages of calibrated rage, Trumputin will be watching and deciding whether their ire meets his expectations and if the lies sound convincing to him — because that’s what really matters from now on; while the brazen destruction of what remains of our democracy will proceed right on the GOPers’ schedule — unless we, the people, intervene, of course.

So, Chuck, welcome to kleptofascist pathocracy. We’ve been in it for a while, so we are a tad more experienced in deciphering its ways. You are just opening your eyes, but that’s a good start. Keep at it. I have faith in ya.

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Bonus feature:

Kellyanne’s opinion on the women’s marches:

“We certainly respect people’s First Amendment rights. But I frankly didn’t see the point. I mean, you have a day after he’s uplifting and unifying and you have folks here being on a diatribe where I think they could have requested a dialogue. Nobody called me and said, ‘Hey, could we have a dialogue?’”

Yes, because if there is one thing that Mrs. Goebbels excels in, it is the art of, um, dialogue. She is as good at that as she is at redefining words — uplifting and unifying prime examples.