David Quinn wrote:
What about an attack on an overseas Trump property? Will that qualify (in Trump’s mind) as an attack on the US? I think we all know the answer to that, don't we?
To a terrorist, those big gold TRUMP letterings must be awfully tempting....
I imagine it would, but what concerns me more is what Trump will be able to get away with if an attack occurs in the US during his presidency, a large attack, something along the lines of 911, the Reichstag, or Pearl Harbor. There was very little chance the US would have justified pulling off a full scale invasion and occupation of Iraq without 911. Hell, most of the people I spoke with back then thought the invasion of Iraq was a part of the War on Terror. What a joke.
Well, I certainly see it. To my mind, Trump’s reign is guaranteed to end in disaster. It is going to be far worse than Bush, regardless of whether there is a terrorist attack or not. You can put your house on it.
It all comes down to psychology, and in this regard Bush differs immensely from Trump. Bush was vacuous, a figurehead, a puppet who was easily controlled by the power-brokers lurking behind the scenes. He didn’t have any grand plans to impose himself on the world. He was passive. He was just there, filling up space.
Trump is a completely different animal. He is aggressive, unstable, vindictive, megalomaniac, self-absorbed, addicted to being the centre of attention. He has shown repeatedly throughout his life that when he gets cornered, when people begin to put real pressure on him, he lashes out. He becomes vengeful, erratic and reckless. So what is going to happen when the pressures of office start to bear down on him, when his popularity starts to dwindle, when his own fan base begins to turn on him? How do you think he will respond?
At the moment, he is in the midst of a tremendous high. He is reveling in the bliss of being in the centre of the world’s attention. He hasn’t had to face any real crises yet or make any hard decisions. That is all yet to come. And when it happens, watch out! That is when it will all kick off. He will bungle things in his usual fashion and the blind devotion that has been lavished upon him by his personality cult will begin to dissipate. Anyone who has ever been around addicts when their drugs are withdrawn from them will know how violent and irrational they can be. When Trumps’s ascendancy reaches its end and begins to slide back down, he is not going to react well. He will much rather tear the whole place down than surrender meekly. And that is when he will truly start to become dangerous.
It's all there in his mind, ticking away. Only a trigger is needed to set it off.
I believe it is very unwise to think of Trump as a “cleansing masculine energy". I’m thinking about the masculine part, in particular. Trump might end up being a cleansing agent of sorts, but masculine he will never be. Not in any deeper sense.
While masculinity is usually associated with things like conquest, aggression, single-mindedness, purposefulness (which we find in Trump), it is also linked with consciousness, soul, conscience, integrity, structured thought, insight (which are almost entirely absent in Trump). So at best, what we have here is a very distorted form of masculinity. So distorted, in fact, that it would be more accurate to call it an extreme form of femininity.
His constant war on truth is a good example. Day after day, Trump is blatantly disregarding facts, making unsubstantiated claims, engaging in conspiracy theories, rejecting scientific theorizing and other forms of expertise, and generally covering us all with mountains of bullshit. Now in some people’s eyes, this could be considered a form of masculinity. It could be argued that Trump is so masculine that he doesn’t even submit to the dictates of truth. You can see how Trump's mind works in this regard: only suckers allow themselves to be tied to truth, or knowledge, or facts, or laws, or norms, and suckers are there to be taken advantage of. He knows that most people are deeply attached to these things and he knows how to use that attachment against them - to unsettle them, to create confusion in their minds, to have them chasing shadows. And while all this is happening, Trump is happily riding off to the next town with all of their money in his pocket. It is a classic con trick that he has been pulling his whole life.
Importantly, Trump’s conquest over truth doesn’t come from a heightening of his consciousness. He isn’t intensifying the masculine spirit in an effort to dissolve all duality. Rather, his rejection of truth comes from the opposite direction, from a diminishing of consciousness. It is the same dynamic by which women reject the concept of truth.
Trump often says that he likes to be unpredictable, which mirrors the common womanly desire to be enigmatic. If you add to this, Trump’s extreme vanity and obsession with his self-image, together with his speech patterns which can only be described as henids and usually delivered in a campy, effeminate fashion, then what we are looking at is not a man, but a very aggressive woman.
By linking masculinity to Trump and his movement, we are in fact debasing the very concept of masculinity. And in the future, when all this blows over (and assuming that the human race still exists), I believe this is something we will all come to regret.
I am reading again Seneca’s Essay ‘On the Shortness of Life’, and while I am still dumbstruck by the wisdom in the essay, I am also intrigued by Seneca's comments concerning the Emperor Caligula.
Very recently within those few days after Gaius Caesar [Caligula] died—still grieving most deeply (if the dead have any feeling) because he knew that the Roman people were alive and had enough food left for at any rate seven or eight days while he was building his bridges of boats and playing with the resources of the empire, we were threatened with the worst evil that can befall men even during a siege—the lack of provisions; his imitation of a mad and foreign and misproud king was very nearly at the cost of the city's destruction and famine and the general revolution that follows famine.
Caligula built a large pontoon bridge so he could vainly walk across the sea. The pontoons he used were grain transport ships for Rome. Seneca seemed to believe that Caligula was impersonating a crazy person, that deep down Caligula knew what he was doing was totally wrong and insane, and upon realizing that his insanity left Rome starving, he grieved. Why, oh why, would a rational man, act insane? When Caligula first became emperor, he was a beloved and just ruler. However, several months into his reign he contracted a serious illness. After he recovered, he seemed to be a different person. He seemed to have gone mad. I think his illness put the fear of death into him. When the cold hand of death gently settled on his shoulder, sending him the unyielding notification that annihilation is coming, he went crazy.
Trump is now 70 years old. He will die of old age one day, very soon. This isn’t something one can put off anymore. The cold hand of death rests its bones on Trump now, and this is what I think fuels his actions and endeavors. To hell with consciousness, soul, conscience, integrity, structured thought, and insight. I am going to DIE! I am 70 years old! And what have I done with my life? I've frittled it away hoarding wealth and pleasure. I have to strike fast and hard to make a real and deep mark on the world, not just some pathetic useless billboards. I need to be a part of history. I need to be a figurehead. I need a monument to last for generations in my name. I need a WALL.
Even the most effeminate man possesses a higher degree of masculinity than the most masculine woman, and in this sense Trump does possess a degree of masculinity which I don't think you give him credit. He is conscious of his own death, conscientious of his legacy, acquainted with authentic Sein-zum-Tode, inner thoughts structured to the task, and single-minded in his ambition. There is no way a woman would be capable of running a campaign like Trump's, no matter how aggressive or masculine she is. Trump's being-toward-death is single-handedly taking a sledgehammer to American politics in order to gain himself a legacy, and it is all his own. If that's not masculine then I don't know what is. But I don't think masculine necessarily implies enlightened. Masculinity gives one better odds of becoming enlightened, but only if the energy is pointed in the right direction. Concerning Trump, he is definitely not pointed in the right direction. But perhaps some good will come of it. Kevin seems to think so.
