We could write an ending where the good guy vanquishes the sleazy robber
If I had studied Shakespeare, the Bible or Greek mythology I might be able to discern subtle truth through historical analogy from the trials of Donald Trump.
The best philosopher I can summon is PT Barnum: A sucker is born every minute. Put another way, people sure are stupid. It’s as if we want to live the circus.
Trump could beat Joe Biden this fall.
There he scowled in the New York courtroom. It will be up to a jury to say if Trump is a criminal in this particular case. He is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of being a corpuscular sleaze bag who surrounded himself with liars and cheats, worthy of dark tragedy that keeps the crowd in thrall.
Don’t look back or you’ll turn to salt. We can’t help ourselves, not when Stormy Daniels is talking about how she spanked his boxers with a magazine. He says no such thing happened. Neither did the Playboy bunny thing. Joe Biden didn’t win the election, Barack Obama was born in a tent in Kenya, and a shot of Clorox could be good for the constitution.
We’re stuck there in PTSD on replay, reliving the Access Hollywood tape on loop, in a grip of our own device. He says he can get away with anything. He can call for insurrection and say everything was perfect, and nearly half the nation swallows it.
The trial becomes a theatre recounting an act upon which we had hoped the curtain had fallen. Trump lost. He can’t go into the good night.
The speaker of the House led the parade of congressional sheep to the microphone outside the courthouse to call the whole thing, the justice system itself, a sham. We are not moving on.
Iowa likely will carry for Trump. We’re in the tank — banning books, driving out immigrants, hogtying higher education, bashing gays, putting a spin on history. Our politics have become nationalized. Iowa did not have a trans issue until somebody in Virginia made it one. Who heard of critical race theory in Iowa until Ron DeSantis banned it in Florida? Our reputation in recent history for moderation and acceptance has turned to hostility and exclusion, fueled by outside dark money.
It’s a recant of the old verse of stupidity blended with pride, which always leaves the sucker vulnerable to the charlatan.
Biden might have exited stage left if Trump had. We will instead subject ourselves to televised debates between them. C’mon man! How do we write an end to this? In a half-dozen swing states where the two are locked in a statistical dead heat. It could all come down to Georgia, which Trump could win.
That’s what amazes even the jaded.
Trump operates in a lower order than Warren Harding or Richard Nixon by the uncontroverted facts, many of which we have had to suppress for the trauma. Nobody accused and certainly did not convict LBJ of sexual assault in his lust for power. At least Bill Clinton apologized for being a liar and cheater.
Biden is an old politician with a mixed record and an errant son. That is the worst that can be said of him. He cannot be put on the same moral plane as any of the forementioned. He led us out of the Covid pandemic, the scariest years of my life. Most would prefer a race between Kamala Harris and Nikki Haley, but we replay the past script. Add a twist: RFK2 with a brain worm.
Trump’s trial hits us over the head with his sordid past again and again. At night, after the jurors go home, Trump rallies by declaring that Minneapolis would have burned down without him in 2020. He wants to live the tragedy. He makes us live it again. He allows us to wallow in our worst and justify it.
Director John Ford would have the good guy win. Romeo and Juliet would not die in the end. Narcissus would not drown in the pool of his own vanity. John Wayne would protect the wagon from the robbers with the truth and a sure shot. We can identify with that story, too.
Then there’s the story of Jesus Christ, the Messiah. We were stupid enough to crucify him. The crowd got conned by the spin machine and couldn’t see their madness.
We’re sure stupid enough to get fooled again by the biggest con man in American history. We are the jury in the court of public opinion, and PT Barnum sold a lot of peanuts banking on suckers.
Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.
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Thanks, Art. This is exactly what we should be talking about. It is unimaginable to me that we talk about ordinary issues (inflation, the price of groceries, is Biden too old, did he keep a campaign promise to pay off college loan debt) when democracy or fascism is what we are faced with in November. Thank you for once again, putting this clear choice before us.
Worthy of H.L. Mencken. Too bad nobody reads newspapers anymore. We're all playing 3 card Monte on our smartphones.