YOU’RE OUT!

Shortly before the November 3, 2020 presidential election I decided it was time to stop hedging my bets. Although it was still possible (in the sense that anything is possible) I could not conceive of a path that would take the Donald Trump we had known and loved to hate for decades to the presidency of the United States. On the eve of the election after four years of political mayhem, Trump-style, I felt that way more strongly than ever. In over fifty years of tuning into the political arena, I had never experienced anything like the 2019 presidential campaign. To me, Trump was the most split candidate I had ever seen. He was someone who, on the one hand, had never manifested any discernible interest in the nuts and bolts of running the country. On the other hand, he was someone who — once he was given access to the levers of presidential power — had become instantly bewitched. He had drunk the Kool-Aid. He had found the calling for which he had been born: to be the most powerful man, the greatest power broker in the history of the world.

Trump’s influence, according to New Yorker’s editor-in-chief David Remnick, stretches back to Father Coughlin, Joseph McCarthy, Roy Cohn, Newt Gingrich, the Tea Party, and more, “but his reality-show wealth, his flair for social American media, and an attunement to white identity politics made him a man for his time. And, when he won, nearly everyone in the Republican establishment capitulated and sought a place in the firmament of power: Cruz, Christie, McConnell, and Graham; Mike Pence, William Barr, Betsy DeVos, Elaine Chao, Rupert Murdoch, and so many others.”

Part of the bargain was ideological: if Trump came through with tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations, and appointed conservative judges, then the humblings could be absorbed. Graham would overlook the way Trump attacked the war record of his close friend John McCain, as long as he got to play golf with the President and be seen as an insider. Cruz would ignore the way Trump had implied that his father was somehow involved in the assassination of J.F.K., as long as he could count on Trump’s support in his next campaign. And Pence, who hungered for the Presidency, apparently figured that he could survive the daily humiliations as the President’s courtier, assuming that his reward would be Trump’s blessing and his “base voters.” But, as Trump’s New York business partners knew, contracts with him are vapors; the price of the ticket is never fixed.

The inauguration of Joe Biden is scheduled for Wednesday 12 noon, January 20, 2021. What’s going to happen? No one, of course (including me) knows. So here’s my prediction: Once again it’s presented in just two of my writterly voices (both of which are played by me):

Q: What do you think is going to happen?

A: I think Joe Biden will be inaugurated. I don’t know exactly how. There may be some last minute arrests. Some undreamed of shenanigans, but the result will be the same.

Q: Which is?

A: That which was deemed impossible — that Donald Trump could actually be President of the United States, and remain in office for the duration of his term had happened! But was finally over!

Q: Over in what sense?

A: That he will never again occupy (in America) political office of any consequence.

Q: Because?

A: Because Donald Trump barely won 2016 against a weak candidate.

Q: With hindsight, then why did he win in 2016?

A: In 2016, he was an open book as a TV Reality Host… but a closed book as a human being. By his own admission Trump had no manifest, no interest in who he really was as a person (he joked “I think I’m afraid to find out”).

That changed dramatically. On the first day, he announced he was going to build a forty foot high steel wall, running for hundreds and hundred of miles along the southwestern wall of Southern California. Its purpose was to ostensibly keep out perceived undesirables, misfits and criminals of whatever ethnicity who were swarming our unpoliced border. To a degree few had imagined Trump began displaying a kind of in your face ruthless insensitivity to the basic civil liberties of refugees perceived as illegal aliens that was unprecedented. I won’t revisit them. It got worse from there.

To me the most frightening aspect was that what he did, no matter how you looked at it, made no sense whatsoever. What advantages could there be to a sitting President who charged his Jewish son-in-law Aaron Kushner with the historic task (with absolutely no credentials for the monumental task at all) of brokering a Middle East peace treaty between Israel’s Netanyahou and Palestine’s political leaders. What sense does it make — in regard to the infuriating annual North Charlottesville Neo-Nazi march — celebrating the alleged achievements of Neo-Nazis, to say “There are good people on both sides…”?

I can’t emphasize it enough. I don’t think he is insane. I don’t think he is evil. I don’t think he is a devil (as some people literally do). I don’t think pinning a tail (real or metaphoric) to him, or magically discovering hidden clover hooves, will explain anything. Otherwise, how do you explain seventy million plus Americans who voted for him? Is it hidden tails all the way down?

Q: Are you saying Trumpism, as a political novelty, may have peaked?

A: How could it not? Every trend in history, in whatever field you pick, has peaked and crashed.

Q: O.K. Then what are his good points?

A: Trump has many good points — but none of them apply to being an effective or useful leader to a social democracy with a bill of rights — in principle applying equally, fairly and non-discriminatively to every citizen — such as the United States. So, what is Trump good at? Trump is good at being a sociopathic genius, it comes naturally to him. He is not a business tycoon and has no interest in being one. He has an almost magical belief in his ability to bend other people’s wills to his own. He is a showman without peers. He is not interested in what people need. He uses people as tools to help him in various ways to obtain his goals. His goals are acquisitive, and mostly materialistic. Spiritual values what Nicholas Humphrey once called soul power do not rank high with him. Brute power, status, control and being in charge are what he wants. People do not accept that politics and humanism are not compatible. The more successful a person is at acquiring materialistic goods, and wielding power, the less interested they are in humanistic values.

Q: Last question: Fast forward. Biden is inaugurated. Then what?

A: Trump is finished as a political influence. Trumpism is still, of course, very much in play.

Q: You are conspicuously silent on the subject of Joe Biden, why is that?

A: Joe Biden did not win the Presidency. He did not fight for it. He was gifted it. I am not implying anything nefarious in saying that. I am saying that in the past fifty years I can not recall a more wishy washy presidential candidate than him. If he wants to be the great uniter he says he wants to be — and I think he does — for the first time in his life, he’s got to be more than a people pleaser, a showrunner — a steady hand on the helm — he’s got to step up and deliver.

Here’s his chance.

I wish him well.

Gerald Alper

Is the author of

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Patient

Psychodynamic Studies of the Creative Personality

His new book is

God and Therapy

What We Believe

When No One is Watching