A Garden of shame, a party of losers…
When cows disappear and the whales lie down for therapy…
Donald Trump’s final rally will be recorded as one for the ages. In a harrowing close to the most dystopian American campaign for president in the modern era, the Trump campaign served up a burlesque of hate and ignorance. Trump sees himself as a Marvel Comics superhero sans the tapered waist. As part of this week’s weave, he revealed again his outsized self-image. He mused about a superpower he picked up, no doubt from his friend Dr. Phil, that would help fight his personal battle with “windmills” based upon his distrust of taking on climate change:
NEW: Donald Trump says he wants to be a Whale Psychiatrist so he can help save the whales from windmills. “They say that the wind drives ’em crazy. You know it’s a vibration because you have those things that 50-story building. “The wind is rushing. The things are blowing. It’s a vibration and it makes noise.”
“I wanna be a whale psychiatrist. It drives the whales fricking crazy. And something happens with them, but for whatever reason, they’re getting washed up onshore and you know, they’re ignored by these environmentalists. But they don’t talk about it.”
- Collin Rugg on X (Trump as quoted from an appearance on Joe Rogan podcast )
Trump has a longstanding fascination with Moby Charles, recalling that in a 2019 text, he bragged that among the world leaders he had met was the ‘Prince of Whales.’
Daft arrogance aside, the out-of-touch ‘Trumpisms’ have both frightened and entertained us for years. He calls himself a stable genius- referring again this week to his self-presumed gift. He infers that others are the source of the cringe-worthy self-promotion even though the faint echoes reverberating in his ears are likely generated by his own social media post:
“I am the most stable human being. I’ve been doing this for a long time.”
What he lacks in humility, he surely makes up for in chutzpah.
The best wordsmith
In an article that appeared online at ResearchGate.net entitled “Mr. Malaprop,” the author analyzes the former president’s difficulty with language. The mangled use of language belies his privileged life and Ivy League education. He said in the past that he had ‘the best words’ underscoring that his vocabulary includes the surprising reintroduction of words like ‘bigly’ which dropped from regular use among English speakers more than 120 years ago. His writing contains misspellings that would make a third-grader blush- ‘payed’ for paid, ‘honer’ for ‘honor,’ ‘heel’ for heal, ‘waist’ for waste.’ His misuse of language suggests a poor comparison of a man of his wealth and status to his educational experience, intellectual curiosity, and training most receive in grammar school. It is indicative of a person who hasn’t read much:
But, unfortunately as mentioned by Wolf 48 (2018), the President is not in the habit of reading a lot. In this situation, it would be a fair guess that the President’s writing output is mainly dependent on his listening and speaking skills… There is a high probability of being tricked during the manipulating process…
The garden party regret
And so at his closing Madison Square Garden “Party” held last Sunday, he comes full circle. The spectacle began with his warm-up audience fluffers. His guests were treated to a long list of washed-up C-list stars whose job it was to warm up the audience with a vulgar replaying of Trump’s greatest hits.
The scene reminded me of the Rick Nelson lament elegy to those who hang on to the past they saw as “the good times:”
I went to a garden party
To reminisce with my old friends
A chance to share old memories
Play our songs again
The song is a final lament by Nelson for his appearance on October 15, 1973, at Madison Square Garden. After singing a few of his “oldies”, Ozzie and Harriet’s youngest tried out a few of his new compositions. The crowd rebelled and booed him as he left the stage:
Played them all the old songs
I thought that’s why they came
No one heard the music
We didn’t look the same
I said hello to Mary Lou
She belongs to me
When I sang a song about a honky-tonk
It was time to leave…Someone opened up a closet door
And out stepped Johnny B. Goode
Playing guitar like a-ringin’ a bell
And lookin’ like he should
At Trump’s Garden Party, the hits kept coming as they say. When he opened his closet door outstepped
- Hulk Hogan whose shirt nearly pins him as the old and steroid-diminished phony tries to rip it off. The phony wrassler is in Trump’s corner one might imagine for the afterglow and a chance again to be a headliner.
- David Rem, a childhood friend, and radio personality Sid Rosenberg served up the theme of the day feeding vulgar and profane remarks about Kamala Harris. One called her “the antichrist” while the other stuck with a more pedestrian taunt calling her an “SOB” but using his big boy words for effect.
- Another fluffer who works up the MAGA crowd in anticipation of the main event, talks about deporting “f-king illegals”, calling Harris a “sick SOB.”
These words from the podium of the final rally of a presidential candidate are to make the point that MAGA hasn’t softened its approach, disappointing the groundlings who always cheer for more. Then a small-time comedian named Tony Hinchcliffe had his turn- and quite a turn it was. For “shits and giggles” Hinchcliffe decides to denigrate an entire island of American citizens for a laugh. He called Puerto Rico a “floating pile of garbage” and the party was turned into a campaign issue. The reference immediately brought out a mixed reaction from the peanut gallery as Hinchcliffe resurrected one of Trump’s most infamous acts as president. one seen by all on national broadcasts after Hurricane Maria, the most powerful and destructive storm to hit Puerto Rico in a century. It helped everyone recall the incident; the paper towel throw, the angry exchange with the governor of Puerto Rico, the threats to withhold aid to the island weeks later as a second storm struck driving the island’s population to its knees. Who could forget the lack of humanity, the childish bickering over credit for a storm response that was feckless and poorly managed by his administration?
Then, rubbing salt in their wounds Trump comforted them with a comparison of their plight to that of the people of New Orleans during Katrina. They should feel lucky, he inferred, because more died in New Orleans as if that mattered, or if suffering could be quantified like numbers on a spreadsheet. I have often referred to Trump as a man without a soul, but we are being courted this final week by a man without a heart.
The Founders were well aware of the potential of their government to fall prey to the wiles of a tyrant like Trump. They had just thrown off the hackles of the English tyrant whose rule had become unbearable because he was so contemptuous of their rights. Before he was the star of his own Broadway musical, Alexander Hamilton called out the British tyrant and his overbearing courtiers representing his governance in the New World. In Federalist papers, he wrote:
It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten that the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well-informed judgment, their interest can never be separated; and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.
Hamilton must have had a premonition. He saw the dangers of a demagogue who would rise to be a despot once given power by the state.
In his final verse, Nelson told us what he thought about being asked to hang on to a gilded past while abandoning the future:
Now if you gotta play at garden parties
I wish you a lotta luck
But if memories were all I sang
I’d rather drive a truck
Like Rick Nelson, we can not go back and still be America. America has been on a journey and has no time for tinpot despots and no patience for those who would bend a knee to one. I, for one, would rather drive a truck.
Originally published at https://www.dailykos.com on October 30, 2024.
