With the publication of Mary Trump’s book, the world is learning about the dysfunctional family life that helped create the pathology we see in Donald Trump. While we obviously didn’t have all the private background details of the man’s life, the end result has been on display for decades. There is nothing that can be disclosed about Trump that would surprise me, and it’s not because I have some special insight.
Before he hit the political scene like a Tasmanian Devil in 2015, I knew of Donald Trump mostly for being Donald Trump. I didn’t know what he did exactly, or why he was famous, but I’d heard his name on TV (hell, even on NYPD Blue the characters would occasionally drop his name) and knew he had a TV show of some kind. I knew he was involved in professional wrestling in some capacity, but that was about it. When he started insisting that President Obama was born in Kenya, I remember thinking in disgust that he was a racist asshole. But when he persisted even after Obama produced his long form birth certificate, I started to also think he wasn’t all that bright.
I started seeing some of his more controversial positions popping up in articles, like his pro-asbestos stance, his anti-climate change stance and his Central Park 5 controversy. The theme running through these, along with the ongoing Obama “birther” issue, was a fact-free, conspiracy theorist mindset with racial undertones and a strong confirmation bias that not only ignored evidence contrary to his position, but actually mocked, fought and vehemently opposed the evidence.
I knew this much about Donald Trump before he announced his run for President and before I did any actual research into him. Once he actually announced his intentions, with his shockingly racist anti-Mexican rant, I decided I wanted to know more. At no point did I believe Donald Trump would actually win the GOP nomination for President, nor at any point did I believe he would win the 2016 election. I’m not claiming omniscience, but what I am claiming, and am about to prove, is that everything we know today about Donald Trump was knowable to anyone before they chose to vote for him. This is deeply troubling in a couple of ways. Either people looked into him, saw him for what he was, and voted for him anyway, or people voted for him without bothering to look into who he was. Neither scenario does much for one’s faith in humanity or democracy for that matter.
In 2015 I wrote (under my pen name) that he was part delusional dictator, part deranged mobster and a wannabe war criminal. This post was actually about Trump’s competitor at the time, Ben Carson, but I mentioned Trump’s propensity to take positions based solely on how they feel to him. Here, I wrote about Trump’s entertainment value, and for a while I did have some fun watching him seemingly torpedo his own campaign every day, but I also highlight his lies, his attacking journalists, attacking his own supporters even, along with his delusional mobster mentality. I was still certain at this stage he could never win the nomination, and I was starting to suspect he was a sociopath.
I really started figuring him out here, in late November of 2015. I labeled him a narcissist and lamented that I couldn’t even imagine the wreckage that would be left in the wake of a Presidency by one of these three cranks (referring to Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina). Here, shocked by the voters of New Hampshire, I labeled him a fraudulent, petulant blowhard, included evidence of his spewing falsehoods at an astonishing rate, and pointed out that he had no actual core political positions at all. You can sense the change in tone now that the voting had begun. I started getting nervous.
- Here, I rip apart his Make America Great Again slogan.
- Here, I identify that he’s basically a professional wrestler’s version of a politician: it’s all fake, and he’s hitting his opponents over the head with a metal chair as they’re trying to act like actual politicians.
- Here, I write “The man stands as the poster child for baseless conspiracy theories. He has a complete disregard for the truth, combined with a stunning lack of self awareness. He is illogical, irrational, and proud of it.” I also link a video of Trump’s testimony in Scotland about windmills where he boldly claims that “he” is the evidence for his claims.
- Writing under my own name, I sum up everything we know about Donald Trump in one short paragraph.Â
So Mary Trump has written a book to tell us about Donald. All I can say at this point is that if you don’t know enough already to decide to vote for Biden in November, then please, by all means, I beseech you, read the book. I’m thinking it may be more of a self preservation instinct than a sense of curiosity that might drive someone to read it. Having ridden this horror show roller coaster, driven by an orange-faced, maniacal man-child hellbent on holding on to power for power’s sake, with the nation and its people screaming to be let off the ride, a sobering read may be just the tonic one needs.
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