The Life of Donald
Donald Smith II was born in Manhattan to wealthy parents John Smith and Emily Smith. John Smith made his fortune as an ad executive on Madison Avenue, rising quickly through the ranks to eventually break off and start his own agency, Smith and Partners.
Donald was rambunctious and ostentatious early on and stayed this way. Often at preschool, he’d brag about the size of his house how much richer Mommy and Daddy were than his friend’s parents. Most of the time the other kids shrugged and said “Swell”. Little Don became incessantly angry when they did this and threw tantrums. He wanted more praise and attention and “Swell” just wasn’t enough. His parents were warned but dismissed it.
Later on, in Elementary and Middle School, Donald was still prone to the same braggadocious habits. But now he added lies to his portfolio of bullshitery. He lied to his friends saying he had many girlfriends, conveniently at other schools, or the things he had done, or the true wealth and size of his family and father’s company.
And it mostly worked. He had friends and some girls found it attractive but not for long as they soon discovered his lies after going out with him for a while.
In 8th grade, Donald became more aggressive and prone to lying when his parents went through a divorce after his father was caught cheating. And one day when another kid called him out his lies, Donald attacked him. He lost the fight and much of his stature with friends as he said he boxed in the Summer and was suspended. His parents decided to send him to an upstate military academy as a result. There nobody knew Donald and so it gave him a clean slate to start his lies all over again. This eventually morphed into a full-on superiority complex.
There the lessons of moral and ethical behavior along with order and discipline failed to rub off on him. He got more aggressive, lied ever more, stole, and cheated. Somehow, through dumb luck, most suppose, he graduated. And again through dumb luck and made up ailments dodged the draft multiple times, while many of his classmates were deployed to Vietnam, where many would die.
Meanwhile, he went to business school and came back to New York where his father gave a position at the company. The position, little did Donald know, was created out of thin air for him so as to give him something to do and stay out of the way of real business. He was appointed Director of Future Studies. His job was simply “researching” the future and writing up reports as to how that could fit into new advertising strategies.
Most of the time these reports were simply thrown in the garbage, and he was openly scoffed at as being the bosses son. Besides being known for that virtually everyone hated him. He was known to the women as the guy to avoid and to the men an asshole with an over bloated ego.
Eventually, during an argument with a colleague over Donald harassing a Secretary, he was told his job was a joke. Characteristically he threw a tantrum and ran to his father’s office. When he came out he had been appointed to the vacant Director of Accounts and given a corner office.
Within months he lost a quarter of accounts at the firm. Wanting to save himself the embarrassment of having to fire his son, he saw an opportunity in the moon landing. Thus after only 6 months as Director of Accounts, he became the President of Future Studies, and an office was opened in Miami. There Donald got no work done, not that it was of any value anyways, and instead spent it sleeping around, drinking, and doing cocaine, a habit he carried with him throughout the 80s.
Unfortunately for the company, Donnie couldn’t be kept away. In August 1974, John Smith died at 54 from a heart attack. His father’s will didn’t explicitly say the company would be passed to his ownershi[ but after a years-long legal battle with his father’s money, of course, the company was given to him in January 1977. By then it was a smoldering husk of what it had been under his father’s tenure. But Donald with some iota of business knowledge pulled two of his best employees and made them the heads of the major departments in the company. Thankfully, Donald was too busy with other “activities” and the company thrived under their combined genius. Of course, though, Donald took the credit and bragged to his other friends and girlfriends about his great successes.
And then it all came crashing down, as Donald insisted on pursuing Pan Am, then a dying airline. He kept on pushing until he finally got his wish. During this, he insisted on gearing the entire business towards Pan Am and rebuilding its image. And with the company’s money, he built a skyscraper in downtown Manhattan, joined the upstart USFL, and went into the casino business. But after a decade of mismanagement, all four businesses went into the ground. Smith & Partners closed its doors into 1990 with the collapse of Pan Am, the Manhattan skyscraper was by in large sold, the USFL collapsed in the late-80s, and his Atlantic City Casino filed for bankruptcy.
But with only dumb luck like Donald could find he reemerged a decade later with a booming real estate empire. Of course, he didn’t build it and he barely financed it but he didn’t like to get tangled up in such details. He again made a Casino investment, started a financial company, Smith Management, and invested in stock for major car companies. During this, he had grown to be a mini-celebrity in New York. His finances and come back were so big that he was given a TV show and his name became synonymous with money. By this time he had three marriages and countless affairs, which only added to his publicity, and status as a billionaire New York playboy.
However, again like the 80s, his bad investments hurt him as the Great Recession hit in 2008. The finance company collapsed, the casino closed, the real estate empire fell on hard times, as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis, and the car stock became worthless. But out of all that the old, wrinkly braggart with a mop of orange hair and money found his way out, albeit at the expense of screwing over countless others.
And in 2015 he announced a run for President as a Republican. Initially he was laughed at and mocked but for some reason he was popular. The more insidious and worse he got the more his lead grew in the polls. It didn’t matter he touted family values while he had been married many times and had cheated many more times, it didn’t matter he wasn’t nearly as rich as he claimed to be, it didn’t matter he called for Nazi Germany style politics, it didn’t matter he was overtly racist and sexist, and it didn’t matter that he looked and spoke like the antithesis of a President.
He gobbled up his opponents like he did KFC, capturing the Republican nomination in June 2016, and then propelled by some mysterious force overcame a sexual assault scandal and won the election over a decade’s long public servant with an honorable and decorated record. Donald was President and was beside himself, knowing only to talk about the most surprising election result in decades, maybe ever. But Donnie didn’t feel strong or self-secure yet, he still needed something.
After 3 years he was impeached after an FBI probe proved collusion between his campaign and the Russian government, suspicious personal finances, and obstruction of justice. People practically cheered in the streets as the years of scandals, resignations, and mismanagement were finally over. But the damage was still there and it took decades to repair, and some damage was irreparable.
At the end of his life, Donald realized what he had been as he sat in a mansion outside of Miami. He realized he had been a failure, a braggart, a liar, a cheater, had no one truly, and that all he had was a mid-sized real estate company with a few floors of office space in Manhattan, and even then that company was built by others. But it was only a dream, and Donald woke up laughing at such preposterous notions. Donald would die shortly thereafter eating a Big Mac after “visiting” with his favorite porn star and completing his 7th divorce, never having found that self-validation he yearned for all his life.
Most knew what he was during his life but his supporters eventually realized the facts they never could about Donald: He was a corrupt, lying sociopath with an inflated ego and an insecurity problem combined with stunning idiocy matched with a classic case of the Dunning-Kruger effect. His life had amounted to nothing, it was just a long stream of bullshit, screwing people over, dumb luck, and taking credit from others. Donald was, simply, a failure at nearly everything except a surprise election win off the backs of people’s fear.
