The Mandarin, or Trevor?
I feel sorry for Donald Trump.
There, I said it.
And why, you may ask? I will explain via movie reference. Spoiler alert if you haven’t seen Iron Man 3.
Iron Man 3 is not a cinematic masterpiece. In fact, it holds true to the general rule that the higher a sequel’s number, the lower the quality of the film. But I am not interested in dissecting entertainment here. Instead I want to focus on the character of the Mandarin.
When we first see the Mandarin, he is a mysterious and powerful figure. Speaking with an indistinguishable accent, wearing unidentifiable but certainly foreign garb, sporting a strange hairdo, speaking in cryptic threats, he appears to be ruthless and formidable.
Later in the movie we discover that he is actually a fabrication. He is a British actor named Trevor with a serious drug problem. He was hired by the real villains of the film, and is nothing more than a slurring incoherent washout. The Mandarin was created to strike fear and to mask the true source of the apparent terror attacks, but the man himself is a sad, pathetic mess.
You see where I am going with this, right?
Yesterday the news was full of stories of the stupid things Trump said at his latest rally. Every time I hear about him having another 2020 campaign rally, I scratch my head and try to fathom why this man, who has been in office for mere months, is already campaigning for the election four years from now.
For awhile I figured it was just another money making scheme. Campaign funds have been pouring into Trump owned properties and companies since this whole mess began, so I thought his rallies were just another way to get more people to buy hats and to give him an excuse to book a bunch of people into his hotels.
But that didn’t seem like enough of an explanation.
I have also heard reports that Trump seems truly taken aback when confronted with negative opinions of himself. He can’t understand why people are protesting the great things he is doing.
Then I started to understand. Trump holds those rallies to insulate himself in a bubble of support. He stirs up the crowd not for any nefarious or clandestine purpose, but just to soothe his own childlike ego.
Trump is truly the toddler-in-chief. He is more Trevor than Mandarin. And he has been put in place to distract and deflect attention away from the nasty and selfish things the pretenders calling themselves Republicans are doing behind closed doors.
So I feel sorry for him. I think he is a sad, pathetic example of how money and privilege can mislead someone into believing they are better than everyone else, despite the fact that their lives are meaningless and empty.
I do not believe he is very intelligent, and as I’ve said before, I think he is a textbook example of a narcissist. I think his confusion about why not everyone in the country likes him is sincere. I think his apparent flip-flopping on issues is because he doesn’t have a position on any of them, he just wants to say what is going to make the most people cheer for him.
So far Trump’s agenda seems to be mainly to undo anything Obama did. He acts like a spoiled rich kid trying to get out from under the shadow of his more popular father. And the best way to do that is to attack everything your father (or more popular predecessor in this case) created and was loved for.
Besides, every time he says something mean about Obama or Hillary, someone will cheer for him.
The rallies are a safe place. He can continue to spout the same nonsense he’s been using for over a year, and people will continue to cheer. Away from the rallies, this is less and less true. As time passes, he is seeing more dissent and dissatisfaction, and he can neither understand it nor handle it.
We all are more comfortable surrounded by people who agree with us. That is why there is such an issue with politics in the United States today — we all naturally gravitate towards like-minded folks, and we become so insulated from any other perspective that we prevent real discourse, compromise, or cooperation from happening. Social media has made the problem worse, but it would be there whether Facebook, Twitter, and Medium were there or not.
And in Trump’s case, the like-minded folks he surrounds himself with represent an ever-shrinking minority in this country, and because they are like him, the more they feel their power threatened, the more likely they are to lash out. On optimistic days I believe their numbers and power will dissipate before they have a chance to do something truly awful.
Trump is not to be feared. He is to be pitied.
We should fear the men working behind the smokescreen, doing as much damage as they possibly can while they’ve got him acting as a human shield.
