Friday, May 19, 2017

You Can See The End



The Canadian who edits Vanity Fair -- Graydon Carter -- writes that you cannot fight Donald Trump by using the usual tools of resistance:

As anyone who has followed his jerry-rigged career from the 1980s onward will tell you, Trump just drags you to the bottom of the pond every time. Decades ago, he was a short-fingered vulgarian tooling around town in a mauve stretch limo, reeking of Brut. In those days, competitors, subcontractors, politicians, and wives were the ones who found themselves mired in the Trump muck. Now it is the country that’s up to its knees in it.

Carter opines that Trump's presidency is doomed. But until he falls,  almost everyone will be suffering from P.T.S.D:

Until that day, you should be forgiven if you think you are suffering from extreme, full-blown P.T.S.D.—President Trump Stress Disorder. You are not alone. A serial liar in the office or home is one thing—and stressful enough. But a serial liar in the highest office in the land is something else altogether. Couple that with an erratically fragile ego, a severely diminished mental capacity, a lacerating temper, and access to the nuclear codes, and it’s going to get a whole lot hotter in here.

If you think you are having a tough time of it since the election, please have some sympathy for the journalists, career civil servants, and White House supplicants who have to deal with Trumpian levels of insanity on a minute-to-minute basis. Trumpian! The word “trump” formerly was a verb used in polite bridge and whist circles. Trump, the man, is now up there with Hercules and Sisyphus with his own branded adjective. I’m not completely sure what it stands for. But when it finally settles into the lexicon, I’m certain that it will be a disconcerting combination of petulant, preening, ignorant, shameless, vulgar, paranoid, vainglorious, reckless, imperious, impulsive, unhinged, callous, corrosive, narcissistic, intemperate, juvenile, disloyal, venal, chaotic, squalid—what have I forgotten? Oh, yes!—and just mind-numbingly, epically incompetent.

Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a rough ride. But you can see the end.


14 comments:

The Mound of Sound said...

Oh yeah, that Carter guy from that failing Vanity Fair.

"Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of @VanityFair Magazine. Way down, big trouble, dead! Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2016"

ffd said...

I like the cartoon - a mad Mr. Toad looking for his next crash like Trump.

A President Pence might not be so great for the States but might be a big improvement for Canada. We hear so much American news that sometimes we forget we are Canadian and our interests are different from those of the Americans. At least, I haven't heard that Pence wants to abolish NAFTA.

Satire seems to work better against Trump than demonstrations. It's never been better for artists in a snarky mood. Time for all of us to access our inner artist and metaphorically thwack the enemy who seem singularly lacking in humour. Maybe that's why SNL is so disturbing to Trump - this is a foreign language to him.

Rural said...

And that just about sums it up, Owen. Just one description perhaps missing "Twit" LOL

Dana said...

Did you find the slide show related to another of the articles?

http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/photos/2016/09/alison-jackson-donald-trump

Owen Gray said...

Carter mentions in the piece that he's had run ins with Trump in the past, Mound. He knows of whom he speaks.

Owen Gray said...

Things might be a little different, ffd, if Trump knew how to laugh at himself.

Owen Gray said...

Titter seems to be the Twit's preferred medium, Rural. Life can't be reduced to 140 characters.

Owen Gray said...

Thanks for the link, Dana. Carter's magazine has Trump's number.

Scotty on Denman said...

You forgot "puerile".

Owen Gray said...

A good word and -- in Trump's case -- absolutely accurate, Scotty.

Steve said...

It going to be tremendous while it lasts, the best failed presidency ever, history written by the greatest man, hugh time for all,

Dana said...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/donald-trump-is-a-menace-to-the-world-opinion-a-1148471.html

Owen Gray said...

Failed, I agree, Steve. Tremendous -- only the ruin he leaves behind.

Owen Gray said...

Unlike Trump, Dana, the Germans are no fools.