“Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another’s fear.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
Upon Winston Churchill’s passing in 1965, Bill Mauldin drew a famous cartoon of a tearful lion, symbolizing the late Prime Minister, a lion-like force of nature and politics. In a radio speech in 1941, Churchill invoked the animal spirits of his nation and ours as America considered joining Great Britain in the Second World War. “And now the old lion,” he said, “with her lion cubs at her side stands alone against hunters who are armed with deadly weapons and impelled by desperate and destructive rage.” A Churchill biography is entitled, “The Last Lion;” an analysis of his speeches is entitled “The Roar of the Lion.”
Donald Trump wants to be like Churchill, whom he called an “unbelievable leader” in an interview with Larry King. One of Trump’s first acts was to return a bust of Churchill to the Oval Office. Trump and Mike Huckabee, a sycophant who spawned Trump’s designated liar, were inspired by the movie, “Darkest Hour,” which led Trump to request a tour of Churchill’s private bunker. Huckabee tweeted, “in @realDonaldTrump we hava Churchill.” That comment came a day after Christmas; perhaps it was the eggnog talking. Members of Parliament were not amused by the comparison. “Churchill served in army & led world to beat fascism,” tweeted Ian Austin. “Chicken Trump backs racists & dodged draft with bad foot!” Alex Sobel tweeted, “Churchill fought Nazis rather than repeated (or retweeted) them.” Comparing Trump to Churchill is like comparing Pee Wee Herman to Hercules.
Trump so admires Churchill that he tries to look like him. The New York Times reported Trump “wanted to look dour, and vetoed any campaign imagery that so much as hinted at weakness.” Trump aides said that’s “why every self-selected snapshot — down to the squinty-eyed scowl attached to his Twitter account — features a tough-guy sourpuss.” Trump said the look he was going for was “like Churchill.” The Daily Mail suggested having the Churchill bust nearby helps Trump maintain the look, “with the proximity to his own desk allowing him to practice the downcast frown and furrowed brow favored by the former leader of the United Kingdom.” Although his “downcast frown” suggests gastric distress, Trump sees Churchill in the mirror. It must make him crazy that the rest of us see Alec Baldwin.
Donald Trump is a con man, grifter, and narcissist who cheats on his wives, but these things are not the primary danger in his presidency. Trump’s presidency is dangerous because he is a coward. His attempt to be like Churchill is a sad delusion. “Churchill,” noted the Daily Mail, “was a wartime hero, a lifelong politician, a writer, a painter, a loyal husband and a celebrated orator whose most famous speech was a passionate denouncement of the policies and politics of Russia at the start of the Cold War.” Trump, the article notes, is none of these.
Trump built his reputation as a TV tough guy telling people, “You’re fired,” but his courage winked out with the Klieg lights. He doesn’t have the courage to fire people to their face, as noted in a BBC News article focused on, among others, the dismissals of James Comey and Rex Tillerson. Noting Trump’s pattern of having subordinates conduct firings, Georgetown University Professor Michael McDermott told the BBC, “I can’t think of any business, organisation or government entity that has any kind of oversight that would tolerate this kind of behaviour in their chief executive officer.” Michael Kruse, writing in Politico in 2016, noted Trump’s unwillingness to fire employees personally was characteristic. “I have never heard him say the words ‘You’re fired’ to anyone,” said a former executive.
Kruse authored a follow-up entitled, “He Pretty Much Gave In to Whatever They Asked For,” a history that belies Trump’s claim to be a great negotiator. For example, Trump demanded $1 million per episode of “The Apprentice.” Jeff Zucker, former head of NBC, said Trump was paid $60,000 per episode. “We ended up paying him what we wanted to pay him.”
In 2016, the Atlantic’s Peter Beinart wrote an article entitled, “The Cowardice of Donald Trump,” noting Trump vilified certain groups in public, but not to their face. “Trump has illustrated something important about the anti-politically correct,” he wrote. “They’re most comfortable confronting PC orthodoxy when the people they’re confronting aren’t around.”
Trump doesn’t need to meet some victims personally: desperate immigrants seeking asylum or safety and security for their family. Debbie McGoldrick, writing for Irish Central, noted the similarity between Trump’s demonization of Hispanic immigrants and the history of Irish immigrants. “President Trump is basing his re-election and midterm elections pitch directly on the old nativist war cry,” she wrote. “Instead of the Irish being demonized it is Hispanics. Somebody must be blamed.” Fear is Trump’s political alchemy; he distills cravenness into an elixir for the fearful and unschooled. His vision of governance is a slow-motion stampede, disregarding a stampede’s disdain for speed limits.
Cowardice places a nation in danger. Trump was intimidated by Kim Jong-un and struck what Vox refers to as “a shockingly weak deal with North Korea.” While Trump proclaims the North Korean nuclear threat is over, the Koreans are increasing nuclear production. The coward was played. What of the upcoming summit with Vladimir Putin? A former Fox News military expert told CNN Putin has “some kind of grip on Trump.” The issue isn’t whether the craven negotiator will make concessions, but how much damage will be done when he does.
Trump’s most effective product is fearfulness. He lives in fear, preaches fear, peddles fear, and negotiates fearfully. To paraphrase FDR, “the only thing we have to fear is Trump himself.”
© 2018 by Mike Tully
Kids, Caves and Orangutans
Don’t you care about your sons and daughters?
– Steppenwolf, “Monster” (1969)
In 2013, comedian-pundit Bill Maher compared Donald Trump to an orangutan. Everybody but Trump recognized the line as satire. “That was venom,” the future President told Fox News. “That wasn’t a joke.” Trump was so upset he filed a lawsuit against Maher. The comedian laughed it off and Michael Cohen, Trump’s fixer-attorney dismissed the case two months later. In reality, Maher deserved to be sued, but not by Trump – by the orangutans.
Comparing Trump to an orangutan does not insult Trump, but it does disparage orangutans, a kind and intelligent species that Animal Planet includes in its list of “Top 10 Animal Moms.” The orangutan mother “never puts her babies down, generally nursing offspring until they reach the age of 6 or 7,” notes the website, adding, “that’s the longest dependence of any animal on Earth.” Humans could learn from orangutans, especially our brittle, humorless President who presides over an administration that kidnaps immigrant children to use as hostages in support of an immigration policy built on scapegoating. Some of the youngest victims of his policy were absent from their parents for so long they no longer recognized them.
As I write this, the most famous boys’ soccer team in history rests and recovers in a hospital in Thailand. We all followed their story arc, from news they were trapped in a flooded cave, to their discovery nine days later, to the daring and tragic rescue that brought them to safety after a volunteer diver gave his life in the effort. The entire world watched the galvanizing and captivating spectacle. There was a planetary sigh of relief when all twelve boys and their young coach were finally rescued. The endangered children had been led from the darkness to safety. Their experience should be a metaphor for a human race that nurtures and cares for its children. Sadly, it’s more exception than metaphor.
UNICEF reports 2017 was a “nightmare year” for children who found themselves in war zones, according to Deutsche Welle, quoting UNICEF’s Manuel Fontaine as saying, “Children are being targeted and exposed to attacks and brutal violence in their homes, schools and playgrounds.” “As these attacks continue year after year, we cannot become numb,” he added. “Such brutality cannot be the new normal.” “More than 10,000 children were killed or maimed in armed conflicts last year,” reported the New York Times. “The suffering occurred across the world.” This fact, according to Virginia Gamba, the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, “shows a blatant disregard for international law by parties to conflict, making civilians, especially children, increasingly vulnerable to violence, use and abuse.” She said her office confirmed 900 cases of rape and sexual violence last year – the actual figure is probably higher – and deplored “the use of human beings as toys, as weapons, as terror, to confuse society, and to divide those children from even the remotest possibility of ever being an active part of society.”
UNICEF published a report in 2016 addressing “The Growing Crisis for Refugee And Migrant Children.” “Around the world, nearly 50 million children have migrated across borders or been forcibly displaced,” wrote the authors. “and this is a conservative estimate.” They added, “More than half of these girls and boys fled violence and insecurity – 28 million in total.” What is the future of a species that fails to care for its young?
Most Americans want to see this nation act to reduce the suffering of children, not add to it by ripping kids from parents’ arms as the Trump administration is doing. I think most of us still want to believe we are a beacon of hope in a dark and frightened world, Reagan’s “shining city on a hill.” But the “shining city” has a cracked foundation; the United States doesn’t take good care of its children. Consider a recent article by Annie Lowery in The Atlantic.” “This is a country that professes to care about children at their youngest and most fragile,” she writes. “But here, for every 100,000 live births, 28 women die in childbirth or shortly thereafter, compared with 11 in Canada.” The ratio has actually doubled since 1990. The infant death rate in the U. S. is twice that of similarly wealthy countries. Our child poverty rate is higher than nearly every other member of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. Lowery notes black women in this country die in childbirth at the same rate as women in Mongolia.
The experience of the Thai soccer team was not a metaphor of a caring world, but a metaphor for the plight of children, far too many of whom endure a metaphorical darkness of war, violence and displacement, hoping for brave heroes to lead them out of darkness and fear. Americans should be the heroes, but we are adding to the misery, not combating it. We neglect our own children and abuse the children of immigrants. Perhaps it is unavoidable such a country is capable of electing somebody like Trump.
We’d have done better to elect a real orangutan.
© 2018 by Mike Tully
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