Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

[Bob Butler]

I can dream of the recent shake ups being positive. One question is based around federalism. Arguably, the federal government has been doing too much. Now, with various agencies being curtailed, it is doing less. If conservatives favoring less service and less taxes, the central government is doing less. With the blue states having more population density and favoring more services, I anticipate them picking up the slack. If the blue people end up healthier, protected, educated and taxed, the red folk might become more the opposite. We might become more as the founders intended, an alliance of independent states.

The trade wars are still shaking out. Over the year, profits and exchange have been optimized. The abrupt changes seem to be messing everything up. It looks like the immediate result features more Canada-Europe trade and Chinese opportunities. Whether Trump backs down is undetermined. Still, my thoughts are that the elites favor immediate profits over long term sustainability. All the former commercial activity is dubious as resources have been ruthlessly exploited. If we end up with fewer cars, less steel and blacked out cities, is this entirely the wrong direction?

And we shall see how much containment survives. To what degree will Putin be able to back down cleanly? Will Trump’s favoring Jewish over Palestinian control of Gaza be accepted by the Arabs? If China is given economic opportunities by the tariffs, will they want to start a war and ruin trade opportunities with the West?

And how does this disruption in the economy play with the Trump administration of billionaires? I somehow think Canada’s action focusing on making electric cars less profitable is aimed at Tesla and Elon Musk. In general, if the old economy had been optimized for short term profits, how long will it be before the billionaires start screaming? Will Trump care? He seems more concerned with revenge than helping the American people. He seems to think it OK to retroactively make coups legal while ruining the economy.

I still think the conservatives likely to lose long term. It is still too early to have a good idea of how things are going to go. If nothing else, the various billionaire on the cabinet are just about confirmed. If the tariffs continue to mess up the economy, will they let it or invoke the 25th Amendment to put one of their own in charge?

Too soon to tell.

[Bob Butler]

Near Cape Cod MA, on a road I frequently pass, there was a house that until recently flew a bunch of Trump / Vance and generally Republican signs and flags which left no doubt as to their political alignment. Recently all but one of those flags and signs came down, leaving only a single Revolutionary War era flag flying. A single tree.

"Don't tread on me."

[Kenny73]

That's a heartening sign.

You know, Bob: when Trump first appeared on the political scene a decade ago, I was skeptical of the people psychoanalyzing him - including at least to some extent actual shrinks - because historically we judged political leaders on measures of moral character (the stuff of the ancients, and old masters) rather than mental health.

But having finally gotten clean and sober (after many years of active use), and done some real rather than fake therapy (if you're in therapy, and still using, it's likely to be about nursing/enabling your resentments rather than dealing with your actual trauma), I've come to understand that both my parents were raging narcissists - my late father of the grandiose type (ie the stage parent who sought to glorify himself through you), my mother the vulnerable type (ie the anti-stage parent who hates actual success for her kids, esp me) - and a helluva lot like Trump, who I do think is a malignant one.

At one time my parents had good jobs - my father was a network executive, and my mother was a special needs teacher and speech therapist - who one day decided to throw all caution to the proverbial wind and embark on a long (ie permanent) series of extremely ill advised and reckless business ventures, engulfing our family in an endless chaos. When I was younger, I thought it was just their naivete combined with the times (the Awakening and all), but...nope! (To the extent it had anything to do with the times - the people going off to find themselves, or whatever - it was probably an example of communal narcissism, where the narcissism is connected to something larger, in this case the culture/counter-culture.) Those jobs were never going to be good enough - my father would've retired a millionaire and my mother would have had extremely rich pension and health care benefits, as well as summers off and things - because no job is ever good enough for a narcissist.

So, the just bonkers business ventures? Yep, those! (I mean: practically anyone other than a narcissist would have known by the 80s/90s that Atlantic City was kind of a has been town, and risky bet - not Trump.) The bankruptcies? Those too! The bad investments with the money they did actually earn? Those as well! (From what I've read, Trump made something like 400 million dollars on the Apprentice, and then apparently squandered much or maybe all of it on risky investments in foreign golf resorts. Probably the only reason the Apprentice didn't go off the rails was because even though Trump was the star he still had a boss, Mark Burnett. That's the same reason why my father's career at CBS looked to an outsider like a success - he wasn't in control of things. But I'm sure Trump was unhappy as the star of that show - which really did glorify his own narcissistic self-concept - because again no job is ever good enough.)

My parents' first bankruptcy was when I was twelve - they/we lost everything: the homes, the cars, even what I had earned as an actor/model kid (I could've sued them under the Coogan Act, but what would've been the point: they had no money by then). About a week after they announced this to the kids, I wrote a letter to my 7th grade school counselor asking - begging, really - to be placed in foster care, and would someone please help me apply for scholarships to military school (which really was an xer/nomad sort of solution). But I didn't send it because who was I think I was worthy of that outcome? And how could I do that to my own parents?

So I've been watching the latest season of the Trump Show as the adult child of undiagnosed and untreated narcissist parents. And i think the country as a whole (regardless of who you voted for) is going to find out what it is like to have a parent with narcissistic personality disorder - the chaos, not success, is the point; it is the endgame. Unless, of course, people - the courts, the opposition, maybe even some from his own party - begin to step in and tell him no, or he gets help (which of course won't happen). (And Trump at least for now does have a co-parent in this, whose name is not JD Vance but Elon Musk.)

I also think that in the end the ancients and the old masters have the final say. The Trump story, I've long thought, is part farce, but also part tragedy. I think Trump's end is a lot like his fictional hero Charles Foster Kane, his final days spent alone in a gilded cage at Mar a Lago or Trump Tower, shunned by the global A list whose approval he spent his lifetime seeking. In the end Trump may be more Gatsby than Great American, those people saying: he was never really one of us, anyhow - and that's just about Trump's biggest fear.

[Bob Butler]

Yes. I sympathize with much of the above. I'd add that he is a casual criminal, disregarding the law, yet acting surprised when he is prosecuted. He is also growing senile. His accusations that Biden was getting old and mentally challenged were projection. I;m not that much into psychology, or in understanding narcissism, but I have seen it used to explain Trump often enough.

More interesting is the delay in implementing some tariffs in response to pleas from Republicans and elites. What seem to be happening is the worst of both worlds. Trump is backing down on parts of his economic agenda, but Canada, Mexico, China and Europe are going ahead with their responses. They are retaliating in advance to policies which might not be implemented. Too soon to see how this might play out.

[Kenny73]

Yes to everything *you* say Bob - you are wise. The clueless criminal for sure; he's like a mob boss in that sense. And for sure is in some kind of cognitive decline. (From what I've observed with family members and others, the late 70s/early 80s are when big health and cognitive challenges can really start to show up - even in previously healthy seeming people. And he's not like the actually healthy people I've known - who still run or walk every day, and eat well - but have heart attacks or strokes or are diagnosed with dementia. I mean, famously, his diet is literally cheeseburgers and diet coke. If he makes it the next four years without a significant health or cognitive diagnosis, he'll be quite lucky.)

I hope sanity prevails on the tariffs and things - I really don't want to see a major economic downturn. But the layoffs of federal workers are enough that the job numbers are likely to be bad for the first few months of the year, and maybe after that too. And if people's benefits - SS, medicare, medicaid - start being disrupted, things could really get bad before long. Oh, and also still: inflation. It was probably going to take some pretty creative actions to actually bring down prices, but the imagination let alone the will just doesn't seem to be there.