Our disgruntled dictator - A diminished nation is being led by a shrinking man
SATURDAY, JUN 3, 2017 08:00 AM EDT
Our disgruntled dictator
A diminished nation is being led by a shrinking man
LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
Did you see the coverage of our president in Europe last week or happen to watch his Rose Garden announcement that he is pulling us out of the Paris Climate Agreement? On video or in photographs, Trump looked like the unhappiest man on the planet. Even his patented forced smile was not in evidence. Appearing with European NATO leaders, he stood by like a man awaiting the gallows. Walking from the Oval Office to the Rose Garden, he was a man under house arrest.
Why? He’s the President of the United States, for crying out loud! He went on a nine-day grand tour of the Middle East and Europe! Wined and dined wherever he went, he flew on Air Force One; he was accompanied by his family and a huge entourage of White House staff, cabinet secretaries and military advisers. What was there to be unhappy about?
At home, the economy was booming: unemployment is as low as it had been in 10 years; the stock market is at or near record highs; his party controls both houses of congress; his approval rating among his own voters is above 80 percent. Sure, he has been dogged by an aggressive press and a burgeoning investigation of his campaign and transition inner circle, but he beat Crooked Hillary! He has transformed himself from a real estate huckster into the carrot-topped Ronald Reagan of a new Republican age!
It’s getting harder and harder to avoid the conclusion that Trump suffers from the same afflictions common to dictators. Did you ever see a picture of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu smiling? Saddam Hussein looking like anything but a strutting, grandstanding fool? Putin appearing to have risen above the humorless, paranoid KGB apparatchik he has always been? Wouldn’t it be interesting to see a side-by-side photo comparison of our president’s Trump Tower apartment and a pick from any one of Saddam’s 70-some palaces, or Ceaușescu’s grand manor for that matter? Cheerfully self-effacing doesn’t describe these fellows, nor does it describe our president. He appears from day to day preternaturally unhappy. His tweets reflect the musings of someone ill at ease with his place in the world. He sounds cornered, set upon by enemies. He seems to be a man who, having striven toward a goal and achieved it, discovered a dark and forbidding place where he expected to find sweetness and light.
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http://www.salon.com/2017/06/03/our-disgruntled-dictator/
