I've now watched Lesley Stahl's interview
of Donald Trump and his family.
It ran on last night's installment of 60
Minutes but I waited and watched it later online.
A huge part of me didn't want to watch it
at all. Since learning the election
results early Wednesday morning, I've gone out of my way to avoid seeing or
hearing Mr. Trump. I've seen and heard
enough of him in the last 18 months to last a lifetime. At this point, the sight and the sound of the
man can trigger what amounts to a severe allergic reaction in me.
I decided to watch anyway.
Why?
Because once you've seen a poisonous snake slither into your house,
closing your eyes and hoping for the best is no longer much of an option.
The interview (like so many recent events)
wasn't what I expected. Mr. Trump seemed
calm, collected, and almost humble.
In other words, Trump the president-elect
apparently has almost nothing in common with Trump the candidate.
At times it even almost seemed as if he had
read my last entry and was responding appropriately.
He actually looked into the camera and told
those supporters of his who are engaging in hate crimes to stop.
He came close to apologizing for the
nastiness of the campaign.
He even expressed his disapproval of the
Electoral College system despite the fact that it's responsible for his
victory. If he had his way, he told
viewers, the popular vote would determine the winner. No, he didn't say "Therefore, I hope
those electors pledged to me will vote for Hillary instead," but he came much
closer than I would have predicted.
Now, needless to say, he wasn't
perfect. Far from it. If you listen closely, you can hear bits and
pieces of madness popping out with some regularity.
Could he really and truly be as unaware of
the protests across the country as he claimed to be? Such protests over an election haven't
erupted in the US since Lincoln's victory in 1860. Ignorance of these events and their
historical significance is in some ways far more troubling than harsh
denunciation would be.
Did he really say that Bill and Hillary
Clinton were good people whom he didn't want to hurt? Seriously?
After months and months of "Lock her up!" chants and after bringing
the women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault to the debate, and after
all the rest?
There was policy madness, too. He said gay marriage was a matter of settled
law because the Supreme Court had ruled it ok while also saying that he would
overturn Roe vs Wade (also a matter of settled law) by appointing only judges
who would act accordingly to the Supreme Court.
He said he would get rid of Obamacare but keep at least two of its
popular provisions (those dealing with pre-existing conditions and allowing
adult children to remain covered by their parents's health care plans) without
apparently realizing that it's the unpopular parts that pay for those. He promised to create jobs by cutting taxes
even though decades of study and experience show that cutting taxes is a pretty
unreliable and ineffective way to create jobs. He again promised to destroy ISIS while
refusing to give any clue whatsoever as to how.
(He wouldn't even acknowledge Lesley Stahl's point about the right of
the American people to know what he and their military might do in their name.)
I could go on and on about the many
shallow, inane, and logically inconsistent proposals he made or alluded
to. In the end, though, it was once
again his tone and manner that left the deepest and most disturbing impression.
I've struggled a bit to figure out why this
was so. After all, isn't a calm and
collected Interview Trump better than Wild Campaign Trump? Sure, there's an utterly unbridgeable gap
between the two – a gap so huge that I have to wonder if he suffers from
Multiple Personalities Syndrome – but this might in fact merely be Hypocritical
Politician Syndrome writ large.
And then it came to me: This is the manner of a tiger that has just
devoured a kill. The inner beast has
been sated. The raging appetites of the
Id have been satisfied. The angry volcano
gods have received their virgin and been appeased.
For now.
Tomorrow?
Well, tomorrow is anybody's guess.
All we can be sure of is that someday the tiger will get hungry and kill
again.
It's a pattern I remember only too well as
an emotionally abused child.
My abuser often felt wonderful after the
abuse and could go on as if nothing bad had ever happened. They just couldn't understand why I wasn't as
happy as they were, why I didn't want to be around them, why I couldn't trust
them, why I couldn't simply forgive and forget – at least until next time. How dare I threaten to ruin *their* good mood
by sulking! What a mean-spirited bastard
*I* was for insisting on holding a grudge!
Yes, it all comes back to me now. It's a sick pattern of behavior that one
never entirely forgets once one has been exposed to it.
A pattern that watching Trump last night
has now brought back into crystal-clear focus.
I must not lose focus again.
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