A friend of mine was criticizing the New York Times for publishing the recent Anonymous Op-Ed purportedly written by a covert resister inside the Trump administration. The Op-Ed, if you haven’t read it, shows the writer gushing in self-congratulation about undermining the president’s agenda. Yes, the same president he or she works for.
My friend made his criticisms in an online thread and asked for comment. His basic position was that the Times “couldn’t be in the anonymous author business and remain credible.” And that whoever in the Trump administration wrote the piece, if indeed it’s authentic, isn’t doing American democracy any favors.
The discussion touched on Trump’s narcissism and then on how our different branches of government are supposed to function.
I post parts of the thread here.
E.M.
MYSELF: I agree with your basic assessment of why the NYT Op-Ed was out of line. As for the other issues, I suspect we’re in agreement too.
It's the legislative and judicial branches that are in charge of countering the executive when and if the executive is out of line. To praise anonymous "Resistance" operatives who brag in print about working inside the executive branch itself is to praise borderline traitors to our democracy. The voters elected Trump to fulfill his policy agenda, and neocons who think they know better and expatiate on how they're subverting what the voters want--well, you do the math.
As a Trump supporter, sure, I see the narcissism. But narcissism is often a personality trait of people who end up in leadership positions. Obama was and is a monumental narcissist. Obviously. But that said, how would the country be reacting if an Obama administration employee wrote something like that NYT editorial? Most of the media would be apoplectic, and the word "treason" would be popping up everywhere, especially on the NYT's Op-Ed page.
The thesis that Trump is somehow "more dangerous" than Obama is undemonstrable. Trump hasn't yet dragged us into a regime-change war, he hasn't decided to dictate trans bathroom policy to the whole country's public education system, he hasn't sat on his hands to allow North Korea nuclear and missile policy to shift into overdrive, or let China continue building military bases in the South China Sea.
Some narcissistic leaders are dangerous by being wimps too in love with the sound of their own "reasonable," diplomatic speech. Neville Chamberlain. The gay Obama narcissism. Other narcissistic leaders sound dangerous, but aren't as dangerous in the long run.
FRIEND: Eric, this time, it appears the middle is in agreement with your perspective in terms of the actual people and their jobs. Regarding any president, there is the office and there is the man. They are not the same. Trump the man is a personal embarrassment to me. The Office of President is a great responsibility. If Trump’s hires are back-stabbing him, they should stop that, come clean, and front stab him. And get fired. If Trump orders crazy on rice, each person in the process who refuses to bring crazy on rice should be fired until someone either does the crazy or he wakes up. What Trump supporters need to wake up to is that none of these internal resistance people are Democrats or liberals. They are Trump appointees. They are Republicans. And that has to be galling.
MYSELF: The problem we Trump supporters see is that this back-stabbing to some degree is inevitable, given that Trump is going to staff his administration with Republicans, but at the same time most Washington Republicans are not on the same page as him. They're neocons in foreign policy and free-traders in economic policy. While his voters support him, much of the Washington GOP sees the Trump presidency as a crisis for their party--not because he's "crazy" so as much as because he's not following the Agenda. If he were following the Agenda, they could live with the "crazy".
Similar with the Democrats. The claim that Trump is "dangerous", a "threat to world peace", a "racist"--it's fed largely by a combination of two things: 1) Trump is not following the Agenda (the same Agenda the establishment GOP wants); 2) the Dems are truly the party of people with Daddy issues, and Trump looks and sounds like all the Daddies rolled into one.
On both sides, most of the people screaming opposition to Trump are not screaming about what they really oppose in him, but rather reaching for something else to scream about that sounds more marketable. The GOP establishment can't come out screaming "This guy is not following the Agenda, America!" because the public will respond "Yeah, that's why we voted for him." And the Dems can't come out screaming "This guy's a DADDY who just laughs at what I say about racism and he even told me to take off my pussyhat at the dinner table!" They can't come out screaming this because the non-Daddy-issues public will laugh them to scorn. So they pretend to be serious instead, when even they know they're just acting out. At the dinner table.
In short, neither Dem nor GOP opposition to Trump dares speak honestly about its actual motives.
Check out my Idiocy, Ltd. and begin the long, hard reckoning.
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