Empathy for the devil

POLITICS DEP'T.

Donald Trump Almost Got His Head Blown Off

THE REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL campaign does not seem to be going well right now. Donald Trump, never a particularly stable or reliable presence, has become even more erratic—running a sparse schedule of rallies and caught up in what the New York Times' Trump-insider reporting team, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, described as "a stretch of flailing and self-harm." He backed out of his scheduled debate with Kamala Harris and then backed in again; his public and semi-public remarks have been maundering and obsessively petty enough to alarm even friendly audiences. His biggest bid for attention was a glitchy interview with his fellow end-stage reactionary Elon Musk, in which he seemed to struggle to pronounce his words. 

The leading explanation for all of this is that Trump found it "disorienting," as the Times put it, to be suddenly running against an eager and energized Harris instead of the tentative and exhausted Joe Biden. New York magazine's Jonathan Chait wrote that even as the candidate swap has rallied Democrats, "the move has set off a secondary effect of destabilizing the Republican campaign by rattling Donald Trump, leading him [to] ignore his advisers and indulge his most deranged instincts." When Trump was leading in the polls against Biden, Chait argued, the candidate was capable of self-discipline; now that he's trailing Harris, he has lost "his willingness to do the things that enable him to win." 

All of this analysis is plausible and probably true. It fits exactly with what lots of people have always believed about Trump—what I've always personally believed about Trump—which is that he's a bluffer and a bully who can't stand losing, and that his defects of ability and character are once again being exposed. 

But then I remember that also he nearly got his head blown off in Pennsylvania. Today marks one full month since the assassination attempt happened—only one month ago, Trump was getting ready to grandstand about a falsified chart of Biden's immigration record, and that was very, very nearly the last thing he ever did. 

His immediate response to the shooting—brandishing a fist and exhorting the crowd to "Fight!"—convinced the political press that the episode was complete and that Trump had come out on top. The photo of him bleeding and scowling and punching the air, with the American flag above him, was immediately hailed as a triumph, surely the moment that the Trump 2024 campaign became unbeatable. Politically, it turned out to be no such thing; he got no real polling bounce from the shooting, and even less of one from making the shooting a central motif of the Republican National Convention. 

In the serial novel that is the coverage of Campaign 2024, that just made the assassination attempt into a bygone high point for Trump. As Haberman and Swan put it: 

The people around Mr. Trump see a candidate knocked off his bearings, nothing like the man who reclined serenely on July 15 as he watched as thousands of delegates cheered him on the first night of the Republican National Convention. Then, Mr. Trump, his ear bandaged, was a living martyr after the assassination attempt two days before. Inside the Milwaukee arena, the Democrats had already been defeated; the only thing left to wonder about was the margin of Mr. Trump’s victory.

What if two days wasn't enough to measure the psychological effects on Trump of having been nearly murdered in public? What if that ear-bandaged serenity, like the fist-pump, was a transitory performance or coping mechanism, put on by someone who had gone through an incomprehensibly shattering personal experience? What if a brush with death—an actual brush, the bullet clipping an ear rather than sending an explosive shockwave through his skull—is not really something a person shakes off just because it's time for the next chapter in the election story?

Haberman and Swan supplied some evidence, in passing, that the former president might not really be following the script written in the immediate aftermath of the shooting:  

Mr. Trump told donors that the news media had been incorrectly suggesting that he had mellowed since the assassination attempt. “I’m not nicer,” he said, according to one person in attendance.

Another said Mr. Trump described himself as “angry,” because “they” — unspecified adversaries that the attendee took to mean Democrats — had first tried to bankrupt him and then to kill him.

Those suggestive moments, though, were folded into a general account of Trump's bad temper, along with his nastiness about Harris. The story treated a reported "potential Iranian assassination threat" and  "new layers of security that have brought a bunker-like feel to his properties" as part of a general pattern of upsetting events, rather than as reminders of one very specific, very raw personal experience. 

Donald Trump's psyche, with all its particular damage and ugliness, is miserably familiar to everyone now. That familiarity makes it hard to pull back and consider his position with any sort of empathy—not sympathy or warmth, even, but simple human recognition. I am used to thinking of Trump as weak and lazy, and to feeling like it's important to say he's weak and lazy because the political reporting corps ignores his weakness and laziness in favor of marveling at his force of will.

Personally, though, if I had just gotten my ear nicked by an AR-15 round—fired not by some master covert operative but by a barely grown loser from a few towns over—while I was up on stage under the supposed protection of the supposedly unbeatable Secret Service, the next time you saw me onstage would be: never. Perhaps Trump truly is such a malignant narcissist that he believes to his core that the bullet was kept away from him by destiny, that the unfortunate firefighter who did catch one in the skull that day was a lesser person, more dispensable to God's plans. But this is the same Trump who worried about going out like Stan Chera. You don't have to be a very sensitive or introspective person to be traumatized by almost being killed, and to want to avoid ever having that experience again. Maybe the 45th president is merely one of the thousands of ordinary Americans walking around alive in the horror of knowing someone tried to kill them with a gun. 

WEATHER REVIEWS

Bethany Beach, Delaware, August 12, 2024

★★★★ The early clouds were bright and furrowed. A squirrel clung to the rim of a trash can in the side alley. Down on the beach, the light was glaring and sharp. A few degrees of the horizon closest to the sun's direction were lost or nearly lost in blue-white haze; trying to follow a swimmer going that way, beyond the breaking waves, made the eyes water. The skin on the shins was taut with drying salt. Afternoon went back and forth between clouds and sun, with a fine breeze. The light grew golden, shining through red crape myrtle blossoms and glittering in the pine needles. After dinner a sharp white half-moon stood above swirling brushstrokes of pink. The moon grew whiter and the swirls grew pinker. The half-court basketball game, five on five, stretched on in the shadowless dusk. The angles of the plays grew hard to read and a cellular tower above the trees became more salient against the sky. Mosquitoes gathered as the game hung on game point, the players losing sight of the ball or the rim in the dazzling and inadequate courtside light. 

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.

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SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.

WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of sandwiches selected from Book of Recipes, by Daughters of the American Revolution, Genesee Chapter, published in 1922, and now in the Public Domain and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.

EGG SANDWICHES
Chop finely 4 hard boiled eggs, 1 cup celery. Season with salt and pepper and melted butter or dressing to bind it together.

MEAT SANDWICHES
Almost any kind of meat chopped fine, add chopped celery or cress as desired, season with salt; mustard; red, white, black, or sweet pepper (paprika); and add melted butter, cream, or dressing to bind it together to spread nicely.

SANDWICH FILLING
Mix 1 T. butter, 1/2 t. salt, 1/2 t. mustard, 1 T. (level) flour, a dash of cayenne, 1/4 lb. strong cheese, 1/2 cup milk. Stir all over a low blaze or hot water. Then add 2 eggs and 1 can of pimentoes chopped. This will keep a week on ice. — (Mrs. C. C. Goodes.)

SANDWICH FILLING
One can pimentoes put through food chopper, butter size of an egg, 1 T. mustard, 1/2 T. salt, pinch of red pepper, 1/2 cup Pet milk. When all is melted, add 3 eggs beaten in 1/2 cup Pet milk. Cook until smooth, then add pimentoes. — (Bertha B. Trembley.)

If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net. 

MARKETING DEP'T.

Supplies are really and truly running low of the second printing of 19 FOLK TALES, still available for gift-giving and personal perusal! Sit in the crushing heat with a breezy collection of stories, each of which is concise enough to read before the thunderstorms start.

LESS THAN 5 COPIES LEFT: HMM WEEKLY MINI-ZINE, Subject: GAME SHOW, Joe MacLeod’s account of his Total Experience of a Journey Into Television, expanded from the original published account found here at Hmm Daily. The special MINI ZINE features other viewpoints related to an appearance on, at, and inside the teevee game show Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, and is available for purchase at SHOPULA.

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