For the last ten days I have been on a Teutonic tour of Berlin, Potsdam and Dresden trying to keep up with a tall, learned, demanding, Herr Professor of art history leading us on a forced march through historic buildings and museums without pause. He was not without humor, referring to gay, flute-playing, architecture-loving, battle-winning, city-designing, map-remaking autocrat Frederick the Great as Freddie G.
Following events back home from this vantage point lent them a certain Germanic patina. Two obvious things stood out. The first, a photo, caught one sign of our times perfectly. Small, passionate Greta Thunberg in schoolgirl braids at the UN is looking daggers at the huge zeppelin of President Trump as he waddles by.
I was a few miles from the cemetery where the Brothers Grimm are buried when I saw this shot, and it was impossible not to think: Look, It’s Little Green Doing Good and the Big Bad Wolf-in-Statesman’s Clothing. “Oh, Mr. President, what big lies you tell!” “The better to fool you with.” “What dim wits you have!” “The better to seem like a man of the people to my tweet followers.” “What bad friends you have!” “The better to stay in power.”
Which brings us to the second story: Impeachment. It too seemed laden with Germanic resonance when viewed from Berlin. Here was a wannabe despot feeling inferior to his fellow autocrats and constantly sucking up to them — Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-Un.
He wants to be like them in the worst way, literally. Ruling like a tyrant rather than a constitutional officer answerable to the people would be so liberating for him and so incarcerating for his enemies.
Instead, far from being free to bestride the earth like a colossus, he is beholden to the gun lobby, to FOX News and other enablers, to the fossil fuel donors and other men far richer than he who treat politicians as tools they can buy.
In 2012, for instance, 60% of all campaign dollars came from one half of one percent of the people. And they get what they pay for. Having sold climate denial to the rubes for decades, they exact tribute in the form of preferential tax and regulatory treatment from their boughten pols and the chance to staff their administrators and the courts with lackeys.
It all makes Trump feel less than omnipotent. And the way the leaders of other democratic governments treat him, as an equal, is even more demeaning. He could buy and sell most of them, yet they talk down to him and act as if he should play by the same rules they do.
No wonder he like the tyrants better. If they have enemies, they vanish. If they want to win an election, they steal it. And they understand that one hand washes the other. He promised Putin fair treatment and Putin helped him become president.
Unfortunately, he has now been caught on the phone trying to solicit dirt from Ukraine on Joe Biden and his penny ante son in exchange for delivering aid already voted by Congress. Even worse, disloyal employees of his own government seem to be the leakers, the spies, the turncoats that outed this scheme. Off with their heads.
So, Trump is looking less like Freddy G all the time, and more like Kaiser Bill, another vain, petulant, insecure, blustering, self-pitying ruler overshadowed by his betters, most of them blood relatives like the Russian Czar and the English King.
Still, the Kaiser showed them all that he was not to be trifled with by starting World War I. He was able to do so because he was surrounded by subordinates who would not think of blowing whistles, but who would click their heels and salute smartly no matter how stupid, corrupt, or insane the order. You know, like Trump’s Republican Party.
Obviously rather than saluting and saying “jawohl,” somebody should have stopped Kaiser Bill before he plunged the world into sorrow. Now is the hour for Americans to stop following Herr Drumpf, the grandson of a draft-dodging brothel keeper and the son of a tax-cheating, discriminatory housing magnate, to his own personal Gotterdammerung.
Rooting for a tinpot dictator wannabe who enlists the aid of foreign governments to steal elections and undermine American democracy isn’t patriotic, but the reverse. Following a tool of the fossil fuel industry who undermines efforts to slow climate change is suicidal. And following Trump down the rabbit hole of the conspiracy theories he peddles is to check one’s brains at the door. Listen to Melania. If you can’t ‘be best,’ at least try to be better than your leader.