I’m getting tired of the chaos trope or meme or cliche, and I blame Jeb Bush. En route to losing the 2016 Republican nomination for president to Trump, Bush called his adversary a chaos candidate who would become a chaos president.
It stuck. And it is certainly true that Trump leaves a wake of chaos wherever he goes, but chaos is the result not the intention. He might as well be called the malice president or the lack of impulse control president, the hubris president or the incompetent autocrat.
He has been diagnosed by professionals as a narcissist, but that tends to slander a nice flower and a self-admiring Greek pretty boy. He is just a spoiled rich boy who never grew up and learned a lot of bad lessons from his mentors, chiefly Fred Trump and Roy Cohn, from which he never recovered.
It says something dire about the New York real estate and media businesses, and the American political and judicial systems that such a creature could con his way through life without ever facing anything worse than a fine.
Raised to be a killer not a loser, terrified of being the latter, too spoiled and lazy to do his homework, he survives by attacking the truth, creating ihis own alternative reality, trusting his gut rather than facts, brains or morality, and disparaging, belittling, suing or buying off anyone who disagrees or objects to the crimes, high and low, on which his life has been based.
This worked until he ventured into a world larger than the image-based faux luxury real estate business. His gut proved an unreliably guide to the more complicated hardheaded businesses of casinos, air travel and the like. It proved more useful in the fantasy-based businesses that rely on self-promotion not mastery of information. Thus, Reality TV and braggadocios ghost-written best-sellers were his sweet spot.
And then came politics. Not surprisingly, Trump thought his tool kit of big talk, minimal knowledge, constant attack and smear, lie and boast made him a natural for elective office. He already had a pre-conned base of fans who had bought his fictional persona and to whose ignorance, prejudice and grievances he could play.
He too had spent his life feeling dissed by better educated, smarter, richer, classier masters of the universe who regarded him as a creep from the wrong side of the tracks, the kind of guy that gave their city, country, prosperity and nefarious dealings a bad odor and the wrong kind of attention. He undoubtedly regarded the presidency not just as a fabulous money-making opportunity, but as a way to get even with his betters by making them bend a knee.
Unfortunately for this plan, he didn’t have the intellectual horsepower or political savvy needed to run the government he won control of. The chaos is a result of his refusal to do his homework or trust anyone else in a business thag requires give as well as take.
Trump as president has also been impeded by the refusal by people loyal to the country rather than to him to go along wth his impulsive, often criminal schemes. In response he demonized them as the deep state, slimy bureaucrats, scum, never Trumpers. In fact, many were the kind of people we used to call patriots when we still pledged allegiance to something other than the Kremlin’s favorite Celebrity Agent of Influence.
So, he was going to build a wall, make fabulous deals, chalk up big wins against China, Mexico, North Korea, NATO, and Democrats. Instead, he has gotten tax cuts for himself and his peers, pain for the poor, the middle class, farmers, dreamers and minorities while Korea has more nukes, China is outlasting him on trade, immigrants keep coming, Democrats won the midterms, NATO members mock him, cautious oligarchs who find chaos bad for business oppose him, Putin owns him, and he is being impeached.
He almost certainly won’t be removed from office by the Senate, may even win reelection, may possibly dodge all the court cases against him stacking up in a queue if his Justice Department and judges are corrupt enough, but if Trump knew any history he might know there are reasons why “uneasy is the head that wears a crown.”
A Praetorian Guard led by a McConnell, Barr, or John Roberts may offer protection only so long as it serves their interest to do so. Ask Caligula. And when the plebes get only the circuses and not the bread they were promised, they may get restive and decide a more reliable emperor suits their needs.
In our darker moments we may be inclined to sing dolefully, “Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. They paved government and put in a juggernaut.” But a backlash is always possible if the fickle folks in the cheap seats, like us, tire of the clown show and decide to change the channel.
Furthermore, Trump is 73, overweight and the son of a man who suffered from Alzheimer’s. His frequent inability to speak a coherent sentence, as when he says oranges instead of origins, may presage the future. The cold-eyed student of American history Henry Adams said “Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.”
Well, in this season of faith hope and charity, dream on. Greta Thunberg, not Trump, is Time’s Person of the Year. And even if we are not believers, we might try to embrace John Paul II’s often repeated motto — words that appear in ten Old Testament books, all four Gospels and Acts, “Be not afraid.”