This drives me bonkers. Just bonkers.
Trump is depicted again and again as the poster child for a child. A child behaving most badly, wildly, out of control.
He is not. He is not. Dammit. (Pardon my out of control adultish outburst.)
Trump is the poster child for some of the worst and most embarrassing qualities an adult can possess and exhibit.
This just-out New York magazine article describes Trump, according to his aides, as at turns "a 70-year-old child" and at others "a moody adolescent."
Ok, so Trump's churlish behavior knows no bounds. As the article puts it, for instance, his "TV time must be closely monitored -- because any news story that upsets his ego will trigger a temper tantrum followed by irrational demands that his indulgent, overwhelmed guardians will be helpless to refuse."
How in the hell does it follow from this that our President behaving like a child, much less an adolescent? You wanna get a picture of what your average adolescent is like, and how unTrumplike she is? Then check this out. And this podcast.
If only Trump and his minions would study and absorb and emulate the way of being in the world that this young people model, what a world ours would be.
Give me your run-of-the-mill moody adolescent any day over Trump's embarrassing antics. We should be so lucky that he resembled a moody adolescent, or child, or adult, but what he resembles is an extreme and morally rudderless narcissist.
And if you want to get a sense of the sophistication and maturity of, say, your every day 7-year-old, in comparison to our President and Commander in Chief, then check out this impromptu dialogue I had with one at my daughter's birthday party.
I know my children, both my 3- and 10-year-old daughters, would be embarrassed and horrified to no end to be compared to him. Sure, they have their temper tantrums -- I know I do -- but irrational demands are few and far between (I'm sure I make more, if we tally 'em up, than my kids do, yet still wouldn't be able to count them all on one hand, even if taking into account an entire year's worth -- though I do know adults, including one in my own extended family, who sadly emulate Trump's).
Yes, my three year old does like to watch 'Peppa Pig', and she doesn't like it when we set too strict limits. But she makes no irrational demands, and doesn't overwhelm her guardians, who don't give in, no matter how insistent my Cybele might be.
And my 10-year-old Cali? She just never got in the habit of watching TV. I'll be surprised if she watches even five hours of television a year -- a year.
So please, please, if the Trump Administration accomplishes little else of any good, please let it allow me to use his embarrassing antics as a platform me to do all I can and must to convince you to join me in putting to an end, once and for all, this inane adult habit of comparing the oafish, boorish, hideously narcissistic adultish behavior of Trump and his like to that a child. There is simply no comparison.
The fact that this 70-year-old leader of the free world, as the New York article notes, has "guardians" who don't have the chutzpah to even attempt to set limits on him, no matter how good it might be for his own well being, not to mention that of the country, also speaks volumes about them -- and is a surly and scary sign of what we'll be facing in the four years to come (please tell me he hasn't been given the correct codes for launching armageddon please tell me one of his guardians at least has seen to it that they have been altered so he can't possibly put his finger on anything nuclear).
I believe, as I assert relentlessly -- but with an army of evidence of all sorts to support my claim -- in The Philosophy of Childing that it will be up to our nation's children and youth to set an example of mature behavior if we're to emerge from these next years with even a semblance of decency and dignity.
To improve our odds in this regard, let's give our most youthful citizens far more entree, with far more rights to self-determination, in the civic sphere.
If we don't let childkind come into its own, front and center in this era, adult-induced blunders of the Trumpish kind might well be even worse than those in all the preceding generations and centuries. Might well be worse than all of them combined.
Our kids don't deserve that. Neither do I -- nor you -- for that matter.