The Three Faces of Trump

[applegrove]

The Three Faces of Trump

By David Denby at the New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-three-faces-of-trump

"SNIP...............


Implacable Resolution: The increasingly familiar chin-up, narrow-eyed Mussolini frown. When Trump listens to a hostile question, his lips are closed, his head squares up to a solid block of orange clay, his corn-silk hair surges resolutely forward and backward at the same time. Expressionless, he nods as the hostile sentence is delivered. By evoking Mussolini’s thrusting chin, I don’t mean to imply that Trump is eager to become a military dictator. He isn’t. Donald Trump is something classically American, an unwavering what’s-in-it-for-me capitalist who likes to crush other people. Yet Mussolini and Trump share something: They appeal to an appreciation, even love, of overwhelming ego strength and extreme machismo, however crass in expression—in fact, the crasser and more preposterous the better (shame doesn’t exist for some public men). Those who are drawn to such strength nestle under it. The hero releases his aggression on the world, the aggression that others would be punished for; his ability to get away with belligerence, insults, lies, and threats makes it easier for his audience to accept caution and silence for themselves. He has triumphed for them, and that’s more than enough.

Trump’s emotional appeal is similar to that of gangsters everywhere, who act out our most violent and anarchic impulses. In a variant interpretation, Elspeth Reeve, at The New Republic, compared Trump not to a gangster but to the “heel” in pro-wrestling matches—the bad guy whose boasts and offensive behavior and barbarian facial hair are part of a ritual that audiences love. But that isn’t quite right. Professional wrestling is scripted, and Trump is spontaneous and improvisatory. In wrestling, the bad guy always loses, and Trump always wins. He is impervious and unremitting. If he says something stupid, he denies he said it—for instance, his suggestion that Megyn Kelly’s tough questions in the recent Fox-hosted Republican debate were produced by menstruation. Trump went to Wharton, he built a great business, he’s intelligent, so how could he have said it? He didn’t say it. His audience loves him not in spite of such “gaffes” as slamming John McCain’s war record; they love him because he says such things. The senselessness of the McCain attack was essential to its popularity. Trump’s speeches and press conferences are a free-association shambles, his “ideas” a series of boasts. When asked, on Tuesday, how he would bring jobs back from China, he talked about buying a hotel in Miami. For his audience, the only thing that matters is that he asserts himself. Reasoning and consistency are élitist weaknesses.

Beneath Contempt. His mouth drops down and forms a slightly elongated oval, like a stretched Cheerio. The oval is a prelude to a taunt or a threat. When Kelly asked Trump about his derogatory comments on women, he responded, “What I say is what I say. And honestly, Megyn, if you don’t like it, I’m sorry. I’ve been very nice to you, although I could probably maybe not be, based on the way you have treated me. But I wouldn’t do that.” But he would do it, and continued to do it. Donald Trump has made a shrewd estimate of the distaste, in a part of the Republican base, for virtue or high-mindedness or public spiritedness of any sort—what he dismisses as “political correctness.” Such sentiments are for “losers” who don’t understand that winning is the only thing; they are “stupid.” Obama’s mild reasonableness is particularly enraging to members of the Republican base because they suspect the President is outclassing them. Trump releases them from that fear.

You-gotta-be-kidding-me. A wide smile, eyes often closed, palms outstretched. In such moments, Trump presents himself as capitalist man, the spirit of rational calculation. Only an idiot could fail to see that he’s right. When asked by Bret Baier, in the debate, about his past support for Hilary Clinton, Trump responded, “I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people, before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me.” So his own behavior is part of a corrupt system. The important point for him is not the degradation of representative democracy, but only that Trump gets what he wants. Having won, he can laugh at his own cynicism.



...............SNIP"

[hedda_foil]

1. Thanks, applegrove. This guy really nails the Trump personality. nt.

[Marie Marie]

2. Oh Thank God there were no pictures

One face is enough.

However, Mr. Denby's description of Trump's facial expressions is great.