Yesterday I wrote a piece comparing Trump’s delusional lying with Charlie Sheen’s insanity during his notorious career-destroying adventure in publicly displaying his drug-induced personal meltdown.
In the poll offered with the story, the most popular reasons for this behavior were Trump’s dependency on the propaganda of Fox News, and daily tongue baths from the likes of Steve Bannon and KellyAnn Conway, shielding him from reality and facts. The most popular reason was that his behavior was part and parcel of a masterful con job on the American people. But after this past week, it is difficult to imagine anything about Trump as being masterful or supporting some other purpose than his own ego, stupidity and greed.
The influence of Fox News and sycophants on his fragile self-esteem and sustaining an impermeable bubble of fact-proof alternate reality really can not be overstated. Most of our political and business elites are clearly “out-of-touch” with the other 95+% of the country, with their limos, walled compounds, personal security, and of course, armies of “yes men” and eager flattering supplicants begging for table scraps, or some “halo effect” elevation of their own status. For a seriously disturbed and unchallenged flaming narcissist like Trump, the effect is orders of magnitude worse, and he is, in effect, drowning in his own hype.
Truly, all of our individual self-esteem and self of well-being is determined by the mirrors in which we see ourselves every day. If I pay most of my income on a one-bedroom San Francisco apartment, in a perverse way, I feel better about myself because I am not wandering the streets homeless, and have at least (temporarily) managed to earn enough to keep a roof over my head. If I were a top corporate executive in a corner office with a golden parachute, it’s hard to escape a certain smugness over all the “little people” laboring under me to create the wealth that I appropriate for myself and our investors.
Statistics show black and brown Americans report a higher level of happiness and personal satisfaction than whites. The theory is that is because they see the progress they have made over previous generations of their families and communities in attaining the things whites take for granted. The earlier generations are the mirror in which they affirm their self-esteem.
White people look back to when a single wage earner in a decent factory job could support a family, buy a house, put kids through college and have a relatively secure retirement. My father did that with an 8th grade education, and mine was a stay-at-home mom (until we were grown up and almost out of the nest). I have an Ivy League education, over 30 years in the tech industry, never bought a house or raised a kid, and no clue how I will afford retirement. That’s why other white men with a lot less than me, in places with a fraction of the cost of living of San Francisco, are killing themselves off at record rates with addictions, suicide and sheer hopelessness. And why they were so desperate they willfully blocked out reality and common sense to vote for Trump. What did they have to lose?
Conservative outlets like Brietbart love to characterize liberals as spoiled, fragile snowflakes who they believe can only exist in rarified sanctuaries like academia or the coddling coastal enclaves. But their Dear Orange Leader lives a separate existence so divorced from anything resembling fact-based reality, that his sycophants have to keep the TV channel on Fox to avoid the “fake news” that would surely undermine any chance of his remaining completely unhinged.
So I have appropriated Al Franken’s feckless Stuart Smalley character from Saturday Night Live’s Golden Era, with his chipper dependence on looking into his mirror and repeating his daily affirmation before going forth into a less than welcoming world for the meme accompanying this story. Maybe people under 40 are too young to remember this character unless they have binge-watched all the SNL seasons on Hulu.
Trump as Smalley can only maintain any semblance of self-esteem by only seeing himself through the mirror of Fox News propaganda. To see himself reflected anywhere else, like in the misery of those who desperately voted for him, the “blue collar billionaire,” in his utter failure to address their hopes and needs in his budget or healthcare promises, might start chipping away at his historic “Great Man” ideas about himself. Sad.