Don’t call me a warrior. I served, but I’m not a goddamn warrior. Neither are all the loudmouths that your warrior talk is for. Yeah, I know the “warrior†stuff is for the Trump cult and not the janitors, nurses, doctors, orderlies, cashiers, stock clerks, drivers, and others who expose themselves every day to the virus. Nor are you talking about the people hunkered down in their living rooms or basements turning out face masks to give to people. Or the thousands who are volunteering at food banks. Nah, you aim your warrior-talk at the deluded cultists who truly believe themselves to be warriors – the Dwight Schrutes of America and yourself.
I woke up in a bad bad bad mood today. It is a continuation of yesterday’s downward dive. Nothing terribly new happened, just the everyday terrible: The continued Russia cover, new moves to cover up your COVID failure but denying us information, your Senate cronies screwing small biz for big, and so on. It’s the same as yesterday, the same as the day before, and, if it wasn’t for this virus, the same as the last three and half years.
As someone who has half-followed you since Spy magazine started goofing on you in the 1980s, I know that you’ve always been an asshole, a creep and a clown. But never did I or anyone else think you’d wind up as president. Even when you flirted with it, we thought it was you playing to the press. Hell, when you entered the 2016 GOP primaries, we thought it was just another Trump PR scam. So, did the press, which is why you got a free pass for so long. The people who held onto the Hollywood Access tapes for so long slept on them because they thought that you were a joke. No one thought you would be president, including you! And, if not for the fluke of our Electoral College and big assists by Russia, WikiLeaks, and James Comey, you would still be Reality TV’s favorite show-businessman.
I’m not going to pile on the press for being slow to dig in, but I will punch about the mainstream media’s continued lack of immediacy and blind devotion to a distorted version of objectivity, one in which you must say bad things about “both sides” and equate magical thinking and miracle cures with rational analysis and science. In a sane world, the truly objective headline would read, “President Trades His Responsibility to the Country for Wealth and Power” or “LIES!”
This is not a 50/50 America. No way that 50% of the country loves you enough to sacrifice their lives for you reelection. No way that 50% of the country is willing to die at work to save your economy. No way that 50% of this country believes all the horseshit that you and the GOP are pushing. No way 50% of America’s brains are so jellied and our memories so blind that we devote ourselves to your reality. We know that your truth is not objectively true. Yet, we are presented with your words as something as valuable as those of me.
Really, in a world where competence and compassion reign, where meritocracy has meaning, and where hard work pays off, I’d have your megaphone and you’d be some schmoe pounding keys on social media. And, if I had the influence that you do, we would not be in the place we are now. Sure, there would be a virus but the richest, most scientifically advanced country in the history of the world would actually perform at a level far above Belarus. But, here we are.
Perhaps, I need to take my words about a 50/50 America to heart. True that 75% – 80% of Americans think that your “Open Our Country” ploy is bullshit. You demand a blood sacrifice and we are not listening. Yeah, we will sacrifice stimulation, money and even our sanity doing this shelter-in-place but we will not die for you.
Don, you are neither smart nor sly. Your motives for suppressing information about the virus, for downplaying and disputing the death toll, and for projecting blame away from you is obvious. You aren’t trying to convince us of anything. You are trying to confuse. And, admittedly, it is one thing you haven’t failed at, probably because you are easily confused yourself.
Your mind is so speed-scattered that you can’t focus. You chase the high so intensely that any information projected at you is lucky to graze your brain. One day you slowly but correctly pronounce Hydroxychloroquine. The next day and the next you are able to pronounce the word. Come Thursday, though you’ve said “Hydroxychloroquine” a hundred times, you stumble on the first syllable and slur the rest of the word out. And it happens again and again. It’s worse than Mary Poppins mangling “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” Ms Poppins might be a super-nanny but she is not a self-proclaimed “stable genius” who “doctors say” is a “natural” at medicine and science. Mary is also a fictional character and you “run” the United States…and you are confused.
As you do with all your short-comings and responsibilities, you try to make others own your confusion. It works for you in three ways. It “proves” to you that “everyone” is as damaged as you are. It “proves” that you are better than we are because you “confused” us so you are the winner and we are the losers. And, it keeps us wondering what the fuck is going on and what in the hell will happen next.
And, sure, at least 60% of Americans do not trust you, but that is fine by you if you can get them so confused that we trust no one. And even better if the press that you oh so need frames this country as a 50/50 affair. Not only do we stop trusting those who are playing it straight (some politicians, governors, scientists, experts, etc.) but we refuse to trust the press.
I’d say that this is genius strategy, but you are too scattered and dull to concoct such a deceit. Plus, this confusion thing is just another version of divide and conquer. Mis- and disinformation has been used to confuse and control for centuries.
You’ve used sowing-confusion in your personal and PR life all your life. God knows how many times you tried to gaslight your wives. “Oh no, Melania, that picture of me with that porn star? She asked to take it with me, not the other way around. No, I’m not smiling, that is a grimace. She is the one that is smiling. Can’t you see that straight line of her lips, the deadened look in her eyes, that’s the way women smile around me. I can’t help it if I am so attractive to them. They just come up and their energy says ‘Grab me by the pussy’ and I have to. I mean, when a kid asks Tom Brady for an autograph, Tom – who is close personal friends with me – gives an autograph. He doesn’t walk away. You tell me what I should do.”
From cad to victim, from pussy grabbing to autograph-signing, the subversion of our reality for the substitution of your own, that is the way this works. Go figure, every day of your adult life you have been told YES. You’ve constructed your existence around hearing YES. You lived most of your life in a genuine tower. Mar A Lago might as well have a moat. The Art of a Deal was a fictional island. The Apprentice was a self-contained, self-referential world. Your rallies are you and a bunch of boys and girls in a plastic bubble. And now you’ve carved out your world at the White House. Unfortunately, because it is the White House your world is now our world, and your world sucks.
Yesterday was a bad day because the news sucked, people I admired died, and I know that things will get worse. All that I can handle, but not in your world. In your world, all of life gets really fucking heavy. Your world is confused, paranoid, and mean. Your world lacks competence and compassion. Your world is so not for me that I am going to destroy your world.
You see, you cannot confuse me. You cannot gaslight me. You cannot flatter me by calling me a “warrior.” I know your game. It is not stable and it is not genius. It is pathetic and childish and idiotic. It is also a loser. You will get louder and louder but that means nothing. Anyone can turn up the volumes, especially when your stack of amps is bigger than anyone else’s. Noise annoys, but it doesn’t destroy, not when that noise is a cover for weakness.
I woke up today in a bad mood and I will throw it off. I am sure that there will be more mornings like this and I’ll deal with them. And when you get loud, I’ll allow you your delusion, not fall into confusion, and fight for your destruction. And that is all I have to say to you.
Sincerely,
Scott Soriano
Image at top: Gabriël Metsu The Letter-Writer Surprised (1662)