Sympathy for The Donald Trump

Even undeniable pieces of crap have a right to surprise when friend becomes enemy.

When every day is night of the long knives...

It was hilarious. In a way.

“Come on…BITCH!”

I had been standing at the rear of a car, loading in gear from a show that had just been played in Portland, Maine. OXBOW, in its acoustic duo form, meant the load in (and out) was easy. But we had played, sold a bunch of merch and I was loading our scant gear into the car rear. But something had caught my ear.

It was the same night that the New York Yankees had beaten the Boston Red Sox by some incredible score of like 19-1. Which means, for the uninitiated, that New England was lit. Never more so than outside the club where people who had just seen us play were milling about in the Portland chill and had caught the attention of two upset super fans.

For whatever reason these two — mark them as mid-20s chowds — had laid into the crowd in a way that, as it happened, was amusing the fuck out of me. Confrontational but somewhat conscious of the ridiculousness of the effort, their goading and baiting, amused me. I mean for a New Yorker like me it was just so much street theater.

“What the FUCK are YOU laughing at?!”

It was getting rich now, it sounded like, and I looked around to see what unlucky, reverse heckler was caught up in Act Two, only to see the entire assemblage look to me. This was what it took for me to realize that the next line reading was mine.

“What? ME?”

[F]ear? This meant that he had woefully miscalculated, knew that he had miscalculated and was loathe to find out what he had fucked around for.

I looked at the main instigator, baseball hat on backward, shades mounted on top of those.

“Yeah, YOU!”

I laughed, “out of all of the people here you can’t really believe it’s best to do this with ME, can you?”

He threw an old beer can at me. “Yo, fuck you, yo!”

“I think you should stop before you get hurt. And I’m not talking about feelings.”

He spit at me, and moved closer now. Close enough that it was time to explain a few things. “If you want to fight me,” I said using a line that had been used on me once to great effect. “All you have to do is one thing…”

He waited.

“…You say one more word to me. Just one more word. And we’ll be fighting.”

It was the easiest thing in the world to just say nothing, the yellow road I chose when last presented with the same option. But I knew/suspected he wouldn’t be able to help himself.

“Come on…BITCH!”

So I stepped up on the curb. Funny thing about Maine curbs: because of the snow they tend to be very high. Eight inches at least. Or at least the one I stepped up on was. So when I did, the young Prince Valiant was faced with someone eight inches taller than he had first talked shit to.

The entire time I remain amused but when I saw his face, top curbside, it was a mix of fear and trepidation and for the first time I got angry. Really angry. And the cause of anger was his lack of commitment. When faced with a man who was eight inches taller than he had planned I had hoped for renewed defiance in the face of the coming beating.

But fear? This meant that he had woefully miscalculated, knew that he had miscalculated and was loath to find out what he had fucked around for. Meaning? He had had an accident and while I personally don’t mind being beaten by men of greater, though misplaced, conviction, I detest the idea that I would be dismasted by accident. And I hated his now very evident fear.

Which brings me to my hate-hate relationship with Donald Trump. Unlike the rest of America for whom he is a relatively new phenomenon, native New Yorkers have been watching him burping his way across the landscape, arriving unbidden in every aspect of public life for decades in his refusal to be ignored.

[W]hat of the scintilla of sadness we feel for the New York boy who sowed the wind, reaped the whirlwind, and now stands friendless and alone, but for the most lunatic of fringes?

Native New Yorkers have also, in our insanely, possibly off-kilter over-appreciation for our city, realized that New York would never go national despite having a handful of personages vibe like they might. John V. Lindsay had Kennedy all over him. Giuliani after 9/11 but before Borat pranking, the same. Koch was smart enough to know America would never be ready for a Jewish “confirmed bachelor” though he was covered in “IT” factor, that element that just makes us LOOK.

So it was a curious mix of confusion and begrudging admiration that our local blowhard had a national profile. With a shrug and a head shake, we’d whisper, or maybe shout, “can you fucking believe this guy?!?!”

This guy: the racist piece of crap that wouldn’t let Black folks live in his buildings. Or that insisted on the death penalty for the Black teens caught up in the Central Park Rape Trial, even after they were exonerated with DNA evidence and a confession. That cheated on his wives, and disguised his voice in phone calls trying to wheedle his way into the news cycle. That used bone spurs to beat a firm pathway out of serving in Vietnam.

He was almost a caricature of a New Yorker, an Archie Bunker with better hair, and America bought it. And President he became.

Which is just fine (not really, but whatever).

However, much like the recently departed watermelon smashing comedian Gallagher, not much about his act has changed since January 6th’s last stand, his shark jumping moment, after which not much he did would ever have the same impact. All of which is fine as it stands and part of the historical record. Less my concern here than what happened then.

The Great Distancing is what happened. Made evident most recently with the midterms when and where it became clear that Americans were heading for the exits on the whole Trump Show. Even while the press maintains the fiction, driven by commentary from the likes of Dave Chappelle that there’s still this Angry White contingent of folks willing to back his every play, that’s not the case. And that’s not me guessing, that’s me reading the results.

Like Caesar, former friends are revealing themselves to be present enemies, born aloft by the shifting tides of time and tastes, and Trump is left Thanksgiving-ing with the unbalanced YE and Holocaust Denier Nick Fuentes. And insult on top of injury, this was also when YE asked The Donald to be his running mate for a 2024 Presidential bid.

It’s almost a tear jerker. Almost if we weren’t laughing so hard. But where the laughter stops: when we consider where, exactly, are his friends now?

It seems apparently super easy to stand with winners: Hitler in 1934, Mussolini in his “March” on Rome (he actually drove), Gaddafi from 1979 to 2011 when he was dispatched with a knife up the ass and his immortal last words, “what have I ever done to YOU?”

But who stands with them when the chips are down (and asses are full of knives)?

“Satan help us all if it was just that easy.” The speaker was Anton LaVey from the Church of Satan and it capped his commentary on why no one should expect a death bed confession/conversion from him. Yes, we are justified by faith alone (and not works) but even LaVey knew, there was no easy way out.

Or more specifically Brad Pitt’s great speech in the Tarantino helmed flick Inglorious Basterds. “After the war ends you can take that uniform off. But I’m going to give you something you can’t take off.”

So the fact that Trump supporters both low and high would be able to just sink back into the underbrush reminds me of meeting modern day Germans who claim that their grandparents were all “protesters”. Should old Nazis get off that easily?

[I]t’s totally sexy when you think your date’s there for you, and very possibly totally dispiriting to discover that there were 100 you’s. All of whom are fungible and now no longer invisible.

And maybe more specifically, what of the scintilla of sadness we feel for the New York boy who sowed the wind, reaped the whirlwind, and now stands friendless and alone, but for the most lunatic of fringes? He remains…unchanged. He was a piece of shit in 1978. He’s a piece of shit today.

That is to say: he is an unchanged piece of shit.

And while a nation of people wonder how we all could have been so wrong, the silence is deafening from those who thought he was so right. A state of affairs that seem to leave him, justifiably, confused.

There are an easy half dozen reasons why, partly: January 6th was nothing if not his Bay of Pigs. His 2020 rearward looking offense is wearisome. And, like Hitler, he’s learned no lessons about fighting multi-front battles. But all of this was easily predictable if anyone had bothered to ask any New Yorker they knew.

That is, what’s most surprising about Trump is how unsurprising he’s been.

So: “Come on…BITCH!” The Maine-iac looked to the crowd for some support. I was the only Black guy there and maybe his animal brain saw this as an advantage, not realizing these people had all just seen me play a show that they had paid for.

But while I was piecing him up in a teachable moment to end all teachable moments, with a jab, a right cross, a hook and a knee for his troubles on the way down, I felt a little sorry for him too. I mean it’s totally sexy when you think your date’s there for you, and very possibly totally dispiriting to discover that there were 100 you’s. All of whom are fungible and now no longer invisible.

But Trump? Well, I guess the mistake was and remains his: he was always alone, the roar of the crowd notwithstanding, because alone allowed him to extol the complete virtues of the only one he ever cared about and who, for a moment in time, he assumed we did too…him.

When you assume though, as Professor Stefanacci once said to me, “you make an ASS out of U and ME.” Or at the very least him who expected anything different. But, you know, 2024 is right around the corner.

There may be hope for the TRUMP-YE ticket yet.