They Bought It
Grandma and Grandpa Jones just drove off Honest Donnie’s used car lot in a clanking rustbucket about to drop its transmission, and they’re smiling as wide as an Iowa cornfield because they think they’ve gotten themselves the best gol-durned deal ever, and to heck with all those know-it-all experts that tried to warn them!
Honest Donnie strikes again. Only this time, he’s duped half a nation instead of a group of investors or a contractor or two.
With his acceptance speech, and with Hillary Clinton’s concession, the normalization of Donald Trump, begun nearly a year and half ago, is complete. He is now official, he is kosher, he has been fully accepted. Maybe not by many Americans, but by the political and media machine.
Make no mistake: Trump is Trump. Always has been, always will be. Just because he’s been elected president doesn’t mean he is suddenly going to change his ways. Many of us want to believe that he will, and we saw his victory speech, with all of its trappings of conciliation and healing and graciousness, as the first concrete sign that that’s exactly what will happen: Donald Trump will become a normal human being who really cares about his country and its people, deep down, beneath the bluster and bullying and racism and all the other fireworks he tossed around during his campaign. He’s a patriot after all! we think. He really does care about America! Whew! What a relief! Those who voted for him, many of them anyway, share in this relief, because they voted for what they saw as a lesser of two evils, but an evil nonetheless. “I don’t like what he says, but Hillary’s even worse” was a common refrain in this election season. It’s a comfort to think that Trump might not be such a bad president after all.
Well, folks, guess what? Zebras don’t change their stripes, and neither do attention-craving billionaires. Donald Trump is not going to turn into a normal person now that he’s been voted into office. Let me repeat that: he is NOT going to change who he is. It’s the parable of the monkey and the scorpion. The scorpion stings the monkey even though it means they’ll both drown, because that’s what scorpions do. They sting. It’s who they are. Trump has spent his life in the service of himself, and there is no reason whatsoever to think that will change now. The Oval Office does not magically confer a conscience and a moral code and integrity. If those things weren’t there before the election, they aren’t going to be there afterwards.
No matter what mask Trump might put on, he is always Trump. He is a bigot, an authoritarian, a misogynist, and a narcissist. Above all, though, he is a con man. And like all good con men, he knows what to say, when to say it, and to whom it should be said. He has proven himself a master of the long game in this election, and a nation of hundreds of millions has been his mark. Now, we will all pay. Buyer’s remorse will take longer to set in for some than others, and those who were most taken in by Honest Donnie will take the longest to figure out they’ve been played. But sooner or later 11/8/16 will become known as the day America bought the big lie. Or, to quote a bygone president who had morals and integrity long before his own ascendancy to the world’s most powerful office, Election Day 2016 will become “a day which will live in infamy.”