Saturday, July 1, 2017

Maureen Dowd, "Cruella de Trump": A Self-Inflicted Wound



In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Cruella de Trump," Maureen Dowd writes of Donald Trump's recent tweet aimed at demeaning Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough:

"The 71-year-old president’s pathological inability to let go of slights; his strongman reflex to be the aggressor and bite back like a cornered animal, without regard for societal norms; his lack of self-awareness about the power he commands and the proportionality of his responses; his grotesque hunger for flattery and taste for Tony Soprano tactics; his Pravda partnership with David Pecker, the head honcho at The National Enquirer, which has been giving Trump the Il Duce treatment while sliming his political opponents, the 'Morning Joe' anchors and Megyn Kelly — these are all matters that should alarm men and women equally."

"[T]hese are all matters that should alarm men and women equally"? Excuse me, Maureen, Trump's narcissistic personality was on view for all to see for months prior to the US presidential election. The Republicans nominated him anyway. And the Democrats then gave Americans the choice between voting for a man frighteningly unqualified to sit in the Oval Office or for a woman and her nominal husband whose sense of entitlement and talent at equivocation were unpalatable to a broad cross-section of the electorate.

The alarm bell should have rung more than a year ago.

It's a little late to be railing against Trump, who is a self-inflicted wound, representing the depths to which the US has descended. As Pogo would have it, "We have met the enemy and he is us."