Ashok Dhillon
Oct 21, 20168 min
In the third and final debate of the Presidential nominees, Donald Trump took us down the rabbit hole. The strange thing about dealing with Trump’s particular brand of insanity (heavy sociopathic characteristics) is, that our supposed sanity (the average human’s mundane ‘normal’ World) has no real relevance. Normal rules of conduct and thought pattern don’t apply, Trump has an abnormal and bizarre personality that gets repeatedly exposed in the Presidential candidate’s debates due to the hour and a half of pressure and intense scrutiny. Therefore, this time we will focus primarily (solely) on Trump’s world in the debate, because Hillary Clinton was predictably prepared, professionally proficient, and by and large systematically dismantled Trump.
Trump creates and lives in his own ‘TRUMP’ world, which like his developments are bombastic; where garish is good, in your face, big and domineering even better, and all of that put together - perfect.
In his world, facts don’t matter, regardless of how many times they are trotted out and put in front of him; his own pronouncements, on record, can be repeatedly and vehemently denied by him, regardless of being on record; his contradictions, some in the same sentence, are baffling to us regular beings; and, there are in his code of human conduct simply no rules, except what he makes up along the way.
His business and political acumen are instinctively good, to a point, as he is arguably successful in both now, but he is certainly not the best, as in both fields there are many who are far better, but his strong sense of survival, by any means possible, and winning and dominance, at all costs, gives him the dangerous pattern of behaviour that shocks and repulses the majority of normal people, in and outside the debates, and makes him unfit to be President. And that pattern of behaviour was on display once again in the later part of this last debate.
That is why, when we watch and listen to Trump, we cannot believe we are hearing the things that he is saying, because we expect him to behave and speak in the manner we expect regular people to, even the ones more successful than him (and thankfully there are plenty of those, or he would be truly insufferable), but we put expectations on him that he simply cannot meet, given his psychological makeup. He is not ‘regular’ or ‘normal’; he is a psychological aberration, and a very unpalatable one to most of us in the majority. But to his core group of supporters, who perhaps in some minor, or perhaps major way share his tendencies, his disturbing, at times shocking utterances, are manna from heaven.
To those that attend his popular rallies and hear him mercilessly insult Clinton and berate the ‘establishment’, his most outrageous pronouncements are exactly what they look for to transport them into the same paranoid alternate universe (heaven) that he creates and lives in, where the opponents and system are corrupt, the elections rigged (except when he wins) but he is always honest, successful, always the better informed, and will somehow always lift them (his supporters) into an American version of utopian Shangri La, where jobs will come flooding back in, in spite of global cost differentials, and everyone will be rich (because he will look after them all, even the little people). Even though, we know he has a long history and record, of wilfully stiffing small contractors, vulnerable foreign labour, the banks, the government, and investors in some of his failed endeavours.
In his narcissistic visions, everything will function morally, flawlessly and successfully under him, in spite of his uncontrollable tendency to lie impetuously, his many failed marriages, bankruptcies, lawsuits, personalities and Republican Party conflicts. And in the end, because he says so, magically, America will be “Great Again”, even though most economic experts have panned his economic policies as inherently unsound, his tax proposals flawed, and his foreign policies dangerous. Even the Mexican President specifically reiterated a number of times after Trump’s visit, that Mexico has absolutely no intention of paying for “the Wall”.
Nevertheless, he is going to do it all ‘bigly’, once he is the President of the United States.
That was about the first forty minutes of the debate, and then reality kicked in and a semi-sober, semi-Presidential Trump, cracked, shed the veneer, and inevitably reverted back to his real self again, the Trump version of Mr. Hyde, which went on to recklessly destroy the carefully nursed ‘fit to be President’ image of the first forty or so minutes. Trump cannot stay ‘Presidential’ for more than a few minutes at a stretch, at best.
The real Mr. Trump, upon emerging, shocked most Americans by refusing to say that he would accept the results of this election if he were to lose, considering his increasingly insistent message that the election is rigged.
The next day he doubled down and said at one of his rallies that he would accept the results of the election – only if he wins – to the absolute delight of his core supporters, and the added shock to the rest of America. No sane and responsible person running for the Office of the President of the United States is supposed to deny the very legitimacy of the democratic system that is trying to elect them. But, Trump is no normal sane person, and he really doesn’t give a hoot about the democratic process or the system, as long as he wins by any means. By being purposefully controversial and defiant of majority’s expectations, Trump captures all the attention, and revels in the fire storm he ignites. Trump will win greater fame and brand recognition with contrived controversy, even if loses the election. And that is the real game, to win for himself greater fame and brand recognition, even at the cost of a dangerously inflamed core base, and a further politically divided incensed country. All the talk of rigged systems is in preparation to lose this election.
Trump has been long under fire for his open disrespect and hostility towards women, and the vile remarks he made on a video tape in 2005, which he brushed off as ‘locker room talk’. After insisting he respects women throughout the debate, and that all accusations by a number of women who have come forward subsequent to the tape’s release, to bear witness that he did indeed molest them and that they were victims of his unwanted physical advances, Donald cracked under the pressure that had been systematically ratcheted up by Hillary in the debate, and called her “a nasty woman”. In that one short phrase he undermined and disproved his whole long defence, against accusations of disrespect and abuse by women.
But then that is Trump, a rather immature adult/child overly sensitive to criticism, with the thinnest of skins, who cannot control himself from lashing out, even if the stakes are at their highest, and the price too high for the indulgence of his dangerous impulses. He must have his fix.
Watching Trump through the election campaign and then through the debates, listening to his statements, impromptu utterances, his crass at times shocking insults and comments, and his unrealistic and unsound economic, foreign and immigration policies (in context of the current, complex and fundamentally changed world), one is convinced of his glaring unsuitability to be President of the United States, but one is also made painfully aware of the shallowness, fundamental crassness and self-centeredness of the man himself.
His actions and words are always calculated to either feed his insatiable ego, even at the cost of public damage (he must get his fix of instant revenge gratification), and/or are designed to manipulate his listeners regardless of the insincerity of his motives. He really doesn’t care about Americans or America, he has spent a life time exploiting the system, and people, to enrich himself, and admitted it.
He fundamentally disrespects women and proven it time and again.
He himself has taken advantage of China’s and other countries’ cheaper labor, for goods and services in his businesses, and shamelessly he makes shutting countries like China out of the American market (as it were really that simple) the cornerstone of his appeal to economically hard pressed Americans.
He allegedly defrauded students in his failed Trump University initiative, and instead of making them rich he impoverished them, and he says he will fix America’s broken education system. The lawsuits for the loss of fees without any knowledge or training having been rendered to the students, emanating from the demise of the University initiative, goaded Trump to cement his reputations as a bigot and a racist, by criticizing the American born Judge (of Mexican parentage) as unfit to judge his case fairly.
He was proud to not pay Federal Taxes for years, calling himself ‘smart’, yet he promises to rebuild the country’s infrastructure, which takes lots of tax money, and instead of raising taxes to do all that he wants to do, he wants to lower the taxes ‘bigly’ and bring the debt down at the same time by growing the economy, when his economic policies, as per the experts, are flawed.
He wants to grow the economy by tearing up what he calls ‘the worst Trade Agreements in history’, as if that was true and as if other countries have no say or leverage in the matter.
How many Americans will love him when costs of goods, from electronics, to food, to cars, to clothes, to medical services, to back office operations, rise astronomically on high American wages instead of Mexican, Chinese, Indian and Bangladeshi low wages.
He says he will renegotiate trade agreements by threatening to shut out countries from the American markets, but the American markets need cheaper goods and services to keep cost of living down for average Americans, and to keep American corporations competitive in international markets. The simple statements he makes on the election trail and in the debates, as to how he will fix all of America’s economic ills, are naïve at best and dangerous at worst. Trump relies on the lack of knowledge and the naivety of his listeners to make blanket statements that are preposterously simple minded and unworkable.
Besides just to keep solvent, America is ‘bigly’ dependent on the goodwill of its creditors. Among other countries, China and Japan are the biggest ones to lend America huge amounts of cash to keep functioning. The day they and others don’t lend America the money it needs just to keep going, that day America is insolvent. And in spite of his personal experience of putting his failed companies into bankruptcies (six of them), Trump cannot declare America bankrupt like his insolvent businesses, it is just not possible as it will bring down the entire global financial and economic system. It took everything the American and the Global governments and their Central Banker’s had, to prevent that from happening in 2008, thanks to another bunch of absurdly cocky, idiotic and dangerous Republicans in the US administration, George Bush II and company.
This rabbit hole that Donald Trump is taking America down is fundamentally destructive. It is politically and socially toxic, encouraging hatred and additional division in an already dangerously divided country. It is policy-wise unsound, lacking basic understanding of the interlocking dependence of all countries in the World today, especially the biggest economies. It is economically dangerous, financially undoable and potentially globally destabilizing. It will turn Americans against each other even more so, and America against the World.
It will be a vision of a mad power hungry manipulative man just needing to brand the most powerful nation on earth with the logo - TRUMP. Everyone else will get stiffed and left holding the bill.
After Trump’s performance at the last debate, and his mad hatter antics the day after, thankfully, the likelihood of that vision materializing is unlikely.