The Emperor of Chaos
For a long time, like many people today, I have been talking about Donald Trump. As far as the public written record goes my offerings and suggested theories about the nature of the man are here for the world to see from mid-2018, but for me it really goes all the way back to the early 1990s, my brutal collegiate, English/Political Science major’s know-it-all criticism of a transparently plastic man (the sort of pun I used to attempt back then too.) But my psychological profile stories have never been personal, not about him anyway. I have only hoped to reflect an empathetic version of a thoroughly miserable man’s personality and motivations.
Much of my generation was introduced in childhood to this character, “The Donald,” a person equally at home selling million dollar apartments as he was messing up one of his cheaper suits, body slamming a smaller professional wrestler. He was a gleaming figure, handsome, a certain negative charm that kept him in focus; every time the light hit him on television there was a gleam of gold. Certainly this was intentional, as we have learned in the uncontrolled 24-hour media spotlight of the present tense. And yet there he remained, a gossipy megalomaniac who would do anything for a laugh.
I remember reading his book, The Art of the Deal, the summer after I graduated from high school. My father recommended it, annoyed by the titular intellectualism of my declared programs of study. He told me that reading the book would clear my head and teach me that, like himself, the business world was the only way to make money in America. I had shrugged, and when I finished the book–I remember this exactly–I said to myself out loud, “What a fucking asshole,” directing this remark at both Donald Trump and my blood-related proselytizer. After that I put the garbage in a milk crate and brought it over to my favorite used bookstore, unloading some of the terrible shit I’d read for store credit, enough to finish my collection of everything by Dostoevsky and Philip K. Dick.
Later, as Trump seethed through his 1990s failures and frequent missteps, publicly suing everyone for hurting his feelings, the man become a parody of himself, a cartoon of the image he’d spent so long promoting. It took a short time before he decided he would be the true asshole that he’d always been behind closed doors, and put on public display the great joy he got from firing people and fucking with their lives and well-being. Networks put this on TV, the collapse of reality with the rush of cheap products called “reality TV.”
The Apprentice was very popular, making tabloid figures out of the cast, the second and third tier celebrities appearing with hopes of reviving their sagging careers. Some of these vaguely familiar names had once had leading roles in terrible movies; it made stars of a creepy, grotesque family. Look at the Trumps–I mean seriously look at the way they expressed themselves on TV, this soap opera fantasy, exaggerations of the soullessness of themselves. One has to believe that reality is far worse, much more perverse than the sanitized hero worship presented for public consumption.
This man, this creature who had been so awful to so many people for so long; this terrible boss; this angry, paranoid man, probably correct in some of his suspicions, the cutthroat world he thrived within still providing the mutual greed of corporate enemies. He is now convinced that everything going against him, ever, has all been some sort of secret plot. A deep state. The gang of thugs. Cults formed to challenge him and him alone. He condemns crazy opposition figures who don’t understand how much of a genius Donald Trump has tried convincing everyone he is and always was. If only everyone listened to him. He could show you the way. If you disagree with me “You’re fired,” If you grovel then you can stay.
Think about the temerity of such a man, about his ability to manipulate his own misunderstanding of everything besides his momentary wanton lust. He can just call someone a name, an elementary school yard bully, inventing silly slurs and then repeating them over and over again until all of them lose credibility. Donald Trump, if nothing else, is a master of killjoy cynicism.
Think about a person in charge who constantly tells you.your work is shit and that at any time you could be fired. Think about a man like this running a business called Trump Nation, a terrible boss. He is a terrible boss.
Donald Trump is a terrible, terrible boss.
Think about all those proud and dignified people who quit. The several who were fired (all those who quit were fired after the fact to give the boss a perception of who was really in charge.) Think about the turnover and the debt. People get fired. They write books. They get sued. They go on TV. They are condemned, condemned. Just another partisan voice in the media.
Think about the excuses, all those excuses, deflecting responsibility for everything going wrong and then retaking the credit when other people’s hard work turn things around.
He goes blabbermouth. He proves he can’t understand. He exposes that to him everything is a casino game. He plays with people’s lives. He loses far more often than he wins.
President Donald J. Trump is.the emperor of chaos, more of a gremlin than a gargoyle, someone standing by and watching the results of his bet, snorting when he wins and calling the dealer a cheat when he doesn’t. He gets angry when he loses. He takes it out on everybody else.
The Emperor of Chaos. Here is a title for a near future history. Here is a judgment of a soft, thin-skinned, hyper-emotional man (snowflake?) pretending to be strong and confident. The Emperor of Chaos is a fearful, cowering slave to the outside world’s perception of himself. He cannot stand if someone disapproves. He cannot even laugh them off. He can’t take it. He is so bruised inside, no doubt treated like an imbecile by his hateful father, so psychologically destroyed before he ever brought himself to our attention that we have been given front row seats to the collapse into hysteria of a person with no belief in anything. And so he destroys. He destroys. It is the only thing which gives him pleasure, the emotional ruination of other people, setting them to war with each other like he no doubt did with his toy soldiers as a child. He watches the unraveling world on TV, taking credit for starting it, then refusing responsibility for the consequences. It has happened over and over and over again, all the way back to the day he kicked a kid in the face in a playpen, or, as he claims, punched a teacher when he was a child, saying that everything is somebody else’s fault. “They started it!” “I’m a counter puncher!” “I put people in their place!” “I am always right.”
He is a tragic figure, Donald Trump, a sad, lonely man who just wants people to love him. Or at least notice him. Hatred–true hatred–is not so very different, strong emotions keeping minds thinking only of him. He is a superstar, the most famous man in the world, talked about and praised or derided everyplace, everywhere in the world. He is the result of what a man will do when incapable of loving or caring about anything outside his unhappiness, a desperate, helpless individual who wants to make the world as miserable as he is to justify his value as a human being.
Fuck you Dr. Freud.
