Are They Really Special?

We need not use the word megalomania when speaking of The Rump. It’s a given. Little Donald defines the word.

He is far from being the only one suffering from that malady. Some actually believe they are special. However, most are desperate souls that, deep down, know it isn’t true but have to keep saying it, to themselves and others, because of their dread of being less than everyone else.

The latter are people who see only two possibilities: special or worthless. Given the passion, desperation and constancy of The Rump’s protestations, he seems definitely to be a member of that group.

I promise to get to the more interesting part of today’s sermon, but first I need to resort to that old public speakers’ trick. So, let’s start off with a joke, known to most of you as Donald Trump.

Few people go around shouting, “I’m smart.” The smart ones have no need to embarrass themselves so. But The Rump goes far beyond. He proclaims, “I am smart; very, very smart.” Otherwise, we certainly wouldn’t know it by his results. It must take an unusual degree of incompetence to bankrupt a casino.

Give him credit, though. He did learn the trick of letting others use his name, charging a lot for the privilege, getting lots of personal media attention (his Poor Johnny-One-Note form of marketing) and leaving his “partners” shouldering the losses in bankruptcy court.

Here is a guy who must plaster his name everywhere. Notice his plans for the White House. Then there is the Trump Washington Monument. Those 747s are just about large enough for his emblazoned name. Air Farce One. Can Trump Rushmore be far behind?

The root for this need to be larger than life can probably be explained by his obsession with building skyscrapers. He definitely puts a great deal of focus into towers. This is reinforced by the biggest and best golf course, house, etc. If I recall, the technical, applicable term here is phallic symbols. Is it possible he’s the first male to have penis envy?

The Donald said that if Obama released his birth certificate, he would provide his financial disclosure. While he claims various numbers, most commonly around $2.7 billion, financial analysts usually tag him at around $700 million, at most. Does that explain why he reneged on his promise?

He claimed he wanted to get past the birther sideshow, so he could get to the real problems we face. We got past the birther nonsense. What’s the first big issue he expounds on? Obama’s grades. How could a poor student get into Columbia and Harvard?

I’m wondering how a magna cum laude student and President of the Harvard Law Review gets classified as a poor student. If The Rump really wants to know how a poor student gets into Harvard, he might ask his son-in-law. His son-in-law’s daddy forked over a few million. That’s probably how Obama got in too.

I’m sure you’ve heard how upset he is that China is making “American products,” whatever they are. The Donald has several product lines. For some reason they all bear the name Trump. Probably the most prominent is his line of men’s clothing. They are made in China. Who woulda guessed?

I just heard today about his lying about his good fortune of not getting drafted into the Vietnam War. He said he lucked out and got a high lottery number. No. He got 4 academic deferments and, being the great athlete he has told us he was back then, was able to get a medical deferment, without an exam. But that’s okay – he’s a great patriot – he’s told us so, many, many times.

Although he’s flipped on every issue likely to be on the agenda this cycle, we can conclude that he is pro capitalism . . . when it benefits him.

Everyone agrees that capitalism is based on greed. It’s just that not everyone agrees that’s an unalloyed virtue. What is greed’s handmaiden? Self-interest. One might call it self-importance, egoism, one of the seven deadly sins. Pride is another of the deadlies, a constant sidekick. No one has ever successfully explained how someone can be a capitalist and a Christian. That’s like being a celibate and a whoremonger.

The “invisible hand” that is supposed to make the nonexistent “free market” work, being based on greed and self-interest, guarantees economic bubbles. The things that follow bubbles are what economists call recessions or depressions or crises or panics.

Since these bubbles and the events that follow them are inescapable consequences of that greed and self-interest, it seems quite a stretch to claim that an invisible hand is the benign benefactor at the very core of that particular economic system. Our great grandchildren will consider us gullible dullards for opting for such a ridiculous credo.

Those who devote themselves to such a joke have an inhuman, inhumane set of priorities. It is all about them, first, last, always. Geldt is the only measure of a man.

Given that it can only satisfy the egotistical, gullible dullards, it’s difficult to credit their claims of superior intelligence. All they have to offer as proof is wealth. There are a multitude of better measures of a man.

The very traits that bring people to their worship of capitalism and wealth, greed and self-importance, are attributes that are off-putting in healthy relationships. Someone holding the same values could, of course, find that acceptable, or even appealing.

One of these self-proclaimed special people, David Learah, former head of the National Association of Realtors, wrote a book entitled, Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust – And How You Can Profit From It. The book was well-received by his peers and the public. What a smart (read: wealthy) guy. It was so generous of him to share his secrets of wealth with us – less than 2 years before the crash; the crash that couldn’t happen.

From the divinities on high, Greenspan et al., on down, there were so many of these geniuses pontificating in books, magazine articles, speeches, reassuring congressional testimony and such, that David was almost lost in that cloud of hubris.

Don’t get me wrong. These guys are not completely stupid. They either are gullible enough to accept the fanciful or just too intellectually lazy to deal with the complexities of the real world. These people are smart enough to invest a bit of their abundance in buying politicians, getting much of the laws and regulations written to their liking or getting regulators to look the other way.

In their avarice and contempt for the populace, they have so distorted our economy as to make any possible recovery a long way down the road. Born in the misery of the Great Depression, I am apparently fated to end in a similar clime. What a set of bookends.