Through the process of raising our boys, Suzie and I were introduced to the concept of “magical thinking,” a phenomenon common in adolescents. In that context, magical thinking is an unconscious belief that merely thinking that an positive outcome will occur is enough, by itself, to make it happen. Magical thinking allows adolescents to dream, to picture themselves as succeeding, without having to engage in any hard work to make success happen. It is, as it turns out, surprisingly common, and a recipe for failure.
If nothing else, this election was a demonstration of the power of magical thinking, a belief by almost half the voters that by saying something over and over, by checking off a box on a ballot, by wishing hard enough, great things will just happen. Don’t think about the details, about the specifics of how to actually get from here to there … just believe really, really hard, and good things will come. Jobs! Security! Peace! America ascendant! All corruption and political self-interest gone! A blissful return to an idealized past America.
Having swept Trump to victory, a new form of magical thinking is now appearing: The belief by some, on both the right and the left, that somehow Trump will metamorphize into a reasonable, normal political leader — that he’ll take advice from experts, that he’ll listen to others with contrary views, that he’ll grow in office.
Dream on. For the past 18 months, we’ve seen exactly the same Donald Trump, day in and day out: megalomaniacal, mean-spirited, self-obsessed, authoritarian, impatient, simple-minded, volatile, uncivil, and completely unqualified, with the attention span of a five year old. There’s no “real Trump” under all that. If there were, it would surely have been trotted out during the campaign, since it would have boosted his prospects immensely.
No, what you’ve seen is what you’ve got.
Part of me looks forward to watching him slowly come to terms with the reality — which I’m sadly not sure he gets — that even the President can’t just snap his fingers and make things happen; that there’s a huge difference between criticizing and accomplishing; that you can’t cut deals with Congress by pissing all of the members off; that each one of those men and women has their own little power base and are beholden to you for absolutely nothing; that the administrative apparatus will rest largely unchanged; and that many of the things you say you want to do will harm your own supporters. Abolish Obamacare? Shrink Medicaid? Better have a plan — not just wishes and dreams — for the millions of lower-class white folks, your core supporters, who’ll lose a benefit they now have.
I’m going to enjoy the spectacle of a man who thinks he knows everything, thinks he can do everything, a man who honestly thinks he is a messiah, slowly and painfully come to the realization that he’s failing. That assumes, of course, that he has the ability to ever admit failure. But even if he can’t, we’ll all see it. A slow process, like a frog in a pot of cool water placed on a lit stove, the temperature rises slowly, and eventually the frog is cooked.
An appropriate visual to end a difficult week. Enjoy the weekend everyone. We’ve lots of work to do.
Categories: Politics