Tuesday
We’ve had bad presidents before but never one who wore his neediness and insecurity as openly as Donald Trump. Recently he complained that Dr. Anthony Fauci was more popular than he was (“Nobody likes me”), and his envy of President Obama has pretty much defined his presidency. And then there’s his desire to have his profile joining Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt on Mt. Rushmore.
Think of him as the frog in Aesop’s fable, which La Fontaine versified, inspiring a Scott Bates version. Here’s La Fontaine:
A Frog had an Ox in her view; His bulk, to her, appeared ideal. She, not even as large, all in all, as an egg hitherto, Envious, stretched, swelled, strained, in her zeal To match the beast in overall size, Saying, "Sister, lend me your eyes. Is this enough? Am I not yet there, in every feature?" "Nope." "Then now?" "No way." "There now, as good as first?" "You’re not anywhere near." The diminutive creature Inflated still more, till she burst. The world is full of folk who are as far from being sages. Every city gent would build chateaux like Louis Quatorze; Every petty prince names ambassadors, Every marquis wants to have pages.
And here’s my father, the version appearing in his An ABC of Radical Ecology:
F Is the Fable of the Frog and the Ox
after La Fontaine
A Frog saw an Ox
and was impressed
He thought he was a creature of stature
worthy of emulation
He turned on
He got so excited in fact that he swelled up
and puffed up
and turgesced
in an attempt to approximate the dimensions of the beast
saying
Hey look at this Charlie just
feast your eyes on Big Fred
Is this big enough
Have I made it yet
Nope
How about this
Not at all!
NOW I’ve made it I bet
You haven’t even made it to first
The little flop
blew up so big he burst
The world is full of people who are just about as dumb
Every used-car salesman thinks he should run General Motors
Every two-bit politician wants 100% of the voters
Every two-star general wants the Bomb
If not 100% of the voters, Trump wanted at least a popular vote count bigger than Hillary Clinton’s, along with a bigger inauguration turnout than Obama’s. He’s a failed businessman and former reality tv host who thinks he can run the world’s biggest economy and a commander in chief who has fantasized about dropping the big one. I’d say that Vladimir Putin is the ox he wants to emulate except that I consider Putin to be a frog as well.
Could we say that Trump’s self-destructive behavior is his version of bursting? The problem is that he has surrounded himself with people and commands a television network that unceasingly tell him that he is, in fact, as big as the ox.