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I am not a man who approves of name-calling, a late-life virtue I have tried to sustain in the knowledge that sooner rather than later I shall stand for judgment before the Lord of Hosts.
Yet, if on this occasion the Almighty asks me what I think of Donald Trump, one word will suffice: “jackass.”
On this day, when a rich, smug and self-promoting vanity candidate denigrated the heroism of a Vietnam pilot who returned to his country after six years in a Hanoi gulag and decided he wanted to go into public service, name-calling alone seems appropriate. John McCain was shot down over North Vietnam, disablingly injured. When his barbaric captors learned he was the son of an admiral, they offered to release him – a public relations coup for sure.
Young McCain’s answer was that the rules of warfare required that POWs be released in the order of their capture and there were men well ahead of him in line.
He refused their offer. Let that sink in: John McCain, wounded, weak and in the hands of a North Vietnamese regime that tortured POWs, stood on principle and remained a captive through the war’s end.
But Donald Trump says he prefers those who weren’t captured. Possibly he would prefer the generals who played it safe and didn’t try to kill Hitler, or the Christ who declined crucifixion. If he is incapable of correctly identifying a hero on the first try, Donald Trump is too dangerous an ignoramus to be within 700 yards of the White House.
Trump’s seriocomic ascent in the polls represents the final conflation of celebrity with leadership. He is Andy Warhol’s warning about the future, in which “people will be famous for being famous.”
He attracted attention for Manhattan real estate deals in the go-go 1980s. He was in a position to break into this risky market because he was left a legacy of hundreds of millions of dollars in wealth and property by his father, Fred Trump Jr.
He released a book about “The Art of the Deal,” in an era when people thought wealth was created through a combination of buzzwords and alchemy. In Trump’s case it was created for him. It would not be the only instance of a birth lottery winner lecturing strangers on the virtues of thrift and hard work.
Even his divorce from his exotic wife Ivana was a marketable commodity for its capacity to enthrall by appalling. She demanded custody of The Plaza Hotel: The art of the deal as told by tawdry divorce filings.
On four occasions Trump’s corporations have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Under its terms, his resort and casino properties paid back fractions of the debt owed to lenders and bond purchasers.
Try that one with your mortgage holder. He emerged as the walking cliche of a boss on “The Apprentice,” making the words “You’re fired” a cheap entertainment.
I live in a city where the steel industry collapsed in the 1980s and a common assignment was to rush to a bridge from which some despondent ex-breadwinner had just leapt. They had also heard someone say, “you’re fired.” From Trump’s lips an economic death sentence is rousing entertainment.
This is the man who just disparaged Sen. John McCain’s heroism. Bored and disillusioned voters no longer draw distinctions between luck and virtue.
Let’s pray they still know the difference between a hero and a phony.