From Truthdig
For Donald Trump, the presidency will be a vast stage for accommodating his megalomania and insatiable appetite for money. Those who mock, defy or anger him will feel the wrath of the state. Those who are not obsequious will be cast aside. He will invest most of his energy in his brand. Self-promotion is the only real talent he possesses. Corruption, already rife within the political system, will explode into a full-blown kleptocracy. Manufactured stories about Trump's prowess, brilliance, sexual allure and goodness, as well as how America is becoming "great again," will be pumped out by the White House smoke machine. He will demand encomiums that will become ever more outrageous. All love, devotion and allegiance will be to Trump.
Trump is the sick expression of a dysfunctional political system and mass culture that celebrate the most depraved aspects of human nature -- greed, a lust for power, a thirst for adulation and celebrity, a penchant for the manipulation of others, dishonesty, a lack of remorse and a frightening pathology in which reality is ignored. He is the product of our escapist world of constant entertainment. He embodies the mutation of values in American society that has culminated in an enormous cult of the self and the abandonment of the common good.
"When a population becomes distracted by trivia," wrote Neil Postman, "when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people becomes an audience and their public business a vaudeville, then a nation finds itself at risk: cultural-death is a clear possibility."
Demagogues -- insecure and crippled by an unbridled narcissism and seldom of high intelligence -- play to the inverted values of a decayed society. They attack all who do not kneel before the idol of "the great leader." "Saturday Night Live" can continue to go after Trump, but Trump, as president, will use every tool in his arsenal, no matter how devious, to banish such public ridicule. He will seek to domesticate the press and critics first through the awarding of special privileges, flattery, gifts and access. Those who cannot be bought off will be destroyed. His petulant, childish taunts, given authority by the machinery of the security and surveillance state, will be dangerous.
Trump's fight with the Fox News host Megyn Kelly illustrates his vindictiveness. Kelly, who was sexually harassed by Roger Ailes when Ailes was Fox News chief, questioned Trump on her television program about allegations of rape made by Trump's first wife, Ivana. Ivana Trump later recanted the allegations, although she had provided graphic details of the rape in a signed deposition during divorce proceedings. Trump was furious with Kelly for raising the matter.
In an interview by Terry Gross on "Fresh Air" that was posted last week, Kelly said that for months Trump attempted "to woo me -- not romantically, but just, you know, into favorable coverage." Trump demanded that she phone him, Kelly said, and she did so. There was a moment in that telephone conversation when he realized he had failed to persuade her, she said. "He became very angry. He told me I was a disgrace, that I ought to be ashamed of myself, and that's when he said, 'I almost unleashed my beautiful twitter account against you and I still may.' "
The conflict between the two exploded after the first Republican primary debate, in August of 2015, in which Kelly asked Trump about his derogatory comments about women.
Kelly was savagely attacked by Trump for nine months after the debate, including repeatedly on Trump's "beautiful twitter account." The attacks ended when Kelly went to Trump Tower to film what she called "a softer focus interview" with Trump but which in journalism slang is called a "puff piece," one that flatters the subject of the interview.
Kelly told Gross that the attacks by Trump "unleashed a chaos in my life unlike any I have ever experienced...
"I was receiving death threats regularly, serious death threats against me, against my family," she said. "Strange men showed up at my apartment building demanding to see me in a threatening manner. People started casing my home. Photographers were found on my property. I don't know if they were private investigators or what they were, but people started digging into my past, bothering my mother, bothering my closest friends, bothering my high school friends, trying to dig up dirt on me...
"The c-word was in thousands of tweets directed at me," she said. "Lots of threats to beat the hell out of me, to rape me, honestly the ugliest things you can imagine.
"The thing I was most worried about -- I have a seven, a five and a three-year-old -- and I was worried I would be walking down the street with my kids and somebody would do something to me in front of them, that they would see me get punched in the face, or get hurt."
Kelly said the "crescendo of anger" sent "my life into lockdown."
When Gross asked Kelly about the "alt-right" figures gathered around Trump, including Steve Bannon, Kelly was unequivocal. "They will come after you," she said. "They will target you. And they will be relentless about it."
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
