PRESIDENT GUMP and THE DOG'S BREXIT

The 'Dog's Brexit' thing has worn me out now. That, and President Gump's inauguration. The scale of the switcheroo in the world's understanding of itself has become exceedingly wearing of late. After my last post I found that the temptation to change it on a daily basis to accommodate the shifts and slides in perception of events just too much to handle, although my basic premise remained unchanged. I can see how journalists can become so frenetic at the constant change of things.

I have to be very careful what I say about President Gump because I have many dear and beloved American friends and family some of whom think he is just the very man to set America back on track. Perhaps he is and I most certainly mean no offence to anyone who holds that belief. But in my view he is almost as presidential as a bowl of porridge, but with much less substance.

Donald Gump is undoubtedly a successful businessman (despite his several bankruptcies). He wouldn't be a billionaire otherwise. However, there are plenty of good businessmen who are not as wealthy as Donald Gump. One of the Gump-quotes that I saw was One of the key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace. Good people don’t go into government. Thanks for that insight, Don.
What I am finding difficult in this whole thing is the 'reality denial' that Donald Gump exhibits. It is very like his fictional counterpart Forrest Trump. You will remember the movie ... Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get. And how about these words of wisdom ... Stupid is as stupid does. Thanks, Mr President.
The point I am trying to make. of course, is that fiction and reality have become confused in the Gump presidency. I'm A Citizen, Get Me Out of Here! 
Most of those friends and family that I know who have voted for Gump have said that Hillarious Clinton was so much worse. Crooked Hillarious, Gump called her ... and the epithet has stuck despite there being no evidence of any crookedness. I am not a fervent supporter of Hillarious Clinton, nor am I an admirer of Donald Gump, but I would rather trust Mrs Clinton as leader of the free world than support a grandiose liar and fantasist like 'The Donald'. I couldn't cope if he was for real. Who knows what you're gonna get ... maybe Heffatrumps and Woozles?

He's black, He's brown
He's up, He's down
He's in, he's out
He's all about
He's far, he's near
He's gone, he's here
He's quick and slick
He's insincere
Beware, beware
Be a very wary bear
A heffatrump or woozle is very confuzle
A heffatrump or woozle's very sly, sly, sly, sly
He come in ones and twoozles but if he so choozles
Before your eyes you'll see him multiply, ply, ply, ply
He's extraordinary, so better be wary
Because he comes in every shape and size, size, size, size
If money's what you covet, you'll find that he'll love it
Because he'll guzzle up the thing you prize 

(with apologies to Walt Disney and whoever wrote a really quite lovely little song until I messed with it.)

Postscript: Since writing this post, I have listened to the audiobook "Fear: Trump In The White House" by Bob Woodward. I was fascinated and appalled in equal measure. In portraying Donald Trump as Forrest Gump I have done the man a grave mis-service. He is frighteningly worse than anything my feeble imagination could have conjured up; thus I will not comment any further on him while his 'clinical narcissism'* is turning democracy into a hellish nightmare.

* I heard this expression used by an apparently respected professor on a You Tube video when discussing President Trump's odd use of language, but I also found this comment on an article in the New York Times, which I found interesting:

Re: “We Are All at the Mercy of the Narcissist in Chief,” by Jennifer Senior (column, Oct. 12, 2019):

As a psychiatrist who contributed a chapter to the “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” I have often been asked whether he meets the definition of a narcissist, to which I have answered, half in jest, “No, rather he gives narcissism a bad name.”

President Trump’s grandiosity and paranoid retaliatory behaviors are so far beyond those shown by what in contrast could be called “ordinary narcissists” that he requires a category beyond narcissism. The proper category would be “destructive dictator,” because Mr. Trump, like Hitler and Stalin, has the personality of a grandiose-paranoid dictator who would destroy all he saw as his enemies, while endangering the nation that he supposedly was advancing through his leadership.

That puts him far beyond the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder into a much more dangerous zone for our nation.

Henry J. Friedman
Cambridge, Mass.
The writer is an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.