Donald Trump, King of the Playground Taunt

One of Trump’s most effective strategies is one so beneath the dignity of an adult—let alone of a president—that any fifth grader of normal intelligence can see through it. It’s so base and indeed so comically stupid, so down-in-the-mud, that no serious rival candidate from either party has been willing to confront it for fear of looking as bully-little-boyish as Trump. They won’t stick their fingers up their nose to mock how childish Trump is for constantly sticking his finger up his nose. But, in a sad, sad comment on the level of American discourse, this deplorable, pathetic, playground strategy of name calling really does rally the base. Crooked Hillary and Low-Energy Jeb, and now Sleepy Joe. It’s not even clever. But it probably works all the better in that it doesn’t require any thought on the part of the hurler or the laugher.

Ignoring the practice hasn’t worked. Taking the high road hasn’t worked. Fuck it, then. It’s time to confront it. No, reasonable opponents should not dream up cute epithets for the orange turdman. It should be confronted as a practice, in a speech and in ads that directly call him out, thus, “Like any small-minded bully on any playground in America, Donald J. Trump is fond of calling his opponents names. The man who rises from bed at noon, wastes half the day in ‘executive time’ and the other half watching propaganda TV calls Joe Biden ‘sleepy,’ and Jeb Bush ‘low-energy.' The man who has been investigated, sued, or indicted repeatedly by the state of New York and agencies of the federal government for such crimes as running a phony university, cheating creditors, stealing from his own charity foundation and sexually assaulting women calls Hillary Clinton ‘crooked.’ The man who lies so routinely about matters big and small, from the size of his inauguration crowd to the Muslims he saw dancing at the fall of the Twin Towers calls Ted Cruz, ‘lyin'’…” It turns out that in his withered imagination, this lying, crooked, lazy, stupid man can’t even come up with an insult that doesn’t apply more aptly to himself.

This is the naked fact about this dirty, bloated, burger-sucking fool. He doesn’t have the intelligence to run a bath let alone a nation. And he’s not even smart enough to know it. He rallies angry people by insults and fear and threats of violence. He prefers smugness to thoughtfulness because it’s all he’s capable of and because, sadly, it works. But it may work less well, it may even stop working altogether, if his tricks are exposed and if he’s forced to answer intelligent questions with reason—something he’s fundamentally incapable of doing because when he was young enough to learn how, his wealth and his privilege made it unnecessary for him to do so. He's been insulated from thinking his whole life,  and he can’t do it. He can’t think; he can’t learn how to think. He can’t even recognize it when others do it right under his nose. When he’s confronted with a thought supported by evidence or reason he calls it “stupid” and does a happy dance and tells everyone he’s won.

Poetry Today

Poems no longer tell us anything.
They place before us things that only exist because of words.
Things nonetheless real—more real than anything, keys
That stab at the insubstantial air and turning unlock it.