Trump’s big chance
Let’s do what the Germans call a “gedanken experiment,” or thought experiment. Imagine you’re in a situation where you are given two choices. The first choice leads you down a certain path ending in virtually unlimited wealth and power. The second choice leads you down a path of miserable infamy and death in prison.
All you need to do to achieve the first path is to speak and act in a certain manner unusual for you, but a manner neither impossible nor entirely unpleasant for — let’s say the next 66 days, just to pick a number at random. All you need to do to achieve the second path, on the other hand, is nothing at all. Just keep on doing what you have always done.
But don’t worry, the first path is not filled with unknown perils or impossible tasks. We’re not asking you to perform the twelve labours of Hercules. You won’t have to climb Mount Everest or run a marathon. You just have to modify your behaviour in little ways. And you’ll have a whole team of experts to help you every step of the way.
“Don’t be silly,” I can hear you say, “sign me up for the first path. That’s a no-brainer.” Of course that’s what you’d say. You’d say it and do it that way because you’re not stupid. The rewards for such a modest effort would be so great and the penalty for failure so horrible only a complete fool would do otherwise. Well just such a fool is available. His name is Donald John Trump.
Imagine Trump, for probably the first time in his life, behaving in a mature and rational way. Imagine him speaking of policies that make sense. Imagine him dropping his penchant for insults and silly made up names. Imagine him not whining. Imagine him telling the truth. Imagine him being humble and gracious.
While you’re imagining all that, imagine how the media would respond. I don’t mean just Fox News and their clones, but the mainstream media too — ABC, MSNBC, CBS, CNN, the New York Times and Washington Post. Sure, some cynics among them would call bullshit on Trump, say it’s all a big act calculated to fool voters. But a big part of those morons would marvel. They would be like wide-eyed children on Christmas morning. They would use words like statesman-like, magnanimous and — dare I say it? — “presidential” to describe the convicted felon and rapist. They’d bend over backwards to help the son-of-a-bitch pull off his final graft.
And it would probably work, too. There are enough stupid, low-information voters out there who would fall for it. Enough undecided voters who live lives of such quiet desperation and sheltered ignorance that they’d see Trump acting powerfully and magnificently and neither notice nor care about anything that has gone on before. They would neither notice nor care about the twin disasters of climate change and a constitutional crisis looming from above. They would be suckered in.
As to his drooling, knuckle-dragging MAGA base, it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to them what Trump does or says in the next 66 days. Trump could turn pro-communist and full-on, flaming woke over the next 66 days and they would barely notice or care. They would stagger zombie-like to the polls muttering “Must, vote, Trump.”
Now, I know what some of you are thinking. You’re saying to yourselves, “What, is Harrington crazy, giving Trump and his team a roadmap to victory?” Don’t worry, brothers and sisters, there is no danger here. I’m not telling you anything Trump’s handlers don’t already know. Many of them have probably thought of going to Trump as a group and performing some half-assed intervention. But they’re all too scared of Trump. They lack the moral fibre. Besides, Trump would probably fire them all if they tried,
The whole point is Trump would never do such a thing, not in a million billion years, because he is what I have been saying all along. Donald Trump is an unbelievably, breathtakingly, shockingly stupid, stupid, stupid man. His narcissism, his ego, his staggering stupidity would never permit him to entertain the idea that he needs to drastically change direction to save his life and fortune. He really doesn’t get it.
Maybe one day when he’s dying in prison he will finally realise that, had he done things differently, he might have avoided his fate. But I doubt even that. Donald Trump will go to his grave blaming everyone but himself, and I am frankly fine with that. Aren’t you? And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.