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INTERESTING TO NOTE - President Trump recently delivered a talk in which he provided his lessons for success. The list is intriguing on its own, but it’s also fascinating for what it omits. In either case, things get mighty murky mighty quickly.
Trump’s Lesson 9, for example, urges us to think ourselves as “winners” and “. . .reject the idea that you’re a victim.” That adage comes from someone who has consistently insisted that he is the “victim” of voter fraud, politically motivated lawsuits and millions of dollars in wrongly imposed fines and penalties.
The winner/victim rule is also hard to apply in other cases. Are the fifty-odd immigrant youngsters whom Trump tried to deport in the dead of night “winners” because a judge grounded their flight? How can children (the oldest kid in the group was 17) torn away from their families to be shipped to a foreign land “reject the idea” that they are “victims”?
If that’s not confusing enough, check out Lesson 5. It says, “don’t lose your momentum, recognize you’re losing it and stop or change direction.” If the administration’s astonishing disregard for public health – firing hundreds of scientists, questioning demonstrably successful vaccines, revoking health insurance from millions – ever had momentum, it has long since vanished. His total dismissal of anything close to due process of law for immigrants who have no criminal records is enormously unpopular, too, but there’s nothing to suggest that he plans to stop or change direction in either case.
Most of the other lessons are benign if not trite. “Think big” “Never eve give up” and “love what you do” aren’t worth much, but they do take up a lot of space on his list, space which might well be devoted to some other principles which cry for attention by their absence.
“Morality,” for example, doesn’t appear at all. Perhaps that’s because it clashes with his record of racial discrimination in housing, his multiple convictions for fraudulent schemes including a “charitable” enterprise which wasn’t, a “college” which didn’t teach, and liability for sexual assault.
“Honesty” isn’t in his lesson plan, either. No surprise there, of course. The President encouraged Texas to gerrymander new districts, so the GOP has a vastly improved chance to win additional seats in up-coming Congressional elections and then rained praise on the legislators who did exactly that. But when California responded by proposing to do exactly the same thing, it is “undemocratic.” Similarly, his persistent claim to have solved or ended seven or eight wars (it’s hard to keep track) lacks veracity.
“Fidelity” doesn’t appear on the list either, perhaps because it would be the height of hypocrisy if it did. He may have created a new task force which caters to the wants and needs of evangelical Christians, but it’s a sure bet that his cavalier approach to wedding vows won’t be on their agenda.
All in all, the only thing the President’s list confirms is that, in all cases and in all circumstances, the lessons the President shares with us may be useful to some, but they clearly do not, and will never, apply to the man who wrote them.
(David M. Hamlin’s commentaries appear regularly in CitywatchLA. He also writes mystery novels, and his short stories have appeared in literary journals in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. He can be reached at www.dmhwrwites.com.)
