A few weeks back, I noted that Donald Trump’s rejection of the Paris accords on global warming amounted to a “tub”, a high-visibility, low-significance virtual non-issue that would nevertheless promote much angst and heartburn among the liberal commentariat, both printwise and in talking-heads land, accompanied, in both media, by endless shots of El Donaldo’s great, bloated, smirking phiz, a red flag to every true liberal’s taurine heart. The more they hate me the more I love it! Well, now he’s got a new tub—an old one, really, his favorite—the media, but all shined up and pretty!
The notion of a “tub”, I explained in my earlier post, was set forth by Jonathan Swift in his first work, A Tale of a Tub: “seamen have a custom when they meet a Whale to fling him out an empty Tub, by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the Ship.” In times of political and socio-cultural unrest, such as Swift found himself in the waning days of Stuart England, he deemed a virtual tub to be necessary, to prevent under-employed wits from assaulting the ship of state, and he hoped to supply one in the form of his strange tale, intended to become the talk of the town.
I doubt if Donald knows Swift, but he has the tub thing down pat, and he can thump the media 24/7, night and day. Trump loves a fight—in fact, he’s not happy when he’s not fighting—and fighting the media is the best kind of fight, because it’s consequence-free, rather like arguing whether Spider-Man can beat the Hulk. If you talk about stuff like health care, you might say something important. That won’t happen when you’re fighting with the media. Besides, there’s always the chance you can goad some damn fool to say something truly stupid, and all of a sudden it’s all on them! And, if not, just drop it and go on to something else.
Donald’s going to be traveling for the next couple of days, which kind of limits the amount of virtual body-slamming he can tend to—that he can do to other people, that is. The amount of virtual body-slamming that he can do to himself is—well, it’s pretty goddamn scary. Because the people he’s going to be fighting with can fight back. So let’s keep our fingers crossed, and count the days when Donald can get back to making jokes about face lifts instead of foreign policy—you know, something that can actually hold his attention.
Afterwords
Back in 1936, Franklin Roosevelt ran for re-election with the following pitch: “Never before in all our history have these forces1 been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.” I’m sure we’re going to hear something very similar out of Trump.
- The forces of “organized money”—“business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering”. ↩︎
