Trump as Rorschach test

Those who hate Trump the most subject him to a moral litmus test they could never pass. It's like they are boxing their own shadow.

When I was a cocky teenage debate champ at Omaha Creighton Prep, I would routinely get into heated discussions with my diehard Republican mom. Whenever she’d utter Biblical bromides like “the poor you will always have with you,” it sent me into paroxysms of apoplectic pique. As we debated, say, U.S. policy towards South Africa––I would later help lead peaceful, orderly rallies for divestiture of Northwestern University assets from the apartheid regime––my mother’s calm, gradualist, conservative viewpoint would invariably trigger me. Our contentious kitchen exchanges would typically end when my mother said, “Well, you don’t have to raise your voice.” She was right, but the issues seemed so existential that I felt justified in throwing calm and decorum out the window.

I see some of my Jesuit-trained, liberal, righteous younger self in today’s outsized reactions to Donald J. Trump. Watching the unhinged vitriol of good friends, Democrat and Republican, directed at the former President, I’ve come to regard the man as a kind of Rorschach Test, revealing the true nature of the haters to themselves. I have a hard time hating anyone, least of all a person who built a real estate empire and then dedicated his later life to public service, eschewing the salary that came with being President while enduring the “slings and arrows” of outrageous censorship, spying, and deep state machinations designed to not only end his political tenure but eviscerate his life’s work. There are far easier ways for a billionaire in his seventies to give back, let alone retire. But Trump endured.

I find it interesting that Trump haters subject the man to a moral litmus test that they could never pass. It's like they are boxing their own shadow. By hating so hard on one man––a stand-in for the parent, sibling, or spouse who refused to see the light!––they can distract themselves from their own perfidy and impropriety. As the alcoholic says, "But I am not as bad as THAT guy."

Today’s Trump derangement is doubly intriguing because no public servants are ever perfect. Most are far from it. Bob Menendez? Nanci Pelosi? Hillary Rodham Clinton? FDR? JFK? Are they, were they, saints?

How many millions would Bill Clinton and his backers have spent to keep Monica Lewinsky silent? How many millions did they spend to keep Mr. Clinton’s other sexual affairs secret? How much is being spent, right now, by the Biden War Room, holed up in the Old Executive Office Building, to silence or impugn the reputations of those who know the true nature of the family’s quid pro quo operation while Joe was Vice President?

Trump demands that he be recognized because he saw first-hand that turning the other cheek bears no fruit. Romney did not brag. He was pious. He turned the other cheek. And he got crushed by Obama and the Dems’ disinformation machine. Were the lines “binders of women” and “self-deportation” capital offenses? No, but the Dems went there anyway.

Trump saw that and thought, "Never again." He would brag. He would attack. He would fudge around the edges. He would be his big, bad, bodacious New York developer self. He would even lie if it served a greater purpose since the other team “owned” everything––Big Tech, big donors, big media, Hollywood, the administrative state––and, as history bore out, they were “capable,” in a nod to Noah Cross, “of anything.” The Trump-Russia collusion hoax, destroying the life of Carter Page, lying on FISA forms, and intel chiefs’ cock and bull about Hunter’s laptop prove the point. Above all, Trump would not turn the other cheek when the powerful came for him. He would remain the punk rock cage fighter he’d always been but with WWE humor and populist flair.

Democrats love the Bushes and Cheneys because they loathe Trump with an ad hominem fury that make vengeful Democratic hearts go pitter-patter. Why do Democrats, NeoCons, and Never-Trumpers detest the orange bogeyman and his fellow “deplorables” with such vile, vindictive, quasi-murderous glee? Because Trump, and only Trump, called out their hypocrisy, knavery, and far more lethal corruption. Who was hurt more: the voters who did not know of Trump’s payments to Stormy Daniels or the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and U.S. service members who died in the deceitfully sold, unnecessary, and morally repugnant uni-party war on Iraq?

In an era of fungible “truthiness,” Trump’s truth is the bigger truth: that the moneyed Ivy League elites who were supposed to keep America tightly hued to its founding principles have lost their way. The surest sign is their weaponization of law and government against one man. Is the patently flawed Trump the ultimate answer? No. But he's a figurative strong right fist to the uni-party’s glass jaw. And that's a start.