A plethora of pixels have been expended on Donald Trump’s now infamous “Photo-Op” in which he brandished a Bible (held upside down) at the door of a church while National Guard troops attacked, on his orders, an entirely peaceful crowd protesting police racism in front of the White House with tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets. All of this, Maureen Dowd notes in a New York Times op-ed “so Trump could walk through Lafayette Park, preening as a fake tough guy.”
Yes, the man who constantly complains about “fake news” is the biggest fake new story of them all. But while fake to the world we mustn’t forget that to himself Trump is utterly authentic.[1]
When an individual plays a part he implicitly requests his observers to take seriously the impression that is fostered before them. They are asked to believe that the character they see actually possesses the attributes he appears to posses that the tasks he performs will have the consequences implicitly claimed for it and in general matters they are what they appear to be.
That’s not a quote from an anti-Trump article of recent vintage but rather is a passage from a once famous book by sociologist Erving Goffman entitled The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, written 64 years ago. It shows that Trump’s psychopathology is not new but also that it isn’t likely to vanish once he’s voted out of office — as observers and commentators expect will happen in November. But Trump, comfortably ensconced in his delusions of adequacy believes the Photo-Op was a smash hit.
“Most religious leaders loved it,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News Radio. “It’s only the other side that didn’t like it.” That “other side” was of course the overwhelming majority of religious leaders, not the “Fundamentalist” cabal that claim he was chosen by the deity himself to save us all from abortion and LGBT rights. That he’s lost on the latter surely won’t deter this “base.” His recently hired press secretary Kayleigh Mcenany (one tends to lose count of her many predecessors) compared Trump’s walk to the church with Winston Churchill inspecting bomb damage in London during World War II. Washington D.C. wasn’t bombed last month and the damage Churchill surveyed was the work of the Nazis. But as Ronald Reagan once quipped “Facts are stupid things,” and Donald Trump has no interest in facts — only theatrical gestures of the sort seen in the world of “Reality Television” from whence he came.
“Reality Television” is of course an entirely fictional construct, exemplified by such shows as “The Real World ,” “The Osbournes,” and “Keeping Up with the Kardashashians.” Take “colorful” non-actors (and marginal “celebrities”) and insert them into slickly devised dramatic escapades made to resemble their actual lives (albeit far from closely) and given specified orders of how to behave before cameras that will film them in the style of a “cinema verite” documentary. Trump’s own shows “The Apprentice” and “Celebrity Apprentice” were pseudo-competitions in which “ordinary people” and “celebrities” were put through a series of a “tests” ( petty “Scavenger Hunt”-style tasks of one sort or another) to achieve the honor of going to work for him. None of them actually did. The moment they “won” was all that mattered as it shine a light on Trump’ presumed largesse.
Such moments are all Trump cares about for, he wants to be looked at in both admiration and fear at all times. When he executes some order or other he has the document reproduced on a large cardboard sign that he holds before the cameras before signing it. Those Trump rallies that he stages are mainly for himself, as Trump adores speaking before throngs of worshipful acolytes, and is at great pains to have as many of them as possible appear in the broadcasts of these self-love-fests as he can — even when the venues chosen are barely a quarter full. On TV the house has been made to look far larger, most of the time.
This internal demand for mass public adulation proves troublesome for Trump when he doesn’t achieve it as was the case at his inauguration in Washington D.C. which saw barely half of the throngs that cheered his predecessor Barack Obama. But Trump being Trump he insisted it was far greater. After all who are we going to believe? Him or our lying eyes? Trump has found this position impossible to maintain for his recent rally in Tulsa Oklahoma — where he claimed “a million” people would attend only to face a 3/4 filled arena that in the past has hosted sold-out shows for “Sha Na-Na” and a traveling production of “La Traviata.”
Too bad this poorly attended Trump “event” was televised. for what matters most to him is television. He watches up to eight hours of it every day. His favorite channels — “Fox” and “One America News” — turn themselves inside out not only supporting his policies but kissing his clinically obese posterior 24/7. Metaphorically of course, though there’s little doubt Sean Hannity and Graham Ledger would be overjoyed to literally apply their lips to his butt. Directly related to this is Trump’s fear of what might be divined from that which doesn’t come before the camera’s All-Seeing Eye.
The origin of the Bible-brandishing caper came from what he felt was the blow-back from his remark to a Fox interviewer about his trip to the White House “bunker” when the protest crowds were first assembling. Lest this be thought of as an act of fearfulness Trump claimed the “bunker” trip was “more for an inspection” of the place and that it had lasted only a “tiny, little, short period of time.” But, alas, there was no video, and so a visual display was required to fill in.
Trump relies on such optics to bolster his image and justify his actions. The border wall that he has sporadically tried to get built would, if ever completed, do nothing to deter “illegal aliens” from crossing into the U.S. But to Trump it “looks” as if it will. Like all U.S. Presidents he has all manner of guards to protect the White House from harm. But that isn’t enough for him during the present protest-laden moment. And so he (briefly) erected a quite hideous makeshift wall (mainly wire fencing) in front of traditional barrier around the White House. Fighting back, the Mayor of Washington D.C. (who was enraged that Trump has brought in troops to overrun the city and stand “guarding” the Lincoln Memorial), has declared the White House street front “Black Lives Matter Plaza” with both a street sign and giant lettering on the street itself visible from the air. In short, two can play at this game, That Trump has had the troops withdrawn shows he’s losing. And the Tulsa debacle has made this loss more palpable to him. What’s next for Trump’s “presentation of self”? As Herman Melville notes at the close of his masterpiece, The Confidence-Man: “Something further may follow of this masquerade.”
Note
1 Even when he’s inventing medical breakthroughs on the spot — like his declaration that a vaccine had been created to cure AIDS. The silence from the “Fake News Media” was absolutely deafening.