Entrails, Late 2019

Back in the dope-inflected late 1960s, “bad trips” abounded. Richard Nixon, for instance, was a “downer” and “on a bummer.”

During the soul-sickening American war in Vietnam, home from wandering in India and Nepal, my friend Bob pondered the qualities of dharma. Smoking yet another joint, he contemplated principles of cosmic order, saw we were in a time of corrupt rulers, fools, and “negative manifestations.” Which meant a dark age—the yuga (stage) of Kali (the demon). Kali Yuga.

“America Love It or Leave It.”

“My Country Right or Wrong.”

Of course there have been more recent Dark Ages in our land of the free/home of the brave. Start with Vietnam War–avoiders Bush ’n’ Cheney’s squalid Iraq invasion.

But the latest yuga’s incarnation of the demon Kali came in a period when I was more than once grinding toward and then, blessedly, recovering from brilliant—preternatural—surgeries and “procedures.” My body felt like a kind of exploratorium. I was taking the measure of my health, of aging in general, and of what I (perhaps understating) termed the death of the ocean. A trifecta. Then, Trump campaigning and elected: a quadrifecta.

Trump incessant. Hyperbolically impure member of a species that has its share of imperfections. I was already at work on this book. To write about him was an option. Responsibility? Every record might be of value. Or, if not a public service, cathartic?

Getting into the muck and the mire, I read hundreds of articles and editorials, also countless books about Trump—pro and con. Several “by” Trump, a few by those around him. The subtitle of daughter Ivanka’s Women Who Work seemed apt: Rewriting the Rules for Success.

From this deluge of information and opinion, here’s a smidgen of what caught my eye and ear:

• ▪ In a 1990 interview about Fred Jr., his older brother, dead at forty-two, Trump said Fred “totally gave of himself and he gave himself to other people.” Adding, via self-diagnosing and getting back to his favorite— only—subject, “I tend to be just the opposite.”

• ▪ Trump strategist Steve Bannon described Trump as not billionaire but crooked millionaire: “just another scumbag.”

• ▪ To the mayor of San Juan Puerto Rico, Trump had a “tweet incontinence problem.”

• ▪ “A nativist who can’t really speak his native tongue,” Frank Bruni wrote. Garbled syntax, verbal mishmash, and blather, Bruni might have added.

• ▪ As described by George Will, Trump had a gift for “self-refuting boasts”: “I have the best words”; “There’s nobody that respects women more than I do”; “My IQ is one of the highest”; “Marla says with me it’s the best sex she’s ever had.”

• ▪ James Fallows noted Trump’s sense of illusory superiority, “the Dunning-Kruger effect: the more limited someone is in reality, the more talented the person imagines himself to be.” Or, as Bret Stephens viewed Trump, “ignorant and vile, but not stupid.”

• ▪ Anthony Scaramucci, briefly White House communications director, described Trump as “an insecure orange turd.” And, “I mean the poor guy has the self-esteem of a small pigeon.”

• ▪ Psychologist John Gartner termed Trump “the most documented liar in human history.”

• ▪ Nixon biographer John A. Farrell, quoted by Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman, said Trump has used “the vile Nixonian strategy that making Americans hate each other is a potent way to seize and secure power.”

• ▪ Tucker Carlson: “At times, he’s a full-blown BS artist.”

Stipulate as fact, though Trump professes to disagree. “I like the truth. I’m actually a very honest guy.”

________

Trump-ubiquitous, saturating senses. Think of deafening music played at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, our all-American “no-touch” torture site. No wonder people yearned to ignore Trump, though to do so might be a form of submission.

Meanwhile, as I worked on this book, news was too easy to access. In better health, I could have headed to a remote spot to study the night sky we’re busy obliterating. Or set out on a farewell / apology tour to family, friends, former lovers. Photographer Wayne Levin, sickened by daily Trump monitoring...