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State of American History, Civics, and Politics

The Unpresidential Library: The Adolescent Room

The Unpresidential Library will differ from the normal presidential libraries. Traditionally, the facility extols the achievements of its namesake. If there are artifacts and exhibits from the childhood or adolescence of the President, they are to show how those time periods contributed to the adult the person eventually became. There is no precedent for a president who remained an adolescent all his life. What was a phase for other people remained the lifelong condition for this president. The Unpresidential Library will reflect this lack of development.

The media have done an excellent job counting the number of times this president has trumped – over 10,000 and counting! Those trumps will become part of the Unpresidential Library but they are not the focus of this blog. Instead I wish to focus on what the media know happens yet do not track the same way they do when he does not tell the truth. I am referring to his behavior as a 7th grade smart-aleck-dumb-aleck. There is no running tally of the hissy fit tweets he has sent. Nor has there been a count of the verbal expressions typical of an immature adolescent. These examples need to be tallied and catalogued so they can be displayed in the Unpresidential Library.

In recent days his juvenile behavior has ratcheted up. One may realistically anticipate such behavior will increase between now and Election Day. His declaration of war on July 14 to divide America and to exploit that division for his own ends guarantees intensified expression of behavior that normally would not be tolerated in a teenager.   Let’s consider a few recent examples of such behavior.

AFGHANISTAN

To begin with, there is the senseless declaration by our immature child president that he could win the war in Afghanistan in a week or ten days. Fortunately for the people there, he has refrained from doing so because he does not want to kill 10 million people. Suppose there were only 9 million people there…would that be under his threshold? So just as God was prepared to wipe Sodom off the face of the earth, so the President of the United States was prepared to do the same in Afghanistan. Thanks to Abraham we have some idea of the cutoff level for utter destruction by the deity. However we are left in the dark in the no-adult-supervision White House as to what his limit is. North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran can rest easy knowing their populations exceed the 10 million people cutoff but who knows if the juvenile will change his mind tomorrow and suddenly consider over 10 million deaths acceptable.

And how would he do it anyway? Are there actual plans on how to effectuate this action? Or is he bringing to bear the same lack of management skills he brought to the border? Inquiring minds want to know.

This thoughtless remark devoid of intelligence is an expression of the adolescent playing grownup. He knows there are these adult toys to play with, he just does not know how they really work. What is the nuclear triad? The simplemindedness of the comment attests the immaturity of the speaker.  He truly does not know what he is talking about but it is fun for him to trash talk anyway. He enjoys being able to say he could wipe a country off the map if he wanted to. And isn’t he a wonderful person for refraining from doing what he could do because too many people would be killed if he did. Such is the conscience of the adolescent in chief.

IRAN   

On July 22, 2019, Little Donee Wanee tweeted:

The Report of Iran capturing CIA spies is totally false. Zero truth. Just more lies and propaganda (like their shot down drone) put out by a Religious Regime that is Badly Failing and has no idea what to do. Their Economy is dead, and will get much worse. Iran is a total mess!   

This comment has not received a lot of attention.  Iran like Cuba, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela, will pay the price levied by American sanctions. But what is overlooked is how the adolescent in chief established a new hierarchy: there is DEAD and then there is WORSE THAN DEAD. Exactly what is worse than dead was not explained. Just as he provided no details as to how he would wipe Afghanistan from the face of the earth in ten days, so he did not explain what exactly is worse than death.  Here again we are witness to the simplemindedness of the immature child mind that has fun spouting these nonsense words as he plays at being an adult. Think of the adolescents playing rank out games after school.

You’re dead.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Well you’re worse than dead.

Ouch and double ouch. I have been insulted by the master rank out artist, the king of the playground. There is nothing left for me to do but to slouch away in defeat.

BALTIMORE 

The Baltimore display is an ongoing one with great staying power. Combined with race, the putdown of the city can endure for a considerable amount of time. It may even become a staple of the 2020 presidential election. It is difficult to underestimate how much fun the adolescent in chief is having in these demeaning words. For a 7th grade smart-aleck-dumb-aleck this is heaven. And there is no teacher who can send him to the principal’s office, no principal who can send him to the school superintendent, and no superintendent who can expel him. After all, he is the President.

The Baltimore Sun has shown the proper way to respond to the juvenile diatribe of the bigot in chief.

Finally, while we would not sink to name-calling in the Trumpian manner — or ruefully point out that he failed to spell the congressman’s name correctly (it’s Cummings, not Cumming) — we would tell the most dishonest man to ever occupy the Oval Office, the mocker of war heroes, the gleeful grabber of women’s private parts, the serial bankrupter of businesses, the useful idiot of Vladimir Putin and the guy who insisted there are “good people” among murderous neo-Nazis that he’s still not fooling most Americans into believing he’s even slightly competent in his current post. Or that he possesses a scintilla of integrity. Better to have some vermin living in your neighborhood than to be one.

You cannot debate ideas with a child. You cannot debate government programs with a child. You cannot debate issues with a child. While the newspaper did not sink to his level of name-calling, it did identify the true nature of the immature child. This is a lesson to be learned by Democratic presidential candidates who should always refer to him in these terms.  And who can forget his heroic action at Ground Zero?

One obvious fact has escaped his notice in his incessant juvenile carrying on about Baltimore. The state of Maryland has a Republican governor, a popular Republican governor. He is not a Trumpican. Here we may observe the distinction between the Republicans and the Trumpicans. A Republican can win office in the state of Maryland. In 2016, the Democratic presidential candidate won over 60% of the vote compared to 33% for the Republican. In 2018, Larry Hogan, the Republican incumbent, won over 55% of the vote, even better than the 51% he won in 2014.  If the juvenile president was not having so much fun insulting Baltimore and blacks, he might wonder how a Republican was able to do it. He might wonder if he could flip the state as he had Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. He might wonder if there was anything to be learned from Hogan’s success in a Democratic state that might help him win re-election. But his adolescent mind does not function on that level so he cannot learn from Hogan nor does he want to.

POLLS

Speaking of being in electoral denial, how about those presidential poll results? A month ago the polls showed the incumbent losing to a slew of Democrats. No matter who the Democratic nominee was, the incumbent was stuck at the 41-42% level. Naturally those polls were fake news. Now here we are a month later and guess what? The results still have him at the 41% level again and these polls are by his own network. What’s more, the Sleepy Creepy fellow is wiping his ass in Ohio. That cannot be right, therefore it is not right, therefore I do not need to do anything.

For the Democrats, this is great news. As long as the child continues to play make believe and think he is ahead in Ohio, the more he will not even try to change the figures. Why waste any time in state you have locked up?

Now imagine being a pollster in the campaign, an actual professional pollster who lives in the real world. Just as the proposed Trumpican director of intelligence will tell the commander in chief only what he wants to hear until it is too late, so the campaign pollsters are required to provide only good polls as Fox is supposed to do. Suppose these fake news results continue week after week, month after month, how long can the immature child live in his pretend world?

So far the real world has been very kind to the adolescent in chief. Almost all his problems are of his own doing. What happens if he starts having external problems in the real world that he cannot successfully pretend do not exist?  What happens if all the polls are fake news even on Fox and from his own pollsters? What happens if he needs to act as an adult in the real world? Whatever does happen, the Unpresidential Library will exhibit the story of the adolescent who became Commander in Chief in the real world and only had childish ideas of what to do.