You Knew I Was a Snake

When someone shows you who they really are,

Believe them the first time.

-Maya Angelou

There's a story that has been told in different forms, but the one that sticks in my head is actually from the Oliver Stone film Natural Born Killers, a movie where two mass murderers become international celebrities and are strangely worshiped by a culture gone mad.  In the 1990's Natural Born Killers qualified as hyperbole, satire, and maybe a little bit of a prophetic warning.  In my opinion the prophetic quality of that picture has grown rather more real of late. There is a scene where Mickey and Mallory Knox, on the run from the law, accept the hospitality of an old Native American man out in the desert.  They are in the grip of psychosis and psychoactive drugs and the old man seems to know that they are not right in many ways, but he offers hospitality anyway.

He tells them this story (edited for clarity and language): there was an old woman who found a snake in a woodpile, nearly frozen to death.  She took the snake into her hut and warmed it up by the fire.  She took care of it until it was back and functioning, when of course it bit her on the cheek.  She was shocked and asked the snake, "why did you bite me? I took care of you, I saved you." To which the snake replied, "Woman, you knew I was a snake."

Of course Mickey proceeds to lose it and kills the old man.  The story and the scene are one and the same. I was reminded of that this morning when I read the account of one of our congress people describing how he had been massaged and placated by Trump in order to get some traction on the Healthcare agenda.  I have heard this before, Trump is rather skillful and charming in these one on one meetings, when he is in salesperson/conman mode.  I would have hoped that someone with a background in politics (read not unfamiliar with obsequious and snake-like manipulation) would be able to see through that, but apparently our desire to be duped by things we wish were true is fairly strong.

For me, the issue of character, even more than policy, is pretty important in a chief executive.  I actually disagreed with a good number of Barack Obama's policy moves, but I came to respect his character and his maturity.  Looking back, as much as I disagreed with G.W. Bush, I didn't really feel like he was a man of low character.  I may have engaged in allowing myself to see him as a clown or a bit of dim bulb, but when I look at how he handled the aftermath of 9-11 and generally how he has conducted himself in the years since his presidency ended, I have a hard time doubting that he is a generally good human being.

I could not bring myself to vote for Bill Clinton in either of the elections he won.  I was not particularly well versed in politics during those years, but I could tell he was a sleaze, and that was pretty much enough.  As it turns out, when I look at his track record of neo-liberalist crap, his policies weren't exactly the progressive gold standard either (Hillary would not have been much better). Bill Clinton was not a demonstrably better Executive than either Bush and certainly not better than Obama, but he was lucky and slick and he had the ability to commandeer a room with his personal charisma.

Oddly enough, I know a few people who voted for Trump primarily because of their disdain for the Clinton machine.  Of the Presidents that I can remember, those two are actually the closest in style and substance.  They both ran as sorts of outsiders, Clinton harnessed the spirit of the early 90's playing the sax on Arsenio Hall and generally being not quite so stodgy as Bush the elder. He captured the Baby Boomer's imagination, he was the embodiment of the 1960's cultural revolution taking over from the WWII generation, and brought some of their most glaring faults (self absorption, hedonism and vanity) with him. For Clinton it was "all about the economy stupid," and he was lucky that the economy was good. Trump has capitalized on a darker sort of populism, rooted in anger, frustration, prejudice, and the feelings of marginalization experienced by "forgotten men and women."

He continues simultaneously to pander to that populist base, while jetting off to Mar-a-Lago every weekend and golfing with all the establishment power brokers and the elite corporate types.  He has no problem with the apparent contradiction in this sort of thing, because he is used to selling and hustling, he has done it his entire life, it is who he is.  One of the reasons why you see such different versions of Trump everywhere is not because he is schizophrenic, it is because he is the ultimate utilitarian and an inveterate salesman.  He can lie convincingly because in that moment he actually believes what he is saying: "Obama wiretapped Trump Tower."  He can turn about and flip flop when it becomes necessary, without ever apologizing or back pedaling.  He can play the serious man, he can play the lecherous power monger, he can play the concerned citizen, he can play the bombastic outsider, he can play all sorts of roles and do it well enough that many people are taken in by the act.

That is who he is, that is who he has been, and that is who he will be.  I'm not saying that any of this, troubling though it may be, disqualifies him from being President, but it is a word of warning to those who are putting their faith and trust in him: he will bite you eventually.