Mi casa your casa
When we got married, my wife, an only child, thought how wonderful to gain a big family, even though some spouses of her new in-laws invited her to join an “Ashworth Support Group.” All in good fun, but just as Flannery O’Connor wrote “Everyone is different, but some is more different than others,” all families are weird, but some is more weirder than others.
The title of the book by Mary Trump, the president’s niece, tells it all: Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man. Not all families are dysfunctional, and not all families are nouveau-riche, but those two elements worked together with other factors, including old-fashioned male-female and race-specific role assignments, egotism, favoritism and bullying, shrewd lawyers and fawning media, to mold our 45th president.
Author Mary Trump is a practicing clinical psychologist, thus qualified to categorize her family’s patterns into professional terminology. She relies further on historical media, recreated conversations with relatives, and her own memories; this book is equal parts personal memoir and psychological study of you-know-who. For both reasons, it is more than just high class gossip, which I expect Melania Trump’s gazillion dollar book deal will be.
(Interestingly, when Mary meets the third Mrs. Donald, Melania only speaks a single word. One of her uncles confides – “She knows what she’s there for.” Mary’s conclusion, “Clearly it wasn’t for sparkling conversation.”)
Another visual scene stands out: while young Don Jr. and Eric wrestle on the floor, Donald reaches out to kick one or the other, while Ivanka sits in his lap enjoying his caresses. (My high school students, before I retired, found Donald’s comments about his daughter repulsive.)
Donald’s rise from inheritor of the family business to become the most important person in the world has a handful of distinct causes. His older brother failed to live up to their father’s standards (two older sisters were not considered for the role), but Donald learned both to use Fred Sr.’s methods and avoid Fred Jr.’s mistakes. Fred Trump denigrated his oldest son into depression and alcoholism; Donald learned to suck up to his father and avoid drink. He took Fred Sr.’s personal manipulation to heart but failed in the arena where Fred excelled—using government grants and tax evasion to grow the business. Fred was a successful businessman, based on shady dealings; Donald invented “The Art of the Deal.”
Like the Kardashians, Trump created celebrity status around himself because he was a celebrity. Success breeds success; even when his failures mount, Trump lives in the headlines. First the local New York media, and for the past several years, all media pay attention to Trump—good, bad and ugly, he’s front page news.
My wife watches old episodes of the silly TV show Northern Exposure, where Donald Trump is presented as a comic character—she never heard of him before, but that show dates to the 1990s, and the lead character was a New Yorker, where Donald was already a buffoon in the headlines.
Sibling rivalry exists in every family, but in Donald’s family it apexed. As he grew up, he perfected this persona:
“Donald’s displays of confidence, his belief that society’s rules didn’t apply to him, and his exaggerated display of self-worth drew some people to him. A large minority of people still confuse his arrogance for strength, his false bravado for accomplishment, and his superficial interest in them for charisma.” (page 44.)
People are still scratching our heads as to how this charlatan got there, and how we can extract him. Apparently, he is facing up to the idea that he lost the election and working hard to make the transition to Biden difficult, and disbelieved by millions. He’ll play golf on Biden’s Inauguration Day.
Mary Trump’s book we got from the library, but it is a worthwhile read. If you’re a Trumpkin, you read it at your peril, to see the Emperor unclothed. If you’ve recognized his fakery, you will gain perspective, and hopefully have empathy for the misled true believers. There but for fortune go you and I, stomping through a library with empty bookshelves.
Kirk Ashworth