“The ‘Orange Clown’ is not a moron. His staff, entourage, and hangers on are not morons either. They are educated carpetbaggers, seeking any and every opportunity, at home and abroad, to garner loot, power and influence,” writes HUGH SELBY.

I was talking to a dear friend in a nursing home last week. She’s in her mid-90s, but long ago she, a genius social worker, taught me about people: what’s nice, what’s nasty, what’s redeemable, and what belongs to the devil. 

We have an early phone chat before the migrant staff  (the ones Pauline doesn’t like) come to get her up, to the toilet, washed and prepared for another day of misery because her back gives her hell every waking moment.

Not that she complains. People like her don’t. She’s grateful for her life, for the people she has shared it with, for the opportunities that she found, and that found her, along the way.

Now she’d be happy to shuffle off this mortal coil, but only because, she says, she’s a burden, not a contributor. 

She’s wrong about that and I told her so, just after she said to me: “That Trump is doing terrible things, but we mustn’t forget how sad, pathetic and useless his life has been. We must pity him”.

Pity is not a thought I have had about the current POTUS, but her comment made me pause, made me remember that her late, dear husband had, for a while, been a Baptist Minister until they both joined the Quakers. 

So, I decided to ask: “So, what’s your take on Netanyahu in Gaza and Lebanon, and Putin in the Ukraine?”

Quick as a flash came the answer: “These men have an unfillable void. They can’t like themselves.They are so consumed with trying to fill their emptiness with unfettered power that other people are irrelevant or mere pieces to be moved out of the way.

“The concept of morality is unknown to them. To understand them you must recognise their perspective. Do that and you will know them and pity them”.

Educated carpetbaggers

How recently were tens of millions of American voters, all educated, all adult, seduced, deceived, too eager to accept the empty box that carried the merch label, “Make America Great Again”.

This week one of my American friends told me “MAGA” had a new meaning, daily growing in popularity, “Morons are Governing America”.

That made me smile, but then I remembered my older friend’s remarks about pity, about the unfillable void.

Because the “Orange Clown” (as former Democrat vice-presidential aspirant, Governor Tim Walz, of Minnesota, referred to the Emperor Donnie in a No Kings speech last weekend) is not a moron. His staff, entourage, and hangers on are not morons either.

They are educated carpetbaggers, seeking any and every opportunity, at home and abroad, to garner loot, power, and influence. 

They have had a monster year since Donnie got back inside the White House.

They know that most of us are gullible, self-interested, generally fearful of repercussions if we stick our heads up, and cowardly.

Appeasement and looking the other way are the natural order of things. They get it. Commentators have been a bit slow on the uptake.

So much slower than the Donnie Court has been at self-aggrandisement.

Those critics who cling to promoting honesty, truth telling, “what can you do for your country”, are clinging to a dreamtime.

This week there has been increasing attention to inconsistencies in the Donnie’s public statements, as though such inconsistencies matter.

All that matters is that Donnie is in the world spotlight, declaiming words, any words to the masses.

Whether those utterances are true or false doesn’t matter, at least not to him. 

The lives of others, whoever they are, and wherever they are, don’t matter either. Doctors and nurses who died because of his response to covid, a black fireman who takes a bullet meant for him at a rally, a child in Gaza or the Ukraine, a school student in Iran, or a silly believer in fair dealing in Minneapolis – none of them matter. 

They are the random detritus from the daily task of his justifying his existence.

Some people, who should know better, say that he is mentally ill. They promote this absurd diagnosis just because he is unfettered by the usual norms for “good” conduct. His mission is himself, only himself. It’s that simple.

What’s up next?

Do you want to know what’s going to happen with that war? Ask yourself, what must he do to get the best results for him? He has been humiliated.

The Nobel Peace Prize has eluded him, so has the label of “Saviour of the Western World”. It’s probably back to maximising wealth accrual.

Beat the drums of retreat to Mar-a -Lago.

He and his supporters will sell everything that looks like it can make a buck. Greased palms and backhanders everywhere. That means a lot more pardons, a lot more environmentally disastrous licences to pollute, a lot more judicial appointments.

Pray that the Gods soon tire of their sport.

Failing that, pity us because we’ll all suffer, but pity him too because he is such a sad, sad orange clown.

Hugh Selby is the CityNews legal affairs columnist.