Coming Around to Trump

I am really coming around to Trump. Apart from the annoyance and shame of seeing his name plastered-up next to Central Park I had nothing to do with him. I never saw his show so all I knew about him was what was obvious: that he is an ongoing, public celebration of being a pig. 

And this is America. The Greatest Generation bequeathed to their kids material largesse and a sense of rightness. For the kids it was unrooted in anything, the nature of inheritances. The kids could choose to dig down on it or not. Trump is unimaginably unreflecting, simply aflame with superficiality.

The point is, he is what the presidency is meant to be: our national ego. A president mediates between our id and our ideals. The instinctive part of Trump is right on the surface. He's a sated baby still demanding to be fed. But he also embodies our ideals. We now aspire to be like him.

Our ideals are now so superficial and greedy it would be good to get it out in the open. The rest of the world sees it anyway. America is an ongoing celebration of excess, a culture with no absolute sense of its good-fortune or anything. Hillary is a pig with pretensions. Trump is a pig without pretense.