Most of us have at least one family member we would prefer not to have. There’s the boozy, profane aunt, the loud, always-lying cousin, the funky-smelling and sticky-fingered grandparent, etc. Either we have one of these for our very own, or we know somebody who does, and we try to arrange our family and neighborly visits to avoid them if we can.
As occasionally happens, however, the spirits work against us, and we just have to grin and bear a family visitation (imposition). The U.S. currently has the “crazy uncle from hell” visitation in spades. He is the present POTUS, and we can’t keep him away from the public. Nor can we prevent him from embarrassing us or the whole family. He simply cannot control himself.
A few days ago, our current POTUS showed his behind to the annual U.N. gathering of world leaders and statesmen (and stateswomen). According to at least one eyewitness report, speaking to the 80th gathering of the U.N. General Assembly and world leadership, Trump gave “a sociopathic, narcissistic, incoherent, insane rant which supported Israel’s continued genocidal acts on human beings in Gaza and condemned, criticized, and threatened our allies!” As far as is known, he was not inebriated. That would at least have given us some slight comfort. Instead, he was simply himself in full bloom, embarrassing both himself and us as surely as if he’d peed his pants in full public view. The wacky uncle, indeed.
The world could only ask, how in God’s (Allah’s) name could the U.S. have chosen this profoundly disturbed man as its leader? This was, after all, the United States, the “g.o.a.t.” of world countries. Surely, its enlightened citizens—the world’s most important capitalist democracy—could not have voted this bumbling idiot in as POTUS and as the primary spokesperson for maintaining the current world order and rescuing the planet from the pending climate change disaster. It simply did not seem possible.
But there he was for all to see, standing there incongruously as out-of-order as a major California-New York rapper from the 1990s holding forth without restraints or respect at L.A.’s Church of God and Christ on a first Sunday morning in May. The man was not just out of order; he was a complete nut job. And the world could only weep and wish for salvation from somewhere.
Donald Trump on the world stage again was a complete disaster. How could he be the POTUS and the leader of the free world and be this idiotic? The world now saw the emperor had no clothes whatsoever. And this was never intended to be a fashion statement.
Mr. Trump unabashedly would not shut up. Apparently, he does not possess the gene that lets you know it’s time to go, or at least that it’s time to step away from the microphone. Embarrassing oneself is one thing. But to embarrass an entire nation that owns the pride-of-the-world epithet, and to be blissfully unaware of it, as if you had just demonstrated to the world how great and smart you are as a leader, rather than that you are a damn fool who snuck into the house through the basement, is beyond the pale.
No, Mr. Trump did not slay the U.N. General Assembly audience the other day, no matter what his band of idiot handlers told him. What he did was to figuratively pee his pants in public, take a figurative public dump on the stage, and leave the gathered world leaders and diplomats understanding that we are all really in it now. We are not coming to the edge—we are already there with this idiot in charge!
Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, which is a new 501(c)(3) pending community-based organization or non-governmental organization (NGO). It is the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank which still operates and which meets every fourth Friday.
