Guest MINDSETTER™ Steven F. Forleo: Trump is a Machiavellian Poseur
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Now is the upcoming winter of our discontent, made glorious this past summer by the dimmed Son of (New) York.
Oh my, the hyperbolic, soon to be Tweety-in-Chief will caper nimbly to fright the souls of his fearful adversaries.
With Donald Trump's profound lack of intellectual curiosity, but with consummate, amateurish, apprentice-like acting skills, da man who will be king is about to inhabit the "people's" house.
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He got there by destroying any semblance of civil discourse, decimating any sense of decency, obliterating common courtesy, and inflating his ever increasing self-delusion to become the biggest impersonator since his distant English cousin, Richard of Gloucester, who’s stage persona was carefully crafted by the Bard from Henley Street.
Yep, that guy, created by Shakespeare, who roamed the streets of London, only to end up permanently loitering in a Leicester parking lot. The guy who wasn’t amorous enough for sportive tricks, but diabolical enough to dispatch his rivals using cunning and guile. Ya know, the con man from Rotting Hill.
Richard was the bloody, boorish Machiavel who was solely driven by the fact he was not accepted enough to be the alpha male. So this usurper-in-chief set out on a deliciously wicked campaign trail filled with misanthropic hatred, sociopathic (at best) longings, overt lying, and outright claims of regal illegitimacy. Basically, questioning birth certificates of those who were standing in his way to royal immortality.
Fifth Avenue Folly
Donald, Son of (New) York, is in that less than giving vein as well, and wants so badly to be an authentic tough guy rivaling the Hunchback King because after all, he's just a spoiled son of an apartment building landlord from Queens who was never accepted by the cool kids in Manhattan.
Trump, like the notorious stage creation, Richard, is someone who’s certainly repugnant, abhorrent, and yet oddly charismatic.
Candidate Trump
Over the past few months he had proven himself to be a master of manipulation.
Who else could mock the disabled, routinely insult women, create widespread antipathy toward anyone emigrating from the "wrong" side of the Rio Grande, label jurists unfit to sit in judgment of him, vilify those who question his phony piety (remember 2 Corinthians?), routinely condemn undocumented immigrant labor while he had hired such folks for constructing his own gilded palace, and constantly fosters the notion that the USA is burning at the edges, while he provides more accelerant.
Shakespeare's Richard III was a genius in language and rhetoric. He knew words convey much more than any silly action. Why not get a surrogate (Buckingham) to do the filthy work by artfully creating “great deals”.
Our Son of (New) York, using fragmented sentences in less than 140 characters, urges his own fawning sycophants to do the same by making outlandish promises like building a Fabulous Great Wall, grossly exaggerating to expel millions of Mexican and Muslim people, promising to create deportation storm troopers, boldly amplifying to stop anyone from entering his fiefdom not extolling Son of (New) York’s hypocritical religious tests, and willfully exploited voters by inventing cultural divides to suit his own treacherous demagoguery.
Not bad for a guy who wants to make America great again!
The Tale of the Talk
But for all of the Trumped up fabrications, Shakespeare's super villain dwarfs our Son of (New) York.
Trump is the permanence of impermamance. Predictable in his unpredictability. He is a bad copy of Shakespeare’s crown jewel, like CZ from Tiffany & Co.
Son of (New) York is a fugazi.
The multi-faceted work of art as written by Shakespeare was creative, inventive, and exceedingly clever. This periwig-pated fake from the Yuge Tower of Babbling Nonsense is just another low-rent jester.
Shakespeare’s villain had panache, style, and a voracious thirst for domineering power. Richard III had boundless energy for hijinks and mayhem.
Our Son of (New) York sports the orange tan, ill-fitting robes, and a thirst for nothing more than spending daddy’s ducats, and soon, ours. He’s much too lazy to match Richard's exquisite Machiavellian accomplishments, although he's working hard to dissemble Americans with pro-Putin, Pravda-like propaganda.
Nostrovia, comrades!
But alas, Trump also lacks the popular vote of legitimacy, just as Shakespeare’s Richard spread the whispering campaign that his brother's sons lacked birthright.
Some might call that a birther campaign?
Shakespeare’s stage character had charm, wit, audacious ingenuity, and amazing acting ability. The Donald is a blustering fool, full of sound and fury signifying laughter, a pretentious pretender to the throne. Where Shakespeare's Richard mesmerized us with verbal prowess and daring gall, the Son of (New) York merely prattles like an infantile knave.
Birther of the Nation #45
The Fifth Avenue Son of (New) York may be determined to rank as a classic villain, using hate as his idle pleasure for these days ahead, but know he’s been cheated of dissembling nature because he’s not the genuine article.
There’s a name for such an imposter.
Tartuffe.
Steven F. Forleo, a professor at CCRI and faculty adviser to The Unfiltered Lens.
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