Holy Crap

 

Since I graduated from medical school fifty-six years ago, I’ve hung around with hundreds of doctors. I’ve even been one myself, based on which I can say categorically that I’ve seen none of them, including me, wearing biblical robes; nor have any held mysteriously glowing orbs in their hands (other than smartphones). From none of them has emanated holy light when laying hands upon patients, not even in Catholic hospitals. Scrubs, sure. White coats, of course. Stethoscopes, name tags dangling. Never robes, though, nor – let’s assume – sandals. Not once. Not half of once. If a doctor showed up at your bedside cosplaying like that, would you assume you were about to die?

Doctors who act Godlike aren’t revered for it, nor would they depict themselves as such on their websites. None – Ben Carson excepted – hang portraits of themselves collaborating with Jesus. So, no. Trump posted his blasphemy fully embracing the representation. Consistent with his numerous pathologies, it’s how he sees himself. In fact, he just did it again. Why anyone not similarly afflicted sees him as Jesus incarnate is mystifying.

Even in bluish Snohomish County, it’s probable there’s a dozen or so people who do. Some might accept his laughable lie that he thought the picture of himself he posted on Truthless Sociopath, Christlike, appearing to heal someone while holy and unholy alike looked on, presented him as a doctor. That kind of bottomless credulity is expected from red-state MAGAs.

Nor is it just that the picture shows a four-fingered supplicant, un-airworthy fighter jets, and a fivesome of video game-like characters, one of whom is headless and four-armed. Trump can post and expunge whatever revelation of mental affliction he chooses. The real significance of this one is that he not only sees himself that way but assumes his voters do, too. Gratifyingly, enough of them didn’t, and said so, that he disappeared it.

Even for some MAGAs, whose threshold for outrage against anything other than liberalism is higher than RFK, Jr. formerly on heroin, and who claim Jesus as exclusively theirs while ignoring everything He preached, there are limits to glorification of a boastful, constant, and amoral liar. If only that harbinged the electoral revolution here that just occurred in Hungary.

Viktor Orban was Hungary’s prime minister for sixteen years, during which time his autocratic style made him a Republican hero, their anti-constitutional leadership ideal. Which explains why he was actively supported by similarly disposed Vladimir Putin and Trump. And Tucker Carlson. And all of CPAC, which, his successor revealed, he funded. Right before the election he lost in the landslide that Trump continues to claim for himself, as big a lie as stolen elections. In another of his high-profile failures, J.D. Vance flew there in support. Maybe the huge turnout, at least in part, was a repudiation of Trumpism, too. Maybe it’s infectious.

Orban became the strongman of Trump’s dreams: controlling Hungary’s legislature, judiciary, press, and, to a lesser extent than he’d hoped, its elections. His anti-LGBT actions were, for MAGA, frosting on the cake. In times lost to dim memory, the Republican Party would have shunned him. That he’d become its hero is, for America, a warning.

To Vik’s credit, he immediately conceded and congratulated his opponent, things Trump has never done; anathema to him like a medium-rare burger. Maybe, seeing similar diminution of democracy here, unlike MAGAs, who love it, enough unblinded citizens will turn out in November to overwhelm Trump’s attempts to disallow their votes.

Maybe people of all faiths will find his and recent-convert in more ways than one, J.D. Vance’s attacks on the Pope disturbing. For Trump, it must be maddening that whereas he’s revered only by a few million Americans, Papa Leo is by a billion or so Earthlings. In a can’t-be-true-but-is statement, Vance warned that the Pope should “... be careful when he talks about matters of theology.” Which smacks more gobs than his attempt to characterize Trump’s Jesus-posting as our jolly funnyman “president,” joking.

Perhaps I’m making too much of it. The posting was, after all, just another example of Trump’s damaged id’s constant need for adoration and, when challenged, lying wantonly, confident, as always, that it’ll be amplified by Foxian state media and received as Gospel by his cult. But, seen in the context of his increasingly desperate, contradictory, and ineffective attempts to turn his calamitous Iran war failures into success, it exemplifies what happens when a malignant narcissist is given nearly unlimited power and finds it falling apart around him.

It’s not just tasteless monuments to himself. His pretentious ballroom, that vulgar, inglorious arch, gilding the Oval Office like a bordello – all of those are merely repulsive. But his wars, his promise to preemptively pardon all the lawbreakers in his White House, his unprecedented corruption, and the increasingly obvious disintegration of his mind endanger us and the world. It’s not too late for patriotic Americans to organize. And Orbanize.