Dirt-bag political operators, blinking idiots, paranoiac advisors, strategists more booze than person, wide-eyed racist maniacs, shifty press secretaries: such persons are no stranger to the White House. This country has a long history, and a good number of those who have been shuttled into the West Wing under a new president were outright, if well-meaning, mediocrities if not outright monsters.
But as evil and stupid as these men were, even they are overawed by sheer tonnage of freeze-dried idiocy that makes up the people surrounding Trump.
Let’s start with Sean “Continually Emasculated” Spicer, whose job — ostensibly — is to perform the duties of White House press secretary. His real job is to be publicly humiliated for the president’s amusement.
He chooses to debase himself every day, repeating the lies his boss demands him to repeat, and for his effort he is laughed at by a room full of reporters, none of whom trust or respect him. To borrow a line from Christopher Hitchens, he is so full of crap, that if you gave that man an enema you could fit him inside a matchbox.
Other than the president, only one official lies with more poise and ease than Spicer: Kellyanne Conway. Most Sundays, she spends her time on the morning cable news rounds, spouting falsehoods like a champ. The thing is, she also feels this weird need to be accepted and given pats on the head by the media she distains: “I spoke for 35 minutes on three network Sunday shows,” Conway pouted on Fox News in January. “You know what got picked? The fact that I said ‘alternative facts.’ Not the fact that I ripped a new one to some of those hosts.”
Note that this sounds like the complaint of a child. The self-pity, the whining lilt of not being rewarded adequately for doing her job.
Trump’s cadre share characteristics of a certain kind of Kindergartener, who sucks on the front of their shirts and sobs, sobs at how unjust it all is. And who will inevitably rise and begin to slap and scream at the other children in righteous anger, as carrying out a just revenge on those who slighted them.
If we can take any consolation from the power these people have, it is that they appear to be absolutely miserable.
