A Racist, a Con Man, and a Cheat
A RACIST, A CON MAN, AND A CHEAT
By Deborah Long
So, the question we keep in our brain’s special housing unit along with beliefs that our own personal bloodlines are pretty damn awesome and that what my gut tells me is always correct – is this:
What makes a person like Donald Trump? And after Michael Cohen’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee, an even larger question looms in the shadows of American democracy: How do the Republicans in Congress not see their own reflection in the deeds of Michael Cohen – in the deeds of Donald Trump? They all voted for tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy like Trump and sent the bill to those who work for a living. They all voted to kill the Affordable Care Act and sent the bill to 25 million Americans who can’t afford healthcare. They all supported Trump’s efforts to kill the Environmental Protection Agency and sent the bill to those who live in Flint, Michigan.
So, how are Republicans different from Donald Trump? And why are they so righteously indignant at the sight of Michael Cohen?
I propose that not one Republican in office today could pass the Mirror Test of self-awareness. Not one. When I was a child, one of the our most beloved forms of animal cruelty was to place our gentle family dog, Dory, in front of a full-length mirror and watch her transform from an affable, face-licking Labrador into a vicious Rottweiler as she unwittingly tried to kill her own image in the mirror. She literally didn’t know that she was looking at herself. Neither do the Republicans. With Michael Cohen’s testimony yesterday, the GOP was entirely stripped of its threadbare cloak of credibility to reveal a body that is undead – a zombie party driven by precisely the same values as its leader, Donald Trump – “a racist, a con man, and a cheat” – according to his own attorney.
But with this, an even more urgent question about the Americans who voted to install these Rottweilers in office goose-steps into view. If we tie a yellow armband with the Star of David on Republican voters and place them in front of a full-length mirror, will they look at their own arm and wonder how the star got there? Will they touch the star? Or will they see an outsider and attack like a Rottweiler.
The ability to separate concepts of one’s own body - the idea of the self - from the bodies of others is an emergent behavior that is linked to the development of emotions like empathy and compassion. It is part of normal human development and begins to develop when we’re very young. It is how we are able to create civil societies that are maintained by an overarching organizing principle like our Constitution. It is how we learn “not to cheat, not to con people, and not to be racist”.
If there is one characteristic of Donald Trump’s well-documented sociopathy– a behavior that straddles all others depicted by Michael Cohen in his testimony – it is his manifest lack of empathy for others. As he sits at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office signing checks to bribe porn stars, and setting policy to lift sanctions against Russia to further his own financial interests, he is nothing, if not the personification of Oscar Wilde’s, Dorian Gray. But the Republican Party and its leaders such as Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, and Mark Meadows, embody the thesis of Wilde’s novel. They are the Dorian Grays of America. They write the demented policies of the Republican Party; they enable Donald Trump to take a wrecking ball to our democracy.
But after all that has transpired in the last three years: the kidnapping and abuse of children at our border, and the resurgence of white supremacy, mass shootings, and bigotry in the service of southern racists, one has to ask: What do Republican voters see when they look in the mirror?
Deborah Long is a Principal at Development Management Group, Inc. and founder of several non-profit charitable organizations. If you find her perspectives interesting, controversial, or provocative, follow her at: https://www.facebook.com/debby.long.98499?ref=br_rs
