{"id":14798,"date":"2017-03-22T20:49:39","date_gmt":"2017-03-23T00:49:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=14798"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:42:57","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:42:57","slug":"our-vicarious-presidency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2017\/03\/our-vicarious-presidency\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Vicarious Presidency"},"content":{"rendered":"

I suddenly get it now.\u00a0 I do.\u00a0 I finally understand what has been so captivating about the self-styled entrepreneur\/entertainer we know as Donald J. Trump running for President, then getting elected President and now acting as President (even though he doesn’t act like <\/em>a President).\u00a0 It’s not because Donald Trump is a NASCAR crash waiting to happen.\u00a0 And it’s not because Trump is the non-fiction version of the compellingly callous King Geoffrey of Game of Thrones<\/em>.\u00a0 Even though both comparisons ring true, this is what dawned on me: a substantial number of your neighbors and mine see Trump as the President they would imagine themselves to be<\/em> if only they had the opportunity.\u00a0 For those tens of millions, Donald Trump offers them a vicarious presidency.<\/p>\n

\"Kevin<\/a>Of course, Mr. and Mrs. Dave the Dispatcher don’t really<\/em> want responsibility for the nuclear button, or our soldiers’ lives, or our national security, but otherwise they would love to be in Trump’s shoes, to make the rules, to even the score!\u00a0 How different things would be around here if only I<\/em> were the President, thinks Dave.\u00a0 And how different it would be if Dave<\/em> were the President, thinks Mrs. Dave.\u00a0 (Mrs. Dave is a traditionalist.)<\/p>\n

A pity that Mr. and Mrs. Dave lacked the\u00a0hundreds of power brokers, the thousands of rich connections, and the billion dollars they would need for Dave himself to run for President.\u00a0 They did not have those kind of resources, but they did have Donald Trump and his kind of resources.\u00a0 And when Trump essentially promised that he would be their co-president, the deal was done: a vote for Trump was a vote for themselves.<\/p>\n

This is why criticizing Trump or anything he says or does is equivalent to criticizing tens of millions of Americans.\u00a0 This is why Trump’s voters are immune to his impulsiveness, his sexism, his irrationality, his narcissism, his paranoia, his I-hate-them-now-I-love-them relationship with Wall Street.\u00a0 Because Trump’s voters not only cast their lot but their very identities with him.\u00a0 In terms of The Walking Dead<\/em>, they are Trump in the same sense that The Saviors are Negan.<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n

My friends have probably heard me say this before: people who want to be supervisors are often the least qualified for that role.\u00a0 They think that management is about telling other people what to do, and they think they are good at that.\u00a0 But these would-be bosses have it backwards.\u00a0 Good managers listen.\u00a0 The best managers get out of the way and let talented people do what they are best at doing, while offering guidance and providing resources.<\/p>\n

Trump is not a good manager.\u00a0 Instead, he is the president of every self-styled supervisor in America: the person who wants to be in control, the person who wants to run things his or her own way.\u00a0 Trump is their vicarious president.\u00a0\u00a0 He is certainly not mine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I suddenly get it now.\u00a0 I do.\u00a0 I finally understand what has been so captivating about the self-styled entrepreneur\/entertainer we know as Donald J. Trump running for President, then getting elected President and now acting as President (even though he … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14798"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15068,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14798\/revisions\/15068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}