In the incessant series of news it is possible that you have overlooked an important development: Trump is done. Over. Out.
Not of course in the sense that he is about to be impeached, or to step down, at least in the near future. (His twitter did promise, ominously, a “big week coming up.” Probably this means as much as his other tweets—nothing.)
Nor in the sense that Trump is not getting his policy preferences enacted. He never has, not least because he has no policy preferences. Trump’s achievements since winning the presidency—mind you, with both chambers of Congress of his own party, and with a Supreme Court right of center—have really been negligible, laughable. Cruel, of course, but not earth-shattering. Even his new promise to get rid of DACA is not more than a cowardly way of deferring responsibility to Congress. Nothing new there either.
No, Trump is done in the sense that the only things he was successful at are no longer working. He no longer scares people. He no longer entertains people. He has become safe to ignore. And so he is ignored.
Think how many people have decided, recently, to ignore him. His decision to ban transgender persons from the military? The secretary of defense promised to set up a commission, which is the Washington way of doing nothing. His threat to shut down the government if Congress did not approve payment for the wall? Congress ignored it, and so did Trump. His attempts to bully Mitch McConnell into abolishing Obamacare after the Senate had voted against that lead nowhere.
And then there is Kim Jong Un, the Korean dictator. Remember the outrage when Trump expressed admiration for Kim’s decisiveness? Now we know why. Kim is winning the standoff because he has proved to be the master in ignoring the other. Other than Trump, who found himself unable to ignore Kim’s provocation, and is now paying the price. Not surprisingly, once his bluff is called, his government is clueless as to what should be done.
Sure, some people still get routinely upset by Trump, because it is their job to do so. Some of them are on the right—the unbearable Ann Coulter, Steve Bannon and his propaganda machine at Breitbart, some others. But unfortunately, most of them are actually on the left, maintaining the constant outrage over every little tweet, every provocation, every handshake, every breach of the norms of politics. Have they forgotten that Trump promised to breach these norms—and won the elections for that?
Somehow there seems to be the hope that at some point enough is enough, and the outrage will bring him down. The opposite is the case. With our conduct, we have been Trump’s lifeblood for too long. “If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention” we all shouted, as though outrage alone was a substitute for policy or even strategy. In reality, it has been that precise outrage that carried the most incompetent person ever to hold the job of President. Trump has been able for too long to pit right against left, white against non-white, women against men, and so on. Outrage will not topple him. Yet another scandal will not topple him. They strengthen him.
No, it is the absence of scandal, the absence of outrage, that will enable us to get over Trump. There is hope that we are getting there. Ironically, the appointment of General Kelly as chief of staff may have been the most fatal step towards Trump’s end. Kelly’s task was to bring order to the White House. But order is exactly what hurts Trump. If he can no longer get his opponent outraged, what should his supporters still admire him for? It was the only thing he was good at.
We will see. Trump will likely do more and more outrageous things to capture our attention. More rallies. More crazy statements, press conferences. Perhaps he will still try to start a war with North Korea just because we are ignoring him, unless (as we all hope) the generals have gently taken his nuclear toys away from him.
But we should not give in, just as we should not give in to a toddler’s tantrum. Once we overcome our constant outrage, we can recognize Trump as what he is. He is not a fanatical racist (except in a general careless way), he is no new Hitler (by far), and of course he is not the person to save the United States. In fact, he is not even a successful con-artist, unless we allow him to be that.
The reality is more banal, and more pathetic. Donald Trump is really just a sad old lonely man who spends so much time in front of the television that he starts tweeting at it. A man who will do anything he can to get the love he craves, and goes crazy because he is not getting it. A man who will defecate in the corner of the living room just to catch our attention. A man who tries frenetically to suppress the knowledge in himself that he is in way over his head, and that it is showing. A man who cannot even load a pickup truck for a photo op. A man who has very little power, except the power we continue to give him.
By now, Trump has become a personal tragedy. We should no longer make his personal life failure our national failure. We should gently pat him over his head, and move on. Enough remains to be done.