Frank's Musings

A man like Donald J. Trump  is a player in an exclusively personal game of life. Such a man exists for the sole purpose of achieving whatever personal goals he has concluded constitute the rules of that game.  He didn’t choose to be in that game and has no control over its terms or conditions. Changing anything about the game is not only impossible;  it would be an admission of complicity that diminished his claim of victimhood that excuses whatever sociopathic actions he commits.

One of the measures of success in the game that he plays is the extent to which he escapes being held accountable for his actions.  Moreover, he is even admired for his ability to ignore the rules that he blames others for imposing on the game.  But those admirers, who  have also  repeatedly failed to comply with the imposed rules of the game, constitute a majority of the voting public.  This is what Trump realized  when he became fed up with derision from the “elites” who were commonly considered to control the game of life (cf. Barack Obama’s put-down of Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner).

Violation of not every game rule can be meaningfully sanctioned; and Trump’s selection of which rules to ignore is part of his manipulative  skill.   It is curious, nevertheless, that Trump has been able to gain the summit of American politics while continually circumventing its written Constitutional rules.  As in his relations with bankers, educators, numismatists, and others, Donald Trump exists primarily as an emblem of entropy—offering us the result of living together without establishing behavioral norms.