How Long Until We're All Manchurian Candidates?
In the 1962 movie classic, “The Manchurian Candidate,” Major Ben Marco (Frank Sinatra) reflexively repeats, “Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.” Sergeant Shaw, played by Laurence Harvey, is actually a communist sleeper agent. Shaw, Marco and another mate were all brainwashed while Korean War POW’s by their communist captors, programmed to penetrate the American political power structure.
What is it about those who serve this president that they seem to turn into Raymond Shaw’s and Ben Marco’s? Heretofore smart, independent-minded professionals almost overnight end up mechanically parroting hosannas in the highest to the Great Orange Leader. A prime example is Dr. Deborah Birx, a renowned immunologist and former Army colonel (as it happens) chosen by Trump to be the government’s coronavirus coordinator. Last week, the good doctor blissfully blurted before TV cameras:
He’s been so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data. I think his ability to analyze and integrate data that comes out of his long history in business has really been a real benefit during these discussions about medical issues.
Of course, none of this is even remotely true. Trump is botching the battle against this pandemic just as he botches everything else he undertakes. She described the president’s miscues in nearly heroic terms, then promoted a nonexistent coronavirus testing website that Trump has been touting. Birx has come under withering criticism. Her credibility went down a couple of dozen notches. At this point, she’s a better fit at Hogwarts than the halls of government.
There’s a steady pattern of such behavior in the Trump administration.
Remember the hirsute oddball Dr. Harold Bornstein? Trump’s personal physician before becoming president, he issued an open letter in 2016, bellowing, “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” He later confessed that Trump had written it himself.
Then there’s the White House doctor, Dr. Ronny Jackson who declared, “He has incredibly good genes, and it’s just the way God made him.” As with Birx, Dr. Jackson became a laughing stock for his toady performance.
Last October, the laughably unqualified White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham exclaimed with faux enthusiasm, “I worked with John Kelly, and he was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great President.”
Huh? You don’t get to be a four-star Marine general with a master’s degree from Georgetown School of Foreign Service by being a dimwitted slouch. Compare him with Cadet Bonespurs who boasted that his “Vietnam” was managing not to get STD’s.
The most bizarre mass profession of faith came in 2017 when Trump rounded up his entire Cabinet and had them sing his praises like an aria from a bevy of drugged eunuchs.
Before news cams, we witnessed the following:
“What an incredible honor it is to lead the Department of Health and Human Services at this pivotal time under your leadership. I can’t thank you enough for the privilege that you’ve given me, and the leadership you’ve shown.” – HHS Secretary Tom Price.
“It is the greatest privilege of my life to serve as the vice president to a president who is keeping his word to the American people.” – Vice President Mike Pence.
“On behalf of the entire senior staff around you, Mr. President, we thank you for the opportunity and the blessing you’ve given us to serve your agenda and the American people, and we’re continuing to work very hard every day to accomplish those goals.” Ex-chief of staff Reince Priebus.
“Thank you for coming over to the Department of Transportation. Hundreds and hundreds of people were so thrilled to hang out, watching the whole ceremony. I want to thank you for getting this country moving again, and also working again.” – Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.
And on it went. Each official joyously praising their leader with over-the-top encomiums in embarrassingly florid language. Only former Defense Secretary Mattis appeared uncomfortable, and limited his statement to gratitude to the men and women in uniform and DoD civilians he served.
After college and before joining the Foreign Service, I served for a short time as an intelligence analyst at the Pentagon. For hours each day, I pored over translated texts of North Korean propaganda. Stuff like –
Comrade Kim Il Sung, the respected and beloved leader, is indeed our iron-willed, ever-victorious commander-in-chief. The Great Leader is the sun of our nation and the lodestar of national reunification. He has made imperishable achievements and by his pre-eminent ideas and leadership, he pioneered the cause of national reunification.
Now you know why Trump wants to be BFF's with the star of the second sequel of the Kim Dynasty's ongoing horror show - little Kimmy Jong Un. It’s called dictator envy.
But the most pathetic sycophant in Trump’s growing collection of worship zombies is Senator Lindsey Graham.
Before the 2016 election, the fluffy senator from the Palmetto State had called Trump a “nutjob,” “world’s biggest jackass,” and a “loser,” as well as a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” He predicted that if the GOP nominated him, “we will get destroyed…and we will deserve it.”
But a year later, he’s beaming like a blissed-out Moonie and chortling, “I am like the happiest dude in America right now. We have got a president and a national security team that I’ve been dreaming of for eight years.” (Trump has since purged that entire “dream team.”) And then, “I am all in. Keep it up, Donald.” And “This is the most presidential I have seen President Trump. It was compelling and everything he said was true.”
As a long-time student of dictators and cults, I’m intrigued by the moral emasculation and mind transference that occurs in those who fall under Trump’s evil spell.
Trump’s now jailed lawyer, Michael Cohen, explained it this way during his congressional testimony:
It would be no different if I said, that’s the nicest looking tie I’ve ever seen, isn’t it? What are you gonna do, you gonna fight with him? The answer is no. So, you say, yeah, that’s the nicest looking tie I’ve ever seen. That’s how he speaks. He doesn’t give you questions, he doesn’t give you orders. He speaks in a code.
And now Trump is demanding kind words and praise from governors and state officials battling the coronavirus crisis. In other words, suck up or die.
Psychotherapist Elizabeth Mika explains Trump’s uncanny ability to bend others to his will accordingly:
Impulsive, sensation-seeking, and incapable of experiencing empathy and guilt, a narcissistic psychopath treats other people as objects of need- and wish-fulfillment. This makes it easy for him to use and abuse them, in his personal relationships and in large scale actions, without compunction. His lack of conscience renders him blind to higher human values, which allows him to disregard them entirely or treat them instrumentally as means to his ends, the same way he treats people.
And why do underlings succumb to this abuse, risking their reputations in the process? As Mika explains:
The tyrant’s narcissism is the main attractor of his followers who project their hopes and dreams onto him. The more grandiose his sense of his own self and his promises to his fans, the greater their attraction and the stronger their support.
This explains obsequiousness by the likes of Lindsey Graham and perhaps Ronny Jackson and some of the Cabinet officers. As for Birx and other department heads, it’s fear-driven. It’s either praise the Great Leader, or perish by tweet.
In any case, what we are witnessing with this sociopathic president is both unprecedented and un-American. Give Trump enough rope, as the Vichy Republicans have been doing, and next thing you know, we’ll all be brainwashed automotons, robotically repeating, “Donald Trump is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.”
Raymond Shaw’s all.