Trump’s Hands Are Weapons of War
The 2016 election playbook may find the Humiliator turned into the Humiliated.
The attraction of talking about his short fingers is that it’s just this one stupid thing that everyone can get around. It’s just the tip of the iceberg, sort of like, Let’s just focus on this because it makes him [respond] and he hates it. You could say he doesn’t understand NATO, but he doesn’t care that he doesn’t understand NATO! At least he cares about this.”
.. the epithet is revealing mostly because it demonstrates how humiliation lies at the core of Trump’s campaign.
.. Trump has trafficked in the idea that America and its citizens—especially itswhite, working-class citizens—have been embarrassed, or otherwise publicly shamed: by undocumented immigrants who have gamed the system and vaulted over their heads, by a politically correct liberal elite that has marginalized their culture, by a possibly treasonous sitting president who has diminished the power of the United States on the global stage. In his remarks following the massacre in Orlando, Trump offered a curious response: “We’re being laughed at,” he warned, apparently on the assumption that the international community sees an America with a giant kick-me sign on its back, and not a nation deserving solidarity and support.
.. “It’s hard to even imagine what Trump laughing anything off might be... As far as I’ve seen it, he has no sense of humor.”.. Trump has not been cowed bywidespread derision, party mutiny, or point-by-point rebuttals of nearly every one of his major proposals. But humiliation—especially of the schoolyard variety—has proven an effective tool to goad, to prod.