Hit him where it hurts

Photo by Leighann Renee on Unsplash

Let's be perfectly frank, shall we?

Donald Trump has no shame.

You can't shame him into not caging kids, ripping them from their mothers.

You can't shame him into not removing nutrition aid from hundreds of thousands of people.

You can't shame him into not appointing lunatics to the federal bench.

You can't shame him into not conspiring with America's enemies for his own benefit.

This man knows no shame. He built his entire persona on the fact that he's shameless, that he'll do anything to seize the limelight, the narrative, the news cycle. He would call reporters using aliases to keep himself on Page Six. 

Attacking him for all the awful things he's done and continues to do is a nonstarter. It won't work. He's a sociopath, without empathy, immune to blandishments. 

This is not to say that we should ignore those evil things. They should be part of our arsenal. But as far as using them to attack him, to get under his skin? No, he just doesn't care. And neither do his supporters. That's a feature, not a bug.

However, there is a way to get under his skin. There is a quick route to a bleeding wound. There is an attack vector to leaving a psychic gash. 

Joe Biden released this ad last night. This is the way to get to Trump.

Mockery. Derision. Humiliation.

A thin-skinned narcissist can't abide them. He can't abide being laughed at, ridiculed, held up to disdain.

He and his coterie, as I wrote in last night's thread, see themselves as big men, as world-historical figures, creating a new America.

What they are, instead, are jokes. Laughable, pitiable, poltroons.

This ad is brilliant for two reasons: 1) Biden waited until Trump was back on US soil to release it, thus abiding by the convention that politics stop at the ocean, a convention Trump broke time and again in London. And, 2) it's a one minute litany of all the jeering to which Trump is subjected. Rather than the "perfect" trip to the NATO summit, he will again be reminded that he's seen with scorn by his supposed peers. They see him as a fool they have to patronize until his country comes to its senses and either removes him via impeachment or via the 2020 election.

Despite the real damage he's doing, most of the world yearns for the return of a vigorous America, one run by competent hands. They want to put these past three years into the past, and hope that this was a one-time aberration, which the vast majority of citizens will never again allow to happen. They want to remind Trump that his time is fleeting, and he will be remembered as the object of the most vicious contempt. In time he will occupy a place in American history, as far as the number of books written is concerned, as does Hitler, without, hopefully, the genocidal horror. The Trump name will replace Benedict Arnold for treason. He will die a laughingstock, and beggar his children.

If you want to attack Trump, if you want to nonplus him, you have to hit him where it hurts. His ego is tissue paper: rip it into shreds, and make him scream.