Alfie Kohn’s description of Donald Trump as a narcissistic, boasting, lying, preening, swaggering, thin-skinned, petulant, desperately competitive, vindictive person with the “attention span of a toddler” who is lacking in “shame, humility, empathy, or capacity for reflection and self-scrutiny” and also “lacking not only in knowledge but in curiosity” was, I thought, a pretty succinct and accurate description.
I have no inside knowledge of what it is like being the president of the US but almost all jobs have a large amount of boring work that needs to be done and I cannot imagine the presidency is any different. Just making sure that things are running smoothly requires an attention to detail, reading reports, and having meetings about the mechanics of government, and these are not exciting.
There will come a time when the rush of being president wears off and people stop paying much attention to Trump on a daily basis. Even outrageous tweets and other forms of attention seeking can become old and cease to garner much attention. But toddlers don’t handle boredom well. So what will happen when Trump eventually becomes bored with the job of being president?
The mind reels at the possibilities of what he might try to do to draw attention to himself again.
Outrageous tweetery is what he’s good at: he knows this and will continue to up his game to maintain our attention / his self-esteem (two sides of the same thing). His sycophants are waiting for him to impeach himself somehow, and this is the only negative feedback loop for him (and a weak one at that).
If you’re looking for adventure of a new and different kind,
And you meet up with a general who is similarly inclined,
Don’t be bashful, don’t be frightened, just do sumpin’,
Press the button!
(Apologies to Tom Lehrer)
His favorite thing so far seems to be speaking at big rallies. I suspect that, whenever he gets bored, he’ll pick some city in a state that voted for him and fly off to address his chanting followers and lead them in two-minute hate against Democrats, the media, and whichever world leader he’s currently feuding with.
Perhaps this should be encouraged. Surely it’s best for the country when he’s far away from the reins of power.
How about no change at all?
The new kings have been Pence, Bannon, the Koch bros and other billionaires of the Republican establishment the whole time anyhow.
Trump won’t get bored -- you need a working brain for that to happen.
I find one aspect of Trump lacking in Alfie Kohn’s description: he seems to have utter disregard, if not downright scorn, for any topic he doesn’t understand.
I worry much more deeply about what Trump will do when a crisis flares up somewhere in the world, as will inevitably happen. Absolutely nothing I’ve seen of him suggests his reaction to a crisis will be sane and level-headed.