Getting Out From Under Trump

It's About the Butt

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, recalls a conversation in the White House, early in Donald Trump's presidency, with Jared Kushner:

            "I mentioned to Kushner one of Trump's more recent calumnies and told him that, in my view, his father-in-law's incivility was damaging the country. Strangely, Kushner seemed to agree with me: 'No one can go as low as the president,' he said. 'You shouldn't even try.'

            "I was confused at first," Goldberg recalls. "But then I understood: Kushner wasn't insulting his father-in-law. He was paying him a compliment. Perverse of course."

            So it seems to those of us whose hearts fluttered when Michele Obama said, "When they go low, we go high."

            But that went over many people’s heads. Politics is not so much about heights as it is about leverage.

           Sports tactics might be instructive here. How might the power of a lineman be conveyed? The old-school way was impressionistic. Coach Bum Phillips said his great big nose tackle, Curly Culp, was relatively slow afoot. He might be timed in the 40-yard dash at over five seconds -- but that would be the same, whether people were “standing in front of him or not.”

            The other way is more technical. A certain pass rusher is almost impossible to block, according to an opponent who has tried, because "he can scratch his knees standing up" -- has extremely long arms, good for grappling -- "but he still has that natural pad level where he can lift you up and forklift you."

            "Pad level": He keeps his shoulder pads low.

            Coaches' shorthand: "Low man wins."

            When Trump heard of Ms. Obama's remark, he may well have rolled on the floor laughing. (If he is capable of laughter.) When Hilary Clinton, running against Trump, quoted "my friend Michelle," to the same effect, in fact, it fell flat.

            The lowest blow Trump struck, early on, was calling Senator John McCain, "not a war hero . . . I like people who weren't captured, okay?"

            That is vile, I remember thinking. But at the same time, something deep down somewhere in my American gristle muttered something else:

Oooh, snap.

            Trump paid for that one, when McCain cast, on the Senate floor, literally with thumb down, the deciding vote against Trump's prospective dismantling of Obamacare.

            Upsetting an opponent doesn't mean just getting low. You have to get powerfully low. You have to have the votes.

            Obama got away with high-mindedness, but we cannot say that he established it as a standard, that he lastingly raised the bar. He did spontaneously lead an audience in singing "Amazing Grace." (Undercut that, mother-f... Excuse me.) But to some tastes, maybe, it was too close to "Kum-ba-ya." You go with hymn-singing, you better do so in a way that doesn't strike foot-washing Christians as holier than them.

            Obama won the Nobel Prize, but it's hard to remember what for. I do remember hauteur oozing from Obama that time he dropped the mike on Trump, with Trump in the audience. Hip hauteur, to be sure, and justifiable hauteur, heaven knows, but tell that to the down-to-earth.

            A headline from the Washington Post back in October, 2016:

            "Of course Donald Trump goes low. That's the populists' winning style."

To a practicing pol, "low" doesn't mean, or doesn't only mean, mean and conniving. It means, says the story in the Post, uninhibited display of bad manners, rejection of procedural niceties. Don't be bringing your amazing grace around here -- MAGA folk aren't looking to be lifted up. They got deep roots, which with encouragement get even more tenacious. And they don't want to be at war with Russia, and they can tell that  lowering inflation just means a paycheck is getting less valuable more slowly. And they may be proud to be working with the filthy rich --

            The Gristle of America has heard enough. Speaks up:

          And would you rather we yearn to join hands with the filthy poor? Don't we share with the rich a common interest?

            Common interest? In what?

       The American Dream. No taxes.

Ah yes. The nitwit/fatcat nexus.

            So the libtards say. But it’s the libtards who say there is no objective truth -- which, okay, means you can't trust anybody, certainly not them. Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths, whereas here comes this big sloppy funny-haired entirely unhoity-toity man who is unembarassed to shout out, "TRUST ME!"

            Low, people call him? How about uninhibited, uncancelable, unintimidated in a courtroom even! He dares to call a woman opponent "Birdbrain"! He's the one who's flying, and not just in his own mind. He is . . .

            Above the law?

The law of man, the law of lawyers. Trumped by the law of God. Feels like team spirit.

           

Since the Kutsher comment, points out Goldberg of the Atlantic, Trump has "gone lower, and lower, and lower. If there is a bottom -- no sure thing -- he's getting closer."

            To his bottom? Or would that be, he's biting their ass? They are so afraid of him, they keep piling up judgements on him. Half a billion so far? Pfft. Kutsher could kick that back. That's not real money -- groceries is real money. Trump doesn't even need real lawyers!

            Okay, Gristle Voice. Should we, the incorrigibly high-minded, compose a new hymn?

                                    So low you can't get under him,

                                   Best bet is weighing him down.

            Or should we look deeper into football tactics? Online you can find a coach teaching young players that it's not, just, about "pad level." If your shoulders are lower than your opponent's, he (excuse the pronoun) can push you down flat. Your hips, too, have to be lower -- your knees bent, your butt lower, your oomph directed right up and through the turkey-neck son of a bitch.

Get out the vote.