A Deep Dive Into Trump-Mind Plus Princess Di!

[mallorys_camera]

Will today be Pajama Day?

The sky is overcast!

The suspense mounts!

###

I only managed to complete 3,000 of the white paper words yesterday because the topic is so very, very dry, I had to moisturize my mind by frequent forays onto social media, which is always a mistake, but you know, I was really bored.

My paternal relations are all rabid Trump supporters and post things like this:



In case you can’t tell, this was posted in response to the election.

Geri, my sister-in-law, posted it.

Geri is a fucking idiot, but you know, well-meaning and a full-blooded Inuit, which makes her theoretically interesting. She’s married to one of the two half-brothers who haven’t yet died of a drug overdose. I guess their heroin is evangelical zeal!

She is my principal window into Trump-Mind.

I kinda get people who voted for Trump on the basis of his tax cut, regulatory slashing, and judicial packing. I don’t agree with them, but I get them.

I don’t get people who think Trump is a Wonderful Human Being.

Geri thinks Trump is a Wonderful Human Being—“a flawed man, but a man of deep righteousness,” she writes. “And who among us is not flawed?”

It’s unnerving to do a deep dive through Geri’s mental laundry as artlessly displayed on the flapping clothes line that is Facebook, and I certainly hope I have the self-discipline to avoid doing so today as I tackle the last 3,000 words of the immensely bor-r-r-ring white paper.

###

I also watched a two-hour National Geographic special on Princess Di.

I’ve always been grateful that Princess Di chose the Labor Day holiday weekend to remind the world that no car can sustain a really massive front-end collision and protect lovers in the back seat unless they're wearing their seat belts. She saved my job at People for another year! Dan Okrent, who was helming operations at Time Inc that year, believed the Internet was a passing fad and was preparing to lay us all off. However, we turned around a massive online Princess Di homage in a little less than eight hours and that saved our collective asses.

I’d never felt much sympathy for Princess Di, though.

But I did after watching this special, which is essentially an hour and a half of an interview tape in which she discusses what it felt like to be a lonely 19-year-old with Daddy issues, plucked from relative obscurity to be the royal broodmare.

I felt deeply, deeply sorry for her and wept at the footage of the twisted, battered metal wreckage of her car against the Paris tunnel’s cement pillion.

She had it right: She really was chosen to be a sacrifice, as fully as any maiden in Greek myth.

That’s a fairly sophisticated thought! And proves she wasn’t dumb.

###

What else? I went for a tromp through the fairytale forest:



And now, I must do Useful Work.

Comments

[asakiyume]

I was never particularly interested in Princess Di either, but after she died, when they were doing retrospectives, I recall an image of her with some child, maybe an HIV-positive child, on her lap in some sub-Saharan nation. And she was hugging this kid, and not photo pose hug, but like a genuine tender-mom hug, no holding back. (I mean it wasn't a bear hug or anything--which would probably be alarming and unpleasant for the recipient, but just no-holds-barred, no fastidiousness, no discomfort.) She didn't appear to have any background worries about getting sick herself, no distaste about, say, dirty clothes or anything. And I thought, this woman really cared about these kids. Not everyone is into kids, fair enough! And women can be pushed into gender-stereotyped roles like kindergarten teacher. But looking at her with that child, I felt like she must have *enjoyed* being a kindergarten teacher, and like she wanted to make a difference for the kids in the photo with her. And then I liked her.

That's fascinating that your sister-in-law is Inuit, how cool.

Before Trump was president, when he was just a blowhard reality star, I could see how he could appeal to people. He could be funny, and he didn't stand on ceremony, wasn't remote. But during the first presidential campaign and his presidency, he revealed his huge, huge deficits as a human being.

I need to do some useful (read: paid) work too... Always enjoy your entries, though. Thank you.

[mallorys_camera]

I came away from the documentary thinking she was a lot more serious than I had given her credit for.

[moondance66]

Never liked Princess Di.

Apparently she and her sister had planned to "catch" Charles and Andrew. Well she got what she wanted.

I've always felt sorry for Charles and Camilla.

And I have literal, visceral hatred for women who bash Camilla over her looks. It's shitty when men do it, but when women do it, it's a whole new level of shittiness.

Then again women buy novels where the most defining trait of the heroine who "gets" the great guy, is that she's pretty.

Do these women ever turn on their brains?

Trump admirers live in the mirror universe.

[mallorys_camera]

I was never a big Princess Di fan either, but this documentary was very touching and won me over.

Camilla looks exactly like my longtime Friend of the Heart Marybeth, so, of course, I've always liked the way she looked. I think it's awful that Charles and Camilla weren't allowed to marry in the first place.

Trump admirers... It depends upon what they admire about him, I think. He was a pretty successful implementer of conservative policies, so I understand—intellectually, at lleast—why conservatives might have preferred him to stay in office.

But these people (like my sister in-law) who think he's a wonderful human being?

What planet are they from?

[smokingboot]

I've never liked the royal family, and Diana meant nothing to me; this whole royal brood mare thing repulses me somewhat. Nevertheless, a girl of 18 with a background in nannying and hamster-keeping is not going to manipulate a wealthy, world-aware man 13 years her elder. She learned of course, we all do...

The rumour of Charles having a long term mistress was around for a good while before he married. If he was any kind of decent person he would have waited for her or worked something out and simply defied that nonsense about his wife needing to be a virgin. But he's not the strongest of characters our Prince of Wales.

Geri sounds interesting. What righteousness does she see in Trump? What is it that he does that she considers virtuous?

[mallorys_camera]

Geri is pliable. She likes Trump because her husband likes Trump.

My half-brother Jim—who is a real authoritarian because he was brought up by my father who was a complete brute—doubtless likes Trump because Jimmy has a huge chip on his shoulder regarding education. My half sibs are bright but only two out of seven of them managed to get higher education. They resent people with higher education. Trump speaks to them in their own two-sylllable language.

[smokingboot]

That anti-intellectual streak is alive and well in the UK; it's possible for a candidate to be too smart. I am beginning to suspect that one of humanity's defining characteristics is resentment.