Longacre: Riding the wave of Trump tantrums

I happen to know all about tantrums. Often, my stepson would stop breathing until he turned blue. Anything to get what he wanted. He was a child with special needs, to be sure, but that did not make it any easier on those, like me, who tried to discipline him. Perhaps the most depressing thing was his apparent incorrigibility.

When I watch Donald Trump carry on every day about how he is being mistreated and who’s to blame, I often think of my stepson. The son who refused to do the final paper required for him to graduate from an expensive private school and still received a $10,000 “graduation gift” from his largely absent father. I can only wonder what he would have become if this amount had been closer to the $430 million that Trump’s dad paid him while he, Trump, was only in his 20s.

But here we are, watching in awesome wonder as the supremely spoiled Trump-brat desperately tries to show the world that he is above the law and blaming a “weaponized judicial system” for not letting him get away with fraud, insurrection and treason, among other things.

What’s really galling is to see how many intelligent and seemingly mature people are willing to defend this man-child, even enable him. Don’t they realize that, in Trump’s world, they are nothing but pawns in his quest for power? For him, this means, among other things, stealing elections and getting revenge on his critics. Do these people have so little historical knowledge and imagination that they can’t see where their encouragement can lead? Spoiled brats are bad enough as is. Give them a little power, and they can become monsters.

Frederick Longacre

Hockessin

Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.