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Trump Derangement Syndrome. Treatment options.

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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« on: November 01, 2017, 10:36:32 pm »


from Fairfax NZ....

Every story has a plot — and a villain

By JOE BENNETT | 5:00AM - Wednesday, 01 November 2017

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has announced the first indictments from his investigation of Donald Trump and his links to Russia. — Photograph: Reuters.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has announced the first indictments from his investigation
of Donald Trump and his links to Russia. — Photograph: Reuters.


A STORY is playing itself out in public right now and it has me in thrall. Like every story it has a plot.

Because there are millions of stories one would think there were millions of plots. But there aren't. There are only two. Between them they've formed the nub of every story since Adam and Eve, including Adam and Eve.

The first plot is the female plot, the triumph of love. All forces may be lined up against love but love does not bend. Love persists. And in the end love either wins or dies trying. And to die for love is considered a triumph (though no one ever asks the opinion of someone who's actually done it).

That love prevails is the plot of Cinderella, of the New Testament, of all Shakespeare's comedies. It is the only plot ever used by the most successful publishing house in history. Mills and Boon's formula is to put barriers in the way of love and then to make the lovers swat them aside, until on the last page they clinch and kiss or even, in the more risqué modern stories, code-coloured purple, I believe, make the beast with two backs. But the point of it all is that love prevails.

The male plot is just as simple: it's the triumph of justice. All crime novels are founded on it, all detective stories, all myths of heaven and hell, everything from Greek tragedy to the adventures of Tin Tin. The nub of the plot is that the malefactor cops it. He or she — and it's usually he — has been tempted, has succumbed and has broken the moral code of the cosmos. Whereupon the cosmos sets about putting things right. Justice can take a while to achieve but it is inevitable. The culprit, says Father Brown, can wander to the ends of the earth, but eventually, “I can bring him back with a twitch of the thread.”

To put things right the cosmos may use an external agent of justice, a wild west sheriff, say, or a bunch of little prigs called The Famous Five, but it can equally use the internal agent of conscience. After killing the king, Macbeth and his wife are hunted down by the king's son. But it's their own psyches that do the real hunting. In the end, Lady Macbeth can take the guilt no longer and flings herself from the battlements, while her husband discovers the hollowness of a foul-won victory. And thus justice prevails.

Both plots are founded on the principle that the world is the right way up, is a place where, despite countless threats to its supremacy, good triumphs.

All of which brings us to the story which is playing out in front of our eyes at the moment. It is an example of the male plot. It is the story of Trump and the special counsel.

If you don't see Trump as vile you have not been paying attention. His vileness has nothing to do with his political views, and everything to do with his character. He is utterly self-centred. He doesn't care who he tramples on. He preens. He lies. He's a self-confessed sexual predator. Violence delights him. He's driven by spite and vengefulness. All of which means that if the world is the right way up he should suffer. Yet he's been elected to the highest office on the face of the globe. What's happened to plot number two?

Enter the special counsel, Robert Mueller. Mueller was appointed to look into Trump five months ago, since when neither you nor I have heard him speak. He's been the silent tracker, loping, grey-haired, modest, the embodiment of integrity, with a jawbone as long as a forearm. We've heard Trump ranting and lying and boasting, but from Mueller, nothing. We've just had to hope that he was on the job.

And now it seems that he was. He is about to start laying charges. At the time of writing I don't know who's going to have his collar felt but I can hardly wait to find out. There are numerous candidates, because vile attracts vile.

There's the loathsome Manafort, Trump's campaign manager, who's made a career out of lobbying on behalf of murderous dictators. There's the duplicitous weasel General Flynn. There's Trump's chinless son, his shifty son-in-law or even his bovine press secretary.

Whoever it is should be the first of many. And the last of those many has to be Trump himself. For if Trump survives to see out his term of office without impeachment or imprisonment, then plot number two is a myth, an act of self-delusion, a tale we tell to console ourselves in a world that's the wrong way up.


Julian “Joe” Bennett is a writer and columnist living in Lyttelton, New Zealand. Born in England, Bennett emigrated to New Zealand when he was twenty nine.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/98391558
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