Feeding the Beast

("The Post-Campaign Campaign of Donald Trump")

It is the emotional craving, the all consuming, omnipresent, unquenchable need for confirmation that doesn't merely mark this presidency but defines it. This pathology playing out on endless loop, the President not only unwilling but unable to stop himself. 

The barrage of criticism over his tweets, over his constant self affirmation of his greatness, of his being the best, the biggest, the most powerful, his insatiable desire for self promotion, none of the blistering negative response can possibly cause Mr. Trump to reconsider the propriety of his words or his actions. There is a sickness at the heart of the man and no one will alter his preordained course. It is in his DNA.

Others have played to their advantage upon this obsession. Foreign leaders have fawned over him, greeting him as welcomed hero, with the pomp an circumstance befitting an emperor. And at home, this President dreams of military parades, all before him bowing at the feet of their unquestioned ruler.

These rallies, the endless number counting, the do you love me refrains, these are the air that Mr. Trump needs to breathe, to survive. Washington suffocates him. Mar-a-Lago is refuge from the storm. But nothing reinvigorates him like the sounds and sights of an adoring crowd. Here he is freed of the insecurities and doubts, of the naysayers and the harping critics. Here he is God, omnipotent and without blemish. Here he is loved, adored, deified. Here is where, in his mind, he comes for healing.

And where we, an incredulous and disbelieving nation of onlookers, stare at the mess we have created as it is being perpetuated and revitalized. A disease being fed.