Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Privileged Sons Play the Trump Card

I recently shared a picture on Facebook. In it, Donald Trump's son stands before a fallen elephant, holding the tail that he just presumably cut off.

It is one that one of my Facebook friends claimed was a fraud, and was probably photoshopped, he suggested.

Another friend of mine responded with an article, with a video link attached. That original friend took it back, albeit rather reluctantly.

Admittedly, I am not a fan of the Donald, so perhaps I am not being fair in what I am about to say here. So, if you are a fan of Donald Trump, then figuratively plug your ears. Or don't. Read on, and perhaps comment, challenge me. I want to encourage good, healthy debate.

Donald Trump always irritated me, ever since I first remember hearing about him when I was a kid. he just seems to be the picture of the arrogant, out of touch, excessively self-indulging rich man with a sense of entitlement. I mean, the man has one skill that is undeniable: he knows how to make money. Perhaps I should add a second skill here: he is flashy about his money making.

I mean, really! Who the hell builds one towering skyscraper after another, and puts up his own name in bright letters on the top of them? There's the Trump Tower, Trump's Taj Majal, Trump Palace, etc. Trump this, Trump that. Trump everywhere.

Everywhere? Yup, pretty much everywhere. He has office buildings throughout the United States, from coast to coast. He also has buildings, or has buildings in the planning stages,  in Israel, the Dominican Republic, in Canada, South Korea, Dubai, The Grenadines (in the Caribbean), and in Panama.

Now, here is a man who knows how to advertise himself, right? Plus, of course, he became a well known personality, a veritable celebrity. He even got his own television show, and was, for a while, highly successful in that.

People liked him. God knows why.

Well, actually, hold off on that doubt. I know why. Everybody knows why. It's because of his specialty, which is making money and advertising himself (rather shamelessly). It's because those are the things that Americans tend to admire, and envy, the most. Everyone wished they could be the Donald. Everyone wished they could sit in that high back leather chair, with cold, scrutinizing, judge's eyes, and fire people using supposed straight talk, not pulling punches. He embodied the cut throat, shamelessly individualistic, cold, calculating hunt to get to the top of the business world. For that, he became more popular than ever. Suddenly, everyone's favorite phrase of the moment was, "You're fired!" One almost expected Trump to buy the rights to the phrase, although it obviously has been around a lot longer than he has. Judging from his past actions, it would not be all that surprising if he wanted to get credit for it, nonetheless.

Here was a man with slicked back hair, and a way of doing business that essentially allowed him to gain money by increasing his own personal interest and finances, while simultaneously devaluing whatever it was that he was buying. Here was the real life Gordon Gekko. At last, that is who the character always reminded me of, although the actual inspiration for the character, to my understanding, was not Trump, but rather Ivan Boesky, of whom I am not all that familiar.

All the same, they still remind me of one another.

So entitled is "The Donald", that he entertained running for the Presidency. For once, a venture of his failed, and maybe he really was not trying to become the next President. But he certainly was vocal in his criticism of sitting President Obama, and particularly went after the whole birth certificate thing. Now, don't get me wrong: i am not a big fan of Obama. I was skeptical of him before his administration, and if anything, after four years, I am more skeptical of him than ever before. It is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between Obama and his predecessor.

But that said, when people fixate on superficial things, like his birth certificate, it becomes a distraction issue, and Trump was best known for this, while he flirted with politics. He addressed a conservative audience and won cheap applause with such attacks, never really showing a strand of original thought or criticism, much less any real ideas of his own to put forth. He did what he does best: attack. That is his secret, after all, for making money.

Now, I know that is what America prizes at the moment, more than anything else. Money, money, money. There is nothing more American than money, and a love

(lust)

of money. We take it to an extreme here. But Donald Trump seems to be all about money, and nothing else but money. I had never seen before a television personality with absolutely no personality. This guy is all business, all of the time. But not just business. Sleezy business. Business under the mode of attacking, with an approach towards completely destroying your competitor, if this can even be said to be a competition. I am not entirely convinced that it can be. it's more like the business world's equivalent of the food chain, with the top dog managing to gobble up everything smaller than him.

It just seemed amazing to me that this man, who seemed so intensely unlikable, nonetheless thought that he could possibly win the Presidency. But it was not a laughable notion. People really do like him, and admire him. Hell, I even know a guy who openly said that he was supporting Trump for President. That old business model working for the country, for the government thing again.

Yet another one size fits all solution. yet another "I know best" high profile rich guy assuming that people should listen to him because, after all, he is just better. I mean, he has way more money than you and me, and everyone that we know, all put together, right? Probably by far, too. But his assumptions were not that far off. A part of me even could imagine him making a serious run at the White House, and possibly even gaining it. Maybe then, it would be reduced to just being another Trump label. Maybe the Trump White House. It would have cheapened the whole deal, and the nation would have been the worse off for it.

There are few people who are as shallow and egotistical on such a mega scale as this man. But these are the values that we, as a nation, espouse, and he is one of the most successful men of these times. So, it is fitting.

Now, his sons? Well, they seem to feel pretty entitled, too. Don't get me wrong, I do not like Trump (that should be obvious by now, right?). But at the very least, he is on some levels a self-made man. True, he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. But the empire that is Trump was something unique to him. He made the bulk of that money, and that image, doing what he knows best - making money.

His sons? They just seem entitled, without having proven just yet the same talent for money making and utilizing this to promote an image.

They went on a hunting trip in Africa, and as it turns out, the picture of Trump, Jr. by the fallen elephant, holding the severed tail, is in fact, real. It was not the only thing that they killed, of course, but it was the most symbolic. Given that Daddy Trump has joined the Republican Party, it is perhaps symbolic that his own sons are in a picture next to a real-life elephant, the symbol of the Republican party, and yet not native to the United States at all, having killed it and then severed body parts. Maybe they did learn something from their father's approach, after all.

When responding to the outpouring of criticism, Trump Jr. took the high road (or tried to).He refuses to apologize for being a hunter. And really, he does not have to, I don't think, as that is not wrong, per se. However, I think that he can be criticized for making a sport of hunting, because that is a whole new ball game altogether.

In his own defense, he mentioned that his killing the elephant brought joy to a local village, that otherwise would have been starving.

"I can assure you it was not wasteful the villagers were so happy for the meat which they don't often get to eat."

Be that as it may, but that is not why the overgrown brat went to Africa. He was there hunting, killing an elephant, among other creatures, merely for sport. Sure, he tried to make the argument that it was feeding people, a village in need, and seemed to insinuate that they were very thankful to him. But that is not why he was there.

But he was not finished. He went on, talking about the principle of the thing, at least according to him. When it is a Trump that is trying to get to the core issue, you can bet he is talking about money, and Trump, Jr. does not disappoint, going straight for the purse strings:

"Bottom line without hunters $ there wouldn't be much left of africa. Eco is nice but no $."

Now, that I am not so sure about. Many parts of Africa are not yet developed largely because the resources that would have done so just were not there. But many species are endangered and on the brink of extinction, and some have even gone extinct, because of hunters. That's not the fault of the Trumps, of course. But it is a counter to what he is arguing, which is largely false. Since he relies, predictably, on the money factor, let us be clear: it is the pursuit of money and the privileges that it brings that is largely responsible for the endangered species of Africa and elsewhere around the world. Therefore, we do not need to thank the Trumps for preserving what wilderness still exists in Africa. Far from it.

Also, if you are going to make a serious defense, why not use proper English, and not bunched up text speak? But I digress...

I have not heard much of the Trump sons up to this point. I just hope that this is not the big introduction, where we begin to have to hear about them, as well. I am not a fan of the Donald, but compared with them, he seems downright likable, from what I can tell. They make him look like the humanitarian of the year, by way of comparison.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/13/donald-trump-sons-safari-killing_n_1341596.html

No comments:

Post a Comment