3/21/25

CAN WE HAVE ANOTHER WORD?
Readers have suggested more words to define Trump. The hunt continues.

A DEMONSTRATION ORGANIZED by the Newport Democratic City Committee at the interchange to the Newport Bridge March 19 featured American and Ukrainian flags and signs saying “No kings,” “Stand for democracy/ Stand with Ukraine,” and “Protect democratic rights.”

 EARLIER THIS MONTH, when it was still winter, and as Trump was deporting people for speaking their minds, openly defying court orders and continuing to betray Ukraine, I wondered if there was a single word that described the president.
     I threw out a couple of my own – CRACKPOT and BONKERS.
     Acknowledging their flaws, I invited suggestions. I proposed ground rules: no swears; no comparisons to animals; none that would degrade people with mental illness; no compound phrases; the choices should suggest meanness, racism and depravity.
     “I like MALIGNANT,” wrote one friend from the Other Coast. She said that her husband calls Trump “THE FERAL HOG. But,noting the contest rules against animals comparisons, she suggested just “FERAL.”
     “I vote for MANIACAL,” said another respondent, who included a fragment of a dictionary definition: “Afflicted with extreme mental derangement … wildly irresponsible.
     “And DEMENTED,” this person continued. “It’s a word I use a lot about Trump.”
     Still another also supplied two words, averring both were “probably not good for reaching a wide enough constituency. I chose them because my Gut reacted when people said them to me.”

• CRUEL – “This is the word used by animal rights advocates in ads destined to get us incensed and motivated to donate to ASPCA”
• GREEDY – “I was struck when a Scottish immigrant told me that when he told his college professor colleagues he was moving to the USA, they said to him: ‘Just remember, you are going to a country that can be described in one word, GREED.”

Three other correspondents supplied one word each, without explanations, figuring that they spoke for themselves:

     BASE
     NARCISSISTIC
     ARSONIST

I PARTICULARLY LIKED ANOTHER SUGGESTION, finding it chilling in its depth and intimations of malevolence:
     SADISTIC
     “It’s a word that comes to mind when I think of Trump (and I think of him way too often).
     “I’ve spent a large part of my life trying to understand the moving parts beneath behavior, and “sadistic” comes as close as any to suggesting Trump’s animating dynamic.
     “He’s all about ‘getting even’ with the original sin against him, rooted in his personal history. It’s ‘getting even’ with a bullet.
     “He’s addicted to the satisfaction of his own cruelty, and those cruelties, large and small, play out, over and over again.”

 A HEADLINE IN THE ATLANTIC magazine purported to echo the same idea I had raised: “One Word Describes Trump.”
     “Wow,” I exclaimed, “a Vulcan mind-meld just in the nick of time, and I began to devour the piece by writer Jonathan Rauch:
     He wrote:
     “Even those who expected the worst from his reelection (I among them) expected more rationality. Today, it is clear that what has happened since January 20 is not just a change of administration but a change of regime—a change, that is, in our system of government. But a change to what?
     “There is an answer, and it is not classic authoritarianism – nor is it is autocracy, oligarchy, or monarchy,” Rauch continued. “Trump is installing what scholars call patrimonialism.”
     That’s it? The elusive last word in defining Trump?
     I despaired . I never heard of the word, had no idea how to pronounce it, much less the foggiest idea about what it meant.
      PATRIMONIALISM ?
     That’s supposed to go on my bumper sticker? Or my next protest placard? No wonder the forces of truth, justice and the American way lost last year’s election.
     Rauch explained that a German sociologist, Max Weber, wrote that the word refers to a ruler who considers himself the “father of the people – the state’s personification and protector.”
     Such regimes, he said, have two self-destructive flaws: they are incompetent and corrupt, and democracy advocates can use both weaknesses to undermine and defeat them.
     Maybe PATRIMONIALISM fits Trump just like his fake hairdo and orange skin, maybe it provides political strategists with the secrets of turning back the Trump assault on democracy.
     But it’s not the word that I and many Americans are looking for.

SO THE HUNT GOES ON.
     Lately, CRIMINAL lately is working for me, both as a noun and an adjective.
     Trump literally is a CRIMINAL. Remember, he was convicted last May of falsifying business records in hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.
     And Trump’s manic campaign to destroy America is CRIMINAL in its lawlessness, heartlessness and  thoughtlessness, with equal parts savagery and selfishness mixed in.
     So today, the second day of spring, I thank responders for their suggestions. But the work is not done.
     Defining Trump – which will help in his undoing – remains a continuing and important pursuit.
   The suggestion box remains open and hungry.