Two days ago, on March 16, Susan Glasser wrote, and the New Yorker published, a piece about Donald Trump.
Almost never do I insist that you read something. I’m insisting. Why?
Because Susan Glasser, with uncharacteristic emotion, described Tump’s “rally” appearance in Rome, Georgia. That is, unlike probably most of us, she listened to him and reported details of what he said.
I thought I had grasped Trump’s crazy rhetoric. I’d heard short excerpts on MSNBC and on Twitter, about as much as I could tolerate. But I had a big shock when reading Glasser’s piece. Trump is even more demented, more disintegrated than I thought.
Trump’s appearance in Georgia, by contrast, reflected a man not rooted in any kind of reality, one who struggled to remember his words and who was, by any definition, incoherent, disconnected, and frequently malicious. (This video compilation, circulating on social media, nails it.)
If Susan Glasser can shock the hell out of me by describing the full madness of Trump, she will do the same to you. And the madness is not within our rational world of presidential politics or political journalism. It lives, or should live, in an asylum, instead of on a campaign trail.
Read it.*
*From what I can see now, the New Yorker has removed their firewall (I have a subscription so the wall doesn’t block me) for this piece. If this is so, I don’t have to beg them to release it for the entire world. If not, go find it maybe at your library or somewhere.