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Donald Trump is not a supervillain from a comic book. He is a simple man, almost primal in his drives and impulses. For those who choose to see the world as it actually exists, there is no great mystery about what Trump wants: His goal is to be president forever and to use the power of the office to enrich himself and his inner circle, while taking revenge on anyone and everyone who dare to oppose him, or who he thinks has wronged him.

This article first appeared in Salon.

After nearly fouryears of Trumps public contempt for the rule of law, democracy, the Constitutionand norms of human decency, there are still too many Americans especially among the news media and pundit class in a state of denial about thereality of this dire situation.

They have forgotten the wisdom of Occams razor: the simplest explanation is more likely than not the correct one. This is orders of magnitude true in the case of Donald Trump, very simple man and de facto American emperor.

Seeing opportunity in the coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump has repeatedly shownthe American people and the world who he really is.

The most recent example: During a coronavirus briefing on Wednesday, Trump threatened to adjourn both houses of Congressa brazen attack on the Constitution and the rule of law unless thatbody surrendered to his will by immediately appointing his handpicked nominees to key government positions.

In 2017, Yale historian Timothy Snyder,author of the New York Times bestsellerOn Tyranny,warned the public about Trumps obvious plan tousea crisis to suspend democracy andthe Constitution. Heres what he told me then:

Let me make just two points. The first is thatI think itspretty much inevitable that they will try. The reason I think that is that the conventional ways of being popular are not working out for them. The conventional way to be popular or to be legitimate in this country is to have some policies, to grow your popularity ratings and to win some elections. I dont think 2018 is looking very good for the Republicans along those conventional lines not just because the president is historically unpopular. Its also because neither the White House nor Congress have any policies which the majority of the public like.

This means they could be seduced by the notion of getting into a new rhythm of politics, one that does not depend upon popular policies and electoral cycles.

Whether it works or not depends upon whether when something terrible happens to this country, we are aware that the main significance of it is whether or not we are going to be more or less free citizens in the future.

My gut feeling is that Trump and his administration will try and that it wont work. Not so much because we are so great but because we have a little bit of time to prepare. I also think that there are enough people and enough agencies of the government who have also thought about this and would not necessarily go along.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump declared that he hadtotal authority over the countrys governors and the individual states they were elected to lead. In making that declaration Trump also threatened to force the countrys governors to cease social distancing and other rules put in place to slow down the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. His argument, of course, is that those restrictions are damaging the economy and therefore Trumps chances of being re-elected in 2020 (assuminga presidential election even takes place).

After a public outcry Trump walked back his position,sayingthat he will be authorizing each individual governor of each individual state to implement a reopening.

Of course, Trump does not have any such power under Americas federal system of government. Such a fact is of little importance: Like other authoritarians, he is testing and breaking political norms so that he can shatter them later.

Such rule-breaking behavior has been an ongoing theme of Trumps rule.

Trump has repeatedly jokedthat he will not leave office, publicly solicited the interference of hostile foreign powers to help him steal the 2020 election, and has threatened the Democratic Party, the news mediaand others who dare to oppose him with imprisonment (orworse) fortreason.

Donald Trump is also trying to defund the U.S.Postal Service, perhaps to preventmail-in voting. Such an outcome will force the American people and Democratic voters most of all to wait in line where they may well be exposed to the coronavirus.Refusing to permitmail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic will clearlysuppress voter turnout, an outcome that will help Trump remain in office. Shutting down the Postal Service will all but guarantee, arguably, that Trump will win asecond term.

Trump has also refusedto send lifesaving ventilators and other much-needed medical equipment to states or localities run by Democrats. Instead, hesdistributing urgently neededequipment like a dictator or mafia boss, as rewards to his court and other sycophants. In essence, Trump is intentionally hurting and killing those Americans who he deems to be disloyal to him and his regime.

In a recent essay forThe Atlantic, Kristy Parker and Yascha Mounk warned that Trumps blatant use of the authoritarians playbook during the coronavirus crisis will create an opportunity to further undermine American democracy:

Recent history shows that authoritarian populists engage in six categories of assaults on democracy, of which seizing raw executive power is but one. As president, Trump has engaged in each of these behaviors: spreading disinformation, quashing dissent, politicizing independent institutions, amassing executive power, delegitimizing communities, and corrupting elections.

Now, these same tendencies are shaping President Trumps response to the current pandemic. Perhaps the only authoritarian play Trump hasnt yet made is corrupting the upcoming election with the pandemic as an excuse. But we are in the early days of this crisis, and the prospects for him to do so or to abuse his powers in other ways are manifold.

Why do so many members of the news media, the chattering classand the public en masse continue to treat Donald Trump and his threats to democracy and the rule of law as jokesperformed by an incompetent buffoon who deserves mockery? (Which is truly a waste of energy, since Trump has proven himself to be a malignant narcissist withnosense of shame.)

Moreover, why do so many of these same people still believe that Trumps defeat is somehow inevitable, or that there will definitelybe a presidential election in November?

In a previous essay for Salon, I described these peopleasthe hope peddlers:

[T]he people whotell the public that everything will be OK, that the danger of the Trump regime has beensomehow exaggerated, that matters are not as dire or extreme as they appearand that a return to normalcy is inevitable if we somehow muddle through the present moment.

The hope peddlers are so personally, emotionallyand financially invested in the system that they are existentially incapable of admitting that Donald Trump and his regime are authoritarians and white neo-fascists who represent an existential threat to the United States of America.

The hope peddlers are also engaged in fantastical thinking where they truly believe that if they repeatedly disseminate narratives about nonexistent Democratic Party victories against Donald Trumps regime, suchvictories will somehow magically appear through sheer force of will.

Some of the other people who cannot admit to themselves (and the public) what and who Donald Trump really is are still stuck in the bargaining and denial stages of grief. Approaching the end of Trumps fourth year in office, such people are lost and may never come to terms with Americas horrible reality as failed democracy fully run by neoliberal gangster capitalists, white neo-fascistsand Christian nationalists.

OtherAmericans who arestill stuck in the stages of grief about the age of Trump are behaving like children hiding under the bed from monsters. Children do not yet know that human monsters arereal, and that hiding from them will bring no salvation. Adults have no excuse for engaging in such fallacious thinking.

Then there are others who do not understand the difference between hope and optimism. Activist and science fiction writer Cory Doctorow explained this in a 2016 essay:

Hope is why you tread water if your ship sinks in the open sea: Not because you have any real chance of being picked up, but because everyone who was picked up kicked until the rescue came.

Kicking is a necessary (but insufficient) precondition for survival. Theres a special kind of hope: the desperate hope we have for people who are depending upon us. If your ship sinks in open water and your child cant kick for herself, youll wrap her arms around your neck and kick twice as hard for both of you.

Hope involves taking agency and control over ones own destiny and then taking action to achieve that goal. Optimism is passive. Optimism is also assuming that someone else will do the hard work and that you can be a type of free rider for other peoples labor and struggle and sacrifices.

Optimism will not defeat Donald Trump and his authoritarian assault on American democracy and freedom. It is hope made real by the hope warriors which will defeat Donald Trump and his movement.

Donald Trump may not be a supervillain. But defeating him does require that the Fourth Estate and good Americans embrace alternative ways of thinking.

These new guidelines are:

Do not assume that Donald Trump is telling the truth. He has repeatedly shown himself at least 16,000 times to be a habitual liar.

Do not assume that Donald Trump is a decent human being,acting in the best interests of the country. He has repeatedly shown himself to be a corrupt, self-interested person who has no love for the United States and its people.

Do not assume that Donald Trump is an emotionally, intellectually or mentally healthy and normal human being. He has repeatedly shown that he is an obvious malignant narcissist, likely sociopath and apparent cult leader.

Stop assuming that Donald Trump is anything other than what he has shown himself to be. There is no alternate explanation for Trumps evil behavior. Trump is not kidding; Trump means what he says.

The American people in general, and especially the members of the media class,should have learned these rules four years ago, and internalized them. With Election Day 2020 only a few months away, it is almost too late.

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Donald Trump is not a supervillain he just wants to be one - AlterNet

Donald Trumps taste in films is not much of a secret. In 2012, he gave Movieline a list of his five favorite movies: Gone With the Wind, Citizen Kane, Goodfellas, The Godfather, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. After complaining about Parasites Oscar wins at a campaign rally just two months ago, he mused, Can we get, like, Gone with the Wind back, please? Sunset Boulevard? So many great movies.

Now hes added another favorite film to the list. On Tuesday morning, Trump tweeted his love for Mutiny on the Bounty:

Tell the Democrat Governors that Mutiny On The Bounty was one of my all time favorite movies, the president wrote. A good old fashioned mutiny every now and then is an exciting and invigorating thing to watch, especially when the mutineers need so much from the Captain. Too easy!

Presumably, Trump was responding to two announcements on Monday from several Democratic governors in the Northeast and on the West Coast. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Monday that he and the governors of New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Rhode Island were working together to plan a safe and coordinated reopening of their states businesses and systems following weeks of pandemic-related shutdowns. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced a similar pact between himself and the governors of California and Oregon.

Trumps tweet is fairly obviously an attempt to attach the rebellious and conspiratorial concept of a mutiny to these governors coordinated efforts; he insisted the same day in two additional tweets that only the federal government and the president are allowed to open up the states (which is not true). And at a press conference on Monday, he falsely insisted that he has the ultimate authority to override individual states protective measures against the pandemic.

As others have been quick to point out, Trumps tweet reveals his understanding of Mutiny on the Bounty to be limited at best. Trump didnt say which of the five versions of the story is one of his all time favorite movies. Its probably not the first, a silent film made in 1916, which has been lost to the sands of time. Its probably also not the second, a 1933 film called In the Wake of the Bounty, which marked Errol Flynns screen debut. But Trump could have been referring to the 1935 Charles Laughton-Clark Gable version, which won Best Picture at the 1936 Oscars. Or he might have meant the 1962 version starring Trevor Howard and Marlon Brando. Its even possible he was talking about the 1984 film The Bounty, starring Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson.

Nonetheless, it seems clear the president doesnt really grasp the plot. Mutiny on the Bounty, in brief, is based on an actual mutiny that took place in 1787, when a ship called HMS Bounty was sent to Tahiti to collect breadfruit plants, to grow in the West Indies to feed enslaved people in the colonies.

The ships captain, William Bligh, was reportedly a cruel, hubristic, paranoid commander, and he treated his first mate, a man named Fletcher Christian, so brutally that Christian led a mutiny against him.

If you squint, Trumps tweet could seem to align him with Bligh, the domineering and inhumane captain. In that case, the Democratic governors would be the Bountys mutinying crew. Such a comparison isnt very flattering to Trump, and suggests hes going to get thrown overboard. But it also doesnt make much sense from a basic story standpoint: The mutineers in Mutiny on the Bounty dont need so much from the Captain, so much as they object to his wanton cruelty and dehumanizing leadership. (What did Trump mean by Too easy! you ask? Who, truly, can say?)

As Jordan Hoffman writes at Vanity Fair, its possible the president confused Mutiny on the Bounty with some other movie involving a mutiny. Or perhaps he fell asleep halfway through. Or maybe hes never seen it and is just making stuff up.

But its also possible hes seen it, many times, and doesnt get it. In this scenario, Trumps well-documented love for the film Citizen Kane is instructive, since he expounded on it in a 2002 interview with documentarian Errol Morris. (You can watch that interview here.) Trump was exuberant in his love for the film in general and for the character of Charles Foster Kane specifically a megalomaniac demagogue who builds an empire but ends up empty and alone. The point of Citizen Kane is that all of the title characters fortune and fame couldnt fill the yawning maw that was at the center of his being, which his famous dying words, Rosebud, signify. (Rosebud is a sled he was playing on when he was taken away from his mother as a child.)

Trumps affinity for Kane apparently does not stem from the actual story of Citizen Kane, though it seems eerily parallel to many parts of Trumps own biography. Instead, during the interview with Morris, Trump made it clear that he sees the movie as a story about a man who chose the wrong woman, and whose troubles are linked to her.

Morris has spoken about the interview on multiple occasions, reflecting on Trumps irony deficit disorder. In one interview, Morris marveled at the seeming disconnect between Trumps understanding of Citizen Kane and the fairly obvious moral of the film:

If I were Donald Trump, I would not want to emphasize that connection with Kane. You know, a megalomaniac in love with power and crushing everything in his path. The inability to have friends, the inability to find love. The moral that Trump takes from KaneI mean, its one of the great lines that I recorded. I ask, Do you have any advice for Charles Foster Kane, sir? You know, lets get down to the psychiatric intervention. How can we help this poor man? Hes obviously troubled. How can we help him? Donald, help me out here!

And Donald says, My advice to Charles Foster Kane is find another woman! And you know, I thought, is that really the message that Welles was trying to convey? That Kane had made poor sexual choices, poor marriage choices?

Its not. Its really not.

Im confident that Trumps unsound readings of films like Citizen Kane and Mutiny on the Bounty dont necessarily mean he cant understand movies. The problem runs deeper than that.

Art acts like a mirror, reflecting ourselves back to us. When you watch a movie and respond to it, youre responding because it provokes something in you, or resonates with who you are. But art also acts like a window. A movie doesnt have to tell a story about someone just like you for you to respond to it; movies can give you a look into a deeper reality, something beyond yourself. If you find it difficult to connect to a movie, that might be the movies problem. Or it might be yours. The window-mirror of art reflects, in part, something about the person who watches it, and that reflection reveals whether theyre willing to look not just at it, but through it.

What readings like Trumps tend to indicate is that he only completes the first step a phenomenon the New Yorker critic Emily Nussbaum has dubbed the bad fan syndrome. For Trump, movies seem to reflect only what he wants to see in them: himself and his own concerns. But it appears he tends to miss, or willfully ignore, the greater reality that the window of a movie reveals.

In the midst of a pandemic, Donald Trumps specific movie opinions dont matter. But what they tell us about his mindset is troubling. Its difficult to care about anyone else when all you see is yourself.

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Trumps bizarre Mutiny on the Bounty tweet is revealing - Vox.com

Sarah Kendzior the New York Times bestselling author of "The View from Flyover Country" doesnt hold back in her assessment of the Trump administration: "We do not have a government; we have a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government."

In her new book, "Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America," she details Trumps rise to power dating back to the 1980s. She was supposed to come to Madison to promote her book this month, but no ones doing much traveling these days so we chatted about the book with each other from our own homes.

Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor totctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less.

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Wedge Issues: Sarah Kendzior on Donald Trump and 'Hiding in Plain Sight' - Madison.com

A watchdog group called for an investigation after the Army Corps of Engineers awarded a large no-bid contract to build a small stretch of border wallto a company owned by a major Republican donor.

The Army Corps of Engineersrevealed Tuesday that it had awarded a $569 million contract to BFBC, an affiliate of Barnard Construction, to build 17.17 miles of the border wallin California. The contract pays more than $33 million permile, even more than the $20 million per milethat the administration has spent on wall construction thus far.

The company, which has extensive ties to Republican lawmakers, has already received more than $1 billion to build 37 miles of the border wall, according to The Daily Beast. It originally received $141 million to build parts of the wall in Arizona, but the contract quickly grew to $443 million without any real explanation. An Army spokesperson told the outlet that the company got the new no-bid contract because it was already "mobilized and working."

Barnard Construction, the parent company BFBC, is owned by Timothy Barnard. Barnard and his wife Mary donated $5,600 to President Donald Trump's re-electionlast year after backing several of his Republican opponents in 2016, according to Federal Election Commission data. Barnard has also donated to Sens. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., John Cornyn, R-Tex., Cory Gardner, R-Colo., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C.

The company's leadership has donated more than $50,000 to the Montana Republican State Central Committee, according to the Daily Beast, and contributed tens of thousands to support Rep. Greg Gianforte, R-Mont., and Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont.

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Scott Amey, the general counsel at the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, told the outlet that the contract needs to be investigated.

"$1 billion for 37 miles of wall is a travesty and it must be investigated and audited immediately," he said. "That's nearly $27 million per mile, which is well above other wall costs. These efforts might make good on a campaign promise, but who is minding the store and ensuring that military readiness and bases are not negatively impacted?"

Laura Peterson, a former staffer on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, also questioned why the government was focused on border wall construction as it faces steep costs in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

"Pushing more money out the door for border-wall construction while COVID-19 puts the country into economic arrest reflects dubious priorities," she told The Daily Beast.

A group of House Democrats urged the Trump administration to halt border wall construction in order to focus on the health crisis days before the contract was awarded.

"In a time when our communities face the prospect of rationing ventilators and other life-saving care, all of our government's resources should be spent on building hospitals and medical equipment, and ensuring that the public is safe and healthcare workers have all of the resources they need to face this unprecedented crisis," four Democrats wrotein a letterto the Pentagon, Justice Departmentand Department of Homeland Security.

"There's no decency factor when it comes to this wall," Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., the lead signatory of the letter, told The Daily Beast. "These are cronies of Trump. The financial base, they're getting taken care of. Irrespective of the pandemic, the opposition to the wall, the environment, health, indigenous [concerns], all the court cases, this vanity wall proceeds at a rapid pace."

The Daily Beast's Noah Shachtman noted that the Army "somehow" found $569 million despite warning just a month earlier that it needed billions in extra fundingto respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

Journalist John Aravosis pointed out that the money could have instead bought "a couple billion N95 masks"desperately needed by health workers.

Former Obama State Department official Dan Baerargued that the story perfectly encapsulated the foundations of the Trump presidency: "massive corruption," "racist nationalism" and "negligent incompetence."

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It must be investigated: Trump donors get $569 million contract to build 17 miles of border wall - Salon

Weve put up with a lot as a nation over the years. But whatever your political party, the latest antics from President Trump, during a global pandemic which has killed more than 25,000 Americans, seal the deal: We need out of this mess for good.

Our threshold for the absolutely absurd and the inarguably indefensible has been fairly high, considering just how far Trump has pushed the boundaries of decency and incompetence.

Since the day he was elected, there has been a near constant-barrage of collateral damage all the stuff that came with him when a mere 27% of the eligible voting population ushered him into office.

There has been the unconventional and brash governing style, a revolving door of staffers and Cabinet members, a steep learning curve in the rules of governance, an inability to admit to failures, a hostility toward the press, etc.

And some of the fallout has been truly galling, from his administrations anti-immigrant policies that put kids in cages at the border to his clandestine attempts to interfere in our elections.

The baggage has not just been for his detractors, but for his supporters, too, who put up with his juvenile tweets, his unhinged attacks on perceived enemies (including even a teenage climate activist with Aspergers syndrome) and a politics of distraction that kept many of their favored policies from being accomplished.

From Republicans point of view, obsession with bringing down Trump also unleashed an unending flood of investigations by Democrats and a failed attempt to remove him from office.

As consumed as we were by the dizzying rollercoaster that has been Trumps presidency, all of that looks like kids stuff compared to the carnival ride from hell we are all on now.

This wasnt inevitable. On a practical level, we could be in better shape today had another administration been better equipped to deal with this pandemic. As two epidemiologists write in the New York Times this week, we could have saved thousands of lives had coronavirus been taken more seriously, earlier.

[A]n estimated 90% of the cumulative deaths in the United States from COVID-19, at least from the first wave of the epidemic, might have been prevented by putting social distancing policies into effect two weeks earlier, on March 2, when there were only 11 deaths in the entire country.

This administration was woefully and unforgivably unprepared for this pandemic, and this president has spent weeks dodging accountability for clear failures, which I outlined in an earlier column time and resources that could have been better used to catch us up and control the outbreak.

Instead, Trump has used this horrific health crisis to stoke more division, to attack governors and the media, to boost his reelection campaign and to needlessly confuse the American public. Even if you can accept that his administration was unprepared at the beginning, there is no excuse for his behavior since then.

There is no excuse for turning a press briefing into a campaign rally, where Trump used an opportunity to inform the American people to instead play a bizarre video of mashup clips attacking his critics.

There is no excuse for Trumps shadow war on experts at a time when we need them most. He has contradicted his own doctors and scientists publicly and privately, and sewn a public distrust in any authority but him. Hes allowed his followers to stoke nonsensical conspiracy theories about Dr. Anthony Fauci, an esteemed public health official, even retweeting a #FireFauci tweet.

And there is no excuse for Trumps brazen and unconstitutional power grab. Trump has tried to bully the states either into doing what he wants or praising his response. And his latest exercise in despotism When somebodys president of the United States, the authority is total was a disaster. Republicans and Democrats alike clapped back. Even some of his staunchest conservative defenders hammered the assertion and eventually he was forced to retreat.

This is utter lunacy. Why are we putting up with it?

Weve grown complacent about Trumps obvious incompetence and unmanageable mania, numbed by the inundation of idiocy over the past three years. But now its costing American lives, and we are all still in the crosshairs of his ineptitude.

Fortunately, theres a mechanism to stop the insanity and excise the cancerous rot from atop our leadership in November. But Im not sure that we can afford to wait that long.

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Donald Trump is the virus: His coronavirus response confirms how toxic he is for our nation - Chicago Sun-Times