Showing posts with label Emperor has no clothes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Emperor has no clothes. Show all posts

January 12, 2025

The emperor has no clothes and truth in packaging presidential promises, by Hal M. Brown

 



Bear with me on this, and if you haven't figured out why I used the illustrations above you will.

My partner and I are on the keto diet to lose the weight we gained during the pandemic. That's irrelevant to the point of this blog. To explain though, I was getting bored with the regimen of no carb protein and very low carb vegetable meals, so I ordered the keto crackers shown above from Amazon.

The picture on the package is four times as big as the real crackers and looks entirely different than the flat little squares inside. (I didn't expect a taste sensation so, in all fairness, I'd say they taste a little better than mildly flavored cardboard.)

Now to the political point of presidential packaging of promises (I am addicted to these alliterations):

Trump's promise to make life better for everyone, or at least for his supporters, is like the image on the package of crackers. The picture looks like a crunchy taste treat. It is nothing like what is really inside.

Racist, Democrat hating, LGBTQ demonizing, anti-woke warriors, and America first MAGA members of the Trump cult will get satisfaction in watching Trump's revenge tour unfold on TV. They probably are turned on by his bloviating attempts to intimidate the leaders of other countries. However, I can't see any way that these things will make the practicalities of their day to day lives better. 

I don't see the cost of living coming down. If it doesn't, people won't have more money in their pockets. They may have less. For some, imported goods prices may increase if he follows through on his tariffs. Deporting immigrants, for example, those who work in argiculture, may lead to food price increases or even shortages. 

In a less tangible way, there's what the rest of the world thinks of Trump. His supporters obviously want him to be seen as leader of the world. They want other leaders to kowtow to him the way American oligarchs have. Being mocked by leaders of Mexico, Canada, and Denmark won't have much impact. However, when other countries join in condemning him for his foreign policy decisions, and then some of them are photographed shunning him at international meetings, this may have an impact. 

This hopefully would lead to the gold plating showing cracks on the gilded Trump monument they are used to looking up to.

Trump may be ridiculed and rejected in more quarters. While I don't think he is capable of being embarrassed, his malignant narcissism may be triggered and he could do something rash like using the military to invade Greenland or Panama, or take actions against drug cartels in Mexico. He could see it as a diversionary tactic or, put another way, as wagging the dog

This could lead to his being sanctioned by the World Court. It could end up at the United Nations where the US would VETO any actual action, but it would still make the news. 

His hard core supporters would blow this off, but there would still be the drip-drip-drip of the realization of the truth among others who denied that the picture on the package belied the product inside.

Comparing Trump to the emperor in "The Emperor's New Clothes" became a meme. For example see Donald Trump’s emperor-has-no-clothes moment from 2022.  

Here's the well known plot of the Hans Christain Andersen story from Wikipedia just for a reminder:

The tale concerns an emperor who has an obsession with fancy new clothes, and spends lavishly on them, at the expense of state matters. One day, two con-men visit the emperor's capital. Posing as weavers, they offer to supply him with magnificent clothes that are invisible to those who are either incompetent or stupid. The gullible emperor hires them, and they set up looms and pretend to go to work. A succession of officials, starting with the emperor's wise and competent minister, and then ending with the emperor himself, visit them to check their progress. Each sees that the looms are empty but pretends otherwise to avoid being thought a fool.

Finally, the weavers report that the emperor's suit is finished. They mime dressing him and he sets off in a procession before the whole city. The townsfolk uncomfortably go along with the pretense, not wanting to appear inept or stupid, until a child blurts out that the emperor is wearing nothing at all. The people then realize that they have all been fooled. The emperor uncomfortably realizes it too, but opts to continue the procession, walking more proudly than ever. The fate of the con-men is not revealed.

More and more people will see what the grandiose preening narcissist really looks. Here's the illustration in the drawing from the Andersen book.


I used AI to make an image to add to this. I will spare you looking at one of the totally unclothed Trump images that came up when I turned off the adult content filter on the AI program I use for my blogs. 


In the story it took a young boy to shout out that the emperor was naked and confirm what everyone else was seeing. It will take more than one person to say this for it to have any major impact. This is akin to the one person in an audience begining to applaud or laugh and thus triggering an uproarious response. It is also like how in fiction a jury is depicted where an innocent person is being tried for murder and one juror is the only one who thinks they aren't guilty. This is the plot of Twelve Angry Men. It is also a subplot of several episodes of the TV series "The Equalizer" starring Queen Latifah. This features Aunt Vi who was the holdout who gradually persuaded the rest of the jury that the defendant was innocent.

In Trump's trial, the opposite would hold true. One person would be convincing the rest of the skeptical jury that he was guilty. Trump was already convicted of falsification of business records which is a kind of fraud. In this case for truth, justice, and the American way to be served, he must be convicted of a fraud perpetrated against the American people.

Addendum:

Would you have used another one of these AI images instead of the one I did?




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