The Baba Yaga Has a Florida Tan
Joel B. Levine MD
Donald Trump’s lawyer, himself a character bred from a cross of Bronx Tale and My Cousin Vinny, said it all. “He is the toughest guy I know”. For those not raised in New York City, these words need a translation. On the street they are high praise. They convey the values that are admired or were admired. In one generation, credibility became vulnerability.
Trump is the street guy’s guy. That makes him snake venom to this generation. He is poison for who he is and less for what he has done.
Look back. Richard Nixon was impeached for a political crime in a time of political crimes. He was resurrected. John Kennedy violated every moral norm you can think of. He was left unscathed. He even committed an impeachable act by lying to the public about the deal with the Soviets on the Jupiter missiles in Turkey. Yet Camelot remains well populated.
Trump, as President, was singular in many ways. If nothing else, he gave us a COVID vaccine in record time. This alone saved many. By every written account, he was not Presidential reeking of volatility, self-interest, lack of intellectual rigor, and breaker of norms (whatever they really are in DC).
What he really is however remains the gargoyle for many. He is the John Wick “Baba Yaga”, a specter of malevolence and, for lack of a better term, the Caddy Shack Rodney Dangerfield really gone to bad seed. But let’s recreate the Sordid Story “seismic scale”. Does anyone recall Ted Kennedy’s rape trial? Or the Georgetown Bar sexual assaults or the sex workers being smuggled in and out of the White House for his older brother?
The stuff of nostalgia for some is a whiff of phosgene for others. Hey, they are charmers, boys of the sun, Trump is the cellar dweller, the kind of common man simply despised by those who see themselves as uncommon.
Trump is a very hard pill to swallow. He evokes a bad juju, almost a fear that a Trump like creature will infect your life. He is a specter, for father, husband, or boss. To the Woke, he is a barbarian. For some, he is the push back against all that has been seen as limiting. It is a curious space to occupy, to be seen as a man of the “bad” people.
What is conundrum is what do you do when the paranoid has a reason to be paranoid? When the seers of conspiracy have 20–20 vison? From Russia to the Dossier, Trump became the rarest of public figures, the hated man who deserved to be but not for the reasons given.
Some think this is all to get him to be the challenger to President Biden. Trump lost because COVID permitted a shift in voting mechanisms that favored creative new ways to vote. Republicans did not believe that mail in and ballot harvesting would beat election day turnout. They were wrong. But they have learned. Trump lost by a total of 65000 votes that determined the Electoral count. This will be a different election.
Sometimes the beast gets stronger by being prodded. John is feared because no matter how wounded or damaged or fractured, he returns for a terrible vengeance. John Wick 4 will be nothing compared to Trump 3.
