O reason not the need
Another thing, that I didn’t pay enough attention to. (It’s like reading Hamlet. There’s always something you missed – some theme or repeated metaphor or word with multiple meanings and overtones – so that it expands like one of those paper flower things, except that it never stops. In Hamlet, that is. In Trump it’s just a bit of stupidity or venality you didn’t notice fully enough the first few times around.)
Why did he send his idiotic letter to multiple ambassadors?
What was the plan? They were going to text each other and hastily put together a rebellion of the ambassadors and keep at it until Norway gave in and handed over the prize in a big silver-paper box with a red bow on top?
Or maybe he was hoping to form a clique. It would be like high school only better. His clique would sit at the best table and nobody else would be allowed to sit there, ever. He would be the boss of the clique. He would humiliate all the kids with glasses or acne or a brain.
Pretty much. I’m guessing he thought the ambassadors would all totally see his point, and they would call each other up and discuss it and decide to tell Norway it has to give Trump the Nobel or they won’t do any ambassing any more. It will be like a strike but with luxury restaurant dinners.
This plausibly drives a good chunk of Trump’s behavior.
Trump’s family was from Queens. Trump wanted to be accepted in the Manhattan real-estate scene, and the Manhattan social scene. He never felt that he was; he always felt like he was on the outside looking in.
You might imagine that he would feel like he was on the inside once he was elected President of the United States, but that kind of insecurity can be quite impervious to the circumstances of life. (Senator Lindsey Graham displays a similar dynamic.)
Trump displays an extraordinary deference and obsequiousness to Vladimir Putin. People have long speculated about kompromat, but my sense of it is that this is just another club that he wants entry to. Not the club of world leaders. He’s in that club (for what it’s worth) and he doesn’t care about it. The club that he wants into is the club of strong-man dictators: Vladimir Putin; Xi Jinping; Viktor Orbán; Kim Jong Un. He is not (yet) a dictator: he is still somewhat constrained by the U.S. legal and political system. So he’s still on the outside looking in.
His idea of the “best table” is . . . tacky Mar-a-lago? With McDonald’s and diet Coke?
[Shudders.] Yeesh.
Steven, #1: re. Trump sucking up to Putin.
Trump…Putin…Board of Peace. The Universe just ran out of irony meters.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c24g6pj2071o
@AOS
Bored of peace