Day 50 The Cheshire Cat; or, Now You See Me, Now You Don’t

The always-brilliant Jennifer Finney Boylan noted in her opinion essay on Sunday “The Curious Incident of No Dog in the White House,” “Much has been written about what might be generously described as Donald Trump’s lack of interest in dogs, and as the election of 2020 slowly draws near, it’s a subject worth considering again.” Her brief history of dogs of The White House is well worth your reading time.

“Donald Trump is, in fact, the first president since William McKinley [1897-1901] not to have a dog.” That’s 123 years.

I think I’ve figured out why, and it’s not because of his stated reason when someone tried to give him a dog. “Mr. Trump told Ms. Pope he was too busy for a dog. Later, he told supporters he didn’t need one. Because ‘that’s not the relationship I have with my people.’” What?

I think it’s because Donald Trump is actually a Cheshire Cat. With salaams and deep apologies to The Cheshire Cat.

Here’s Wikipedia, in my defense, “The Cheshire Cat is a fictional cat popularised by Lewis Carroll in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and known for its distinctive mischievous grin. ... One of its distinguishing features is that from time to time its body disappears, the last thing visible being its iconic grin.”

I need only change one letter that last sentence to make my point. Can you find it? One of its distinguishing features is that from time to time its body disappears, the last thing visible being its ironic grin.

The Coronavirus Outbreak aggregate this morning writes, “The federal guidelines put in place to slow the spread of the virus by encouraging people to curtail nearly all public life are set to expire today and President Trump has indicated he has no intention of extending the measures as states across the country move ahead with a variety of plans to gradually reopen their economies.

“ʻThey’ll be fading out, because now the governors are doing it,’ Mr. Trump told reporters on Wednesday, referring to the restrictions.” Fading out. Sound familiar?

Just like he’s done since before he was even elected President. Mr. Trump, like our friend the Cheshire Cat, disappears at will, only sometimes leaving behind a grin, a ghost of a grin at that. That grin seems to me to say, You’ll never pin me down.

Or to quote the literary original, “You may have noticed that I’m not all here myself.”

Uh, yeah. Actually, we did. Whenever the subject, any subject, arises that the President doesn’t like, he disappears.

I would also submit to you that he knows what he’s doing, and he’s doing it on purpose. That’s why the grin is ironic—he thinks he’s pulling a big one over on us. I don’t think so. Not any more, and not for a lot of us.

Interestingly, the Cheshire Cat has been around long enough that other disciplines have borrowed his disappearing act. Here’s ophthalmology:

“The Cheshire Cat effect, as described by Sally Duensing and Bob Miller, is a binocular rivalry which causes stationary objects seen in one eye to disappear from view when an object in motion crosses in front of the other eye.”

Here’s the explanation. Read it carefully. If you do, you’ll see how the Puppeteer-in-Chief operates like a Cool Hand Luke, and if those aren’t mixed metaphors, I don’t know what are.

“Each eye sees two different views of the world, sends those images to the visual cortex where they are combined, and creates a three-dimensional image. The Cheshire Cat effect occurs when one eye is fixated on a stationary object, while the other notices something moving. Since one eye is seeing a moving object, the brain will focus on it, causing parts of the stationary object to fade away from vision entirely.”

Isn’t that just what he does? Holding still, really, holding forth at a podium, and a reporter asks a question he doesn’t like, and bam! Something begins to move, him, or an aide, and voila! He changes the focus, and the question fades into the annals of time never to be found again.

Here’s a perfect example of how that technique really works. “Senior Trump administration officials have pushed American spy agencies to hunt for evidence to support an unsubstantiated theory that a government laboratory in Wuhan, China, was the origin of the coronavirus outbreak, according to current and former American officials. The effort comes as President Trump escalates a public campaign to blame China for the pandemic.”

Trump, still for the time being, but able to disappear when the moving object, China, takes the attention.

And then, cat lovers, among whom I am a card-carrying member, there’s this. “Trump and Kushner Engage in Revisionist History in Boasting of Success Over Virus.” “We did all the right moves,” the president said Wednesday. “The federal government rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story,” said his son-in-law.

Here’s a possible response from Lewis Carroll. “Most everyone is mad here.” Mr. Carroll, not to state the obvious, but someone has to, doesn’t mean angry. Although a lot more of us are getting there the longer the fiasco goes on.

“As states begin to lift quarantines, President Trump is trying to recast the story of the pandemic from that of an administration slow to see and address the threat to one that responded with decisive action that saved lives. Recognizing that the crisis jeopardizes his chances of re-election, he and his allies want to convince his supporters that the cascade of criticism is unwarranted.”

Unwarranted?

“In the revised history of the pandemic that Mr. Trump and his team offered, his actions were not belated and inadequate, but bold and effective. ‘We did all the right moves,’ Mr. Trump said. ‘If we didn’t do what we did, you would have had a million people die, maybe more, maybe two million people die.’”

Sez who? Not one authority with the credentials to know.

Jared Kushner, his equally deluded son-in-law, “presented a similarly revisionist account of the administration’s record on Wednesday. ‘We’re on the other side of the medical aspect of this, and I think that we’ve achieved all the different milestones that are needed. The federal government rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story. And I think that that’s really, you know, what needs to be told.”

Now you see me, or, us, now you don’t.

“Mr. Kushner’s comments drew scorn from critics of the administration. ‘On what planet is 59,000 plus deaths a ‘success story’?’ Michael R. Bromwich, a former federal prosecutor and Justice Department inspector general, asked on Twitter.

“Zac Petkanas, a Democratic strategist and campaign aide to Hillary Clinton in 2016, said the public would not be convinced. ‘The truth is that Trump and his administration’s response is anything but a success—especially when it comes to testing. They made huge promises that they simply haven’t delivered, including that ‘anybody who wants a test can get a test.’ But they aren’t fooling anyone.’”

I can only hope that they aren’t.

“Mr. Trump has demonstrated a striking tendency to try to frame the political narrative on his own terms, even when at variance with the facts, through relentless repetition and the power of his bully pulpit.”

You know, The Cheshire Cat sometimes helps Alice and sometimes harms her. He’s in it for himself. Cheshire Cats are like that. There are those who would maintain that cats are like that.

President Trump quite literally uses his disappearing act at will, just like the literary character.

Ms. Boylan writes, “The current moment, in its own way, is no less harrowing than [the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis]. It is a moment that calls out for decisions made with wisdom and calm. It is a moment in which we need Donald Trump to be a better kind of man, the kind that both dogs and humans—all of us—might look to with affection and respect.

“For over three years now many Americans have been anxiously waiting for Mr. Trump to grow into the job, to show that he understands he is the leader of the whole country and not just his core supporters. For a while, we thought, national moments of mourning, from Charlottesville to El Paso, might engender a new Trump, showing us a man governing—just once—from his heart, rather than his spleen.”

Or, his tyrannical, maniacal, Gulliverian ego.

“Donald Trump has failed to be that man.” Actually, he hasn’t. He never had aspirations to be that man, no matter our hope-filled wishes that he could be. No such luck, Beloved.

Instead, we have a chronic, acute, presto-chango, history re-writer up for re-election in six months who will think anything, say anything, and do anything to keep his now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t narrative front and center despite the fact that Americans continue to die, the fact that we are woefully unequipped to do the testing that would keep us safe, the fact that he doesn’t deserve the job because he doesn’t care about anyone but himself.

We cannot afford to let that iconic, ironic grin out of our sight for one more minute, Beloved. No matter the disappearing act, no matter his superpower of focus.

Focus is a fascinating word etymologically. It means hearth. The hearth is the center of the home. Our focus is under our control; we choose where we place it. Let’s not focus on the lights-flashing-on-and-off, nobody’s home sham that was elected last time.

We need to use our own abilities to focus, both individually and collectively, to guarantee that no matter the revision, we’re telling ourselves what really happened, what is really happening, and what will likely be happening for some time to come, and vote accordingly.

Dr. Susan Corso is a metaphysician and medical intuitive with a private counseling practice for more than 35 years. She has written too many books to list here. Her website is www.susancorso.com

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