One of the greatest ironies of the train wreck Trump presidency is how conservatives have eagerly embraced previously despised attributes of liberals. After years of decrying political correctness, micro-aggressions and trigger warnings, we now have a president who thinks he is a special snowflake.
What’s a special snowflake?
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Trump allows himself to be emasculated by Bannon and Putin because of his desperate need for flattery. [/pullquote]
According to the LA Times, a special snowflake is typically a millennial:
… who has been raised to see herself and her experiences as unique and therefore demanding of heightened levels of sensitivity and respect…
According to the stereotype, snowflakes drive professors crazy by recoiling at emotionally charged reading material and drive their bosses crazy by chafing at the concept of an office hierarchy. They can’t tell the difference between an awkward social interaction and a microaggression.
Sound familiar?
President Snowflake sees himself as special and not bound by the usual rules of social interaction. He finds facts intolerable, interprets every bit of criticism as a micro-aggression and is obsessed with the way the world views him.
President Snowflake’s actions, which are inexplicable to most mature adults, and virtually unprecedented in any government official who wishes to be taken seriously, make perfect sense when viewed from the prism of his heightened sense of both self-regard and grievance.
True, Trump is not a millennial. He came by his special snowflake status the old fashioned way: he had a rich father. Money is what initially gave Trump the conviction that he is deserving of special accommodations and his belief that rules are for other people not for him.
By accounts of many people who have known him throughout his life, he has always been a bully. He is thin-skinned, narcissistic and incredibly vindictive. Those traits have metastasized to full blown snowflake status.
He cannot tolerate facts he doesn’t like so he skips intelligence briefings; he cannot tolerate criticism so he surrounds himself with flunky losers like Sean Spicer and Kelly-Anne Conway; he is easy prey for anyone who flatters him, like Steve Bannon despite the fact that Bannon has made him look stupider, clumsier and even more obnoxious that he already looked. That also explains his avidity for Vladimir Putin who has played him like a fiddle. Trump may have committed outright treason because Putin, one of the greatest threats to humanity, has made him feel good about himself.
Trump consistently retreats to lies that his enablers sugarcoat as “alternative facts.” Partly that’s because lies are essential to any authoritarian state and Trump dreams of being a tin-pot dictator. But I suspect that like most special snowflakes, he prefers to see the world as he imagines it should be rather than the way it is.
His obsession with Saturday Night Live parodies, individual reporters, and individual media outlets stems from his belief that anything that make him feel bad is an aggression that must be punished. Most politicians, when parodied on SNL take it as a sign that they have “arrived.” Trump, in contrast, evinces no understanding that this is part of the job of any president nor any understanding that it is his own words and personal behavior that make every parody so scathing.
Trump is such a special snowflake that he cannot tolerate disagreement of any kind. When Assistant Attorney General Sally Yates refused to implement his unconstitutional Muslim ban, he characterized it as a “betrayal.” When Federal judges blocked him, he attempted to defy them. When another Federal judge upheld a lower court ruling Trump demeaned him as a “so called” judge and sought to blame him for future terrorist attacks.
Trump’s attempts to muzzle the press by accusing them of lying — despite a complete lack of evidence — and his efforts to punish CNN in particular are political correctness of the highest order, just right wing correctness, not left wing correctness. Trump is triggered by the truth, but no warning is adequate; the truth must be abolished altogether.
The ultimate irony is that Trump is everything that he professes to despise. He is an ignorant, incompetent loser, a small man who appears even smaller in the awesome job of president. And he allows himself to be emasculated by Bannon and Putin because of his desperate need for flattery.
He is President Snowflake, endlessly tweeting his hostility to laws, people and even facts that bruise his fragile ego.
