Is This the Secret to His Success?

What more is there to say about Donald Trump? More than four dozen books address his tenure as President.  Hundreds more address his business career. That is a lot of spilled ink.

Read all these books and you may still be at a loss as to who this strange, orange-coiffed man is. His actions often do not make sense.  At times he appears self-destructive.  Does he have any self-consciousness?

Psychologists, political scientists, journalists, and politicians (normal ones) have not yet figured him out. 

Maybe the solution is right in front of us. In the list of the  Catholic Church’s Seven Deadly Sins.  Trump scores 7 for 7. Not bad for a non-Catholic.

The list, first appearing in the 6th century under the auspices of Pope Gregory I, offers a concise, convincing description of Trump. It is as if he got a copy in grade school and used it as a guide ever since.

Trump has not just dabbled in each of the sins, he’s mastered them. There is no category in the Guinness Book for how often someone has violated any one or all of the seven sins, but if there was, Trump would have a shot at it.

Lust

Karen McDougal, Stormy Daniels, and others, possibly including a few professionals in Moscow, are proof that the President has, or had a powerful sex drive.  It is what might have prompted Trump to buy the Miss Universe Pageant, which created an opportunity to catch a show in the changing room.  And then there is that one-time friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and his sidekick Ghislaine. 

Gluttony

The President has said he weighs 243 pounds.  Morning Joe claims he is pushing 300.  Nancy Pelosi has suggested he is morbidly obese.  What exactly does he weigh?  Melania herself may not know.  What we do know is that he is fat and practices the diet of a 15-year-old.  His favorite meals include bacon and eggs, fast-food, and ice cream. 

In fairness, Trump is no boozehound.  He does not drink.  Does he pop an occasional pill?  He takes hydroxychloroquine and announced it, to the displeasure of epidemiologists, at a COVID-19 press briefing.  Recreational drugs?  No evidence unless you want to consider some of his more bizarre behavior.

Greed

Is Trump greedy?  There is no need to analyze this one.  In 2016, he bragged, “I like money. I’m very greedy. I’m a greedy person. I shouldn’t tell you that, I’m a greedy — I’ve always been greedy. I love money, right?”

Despite his claimed wealth, he has a long history of cheating contractors.  He surrounds himself with a gaudy display of gold plated furniture that would make King Louis XIV, the king who moved the royal court to the palace of Versailles, blush. 

Trump’s decorating style has been compared to that of the late King.  Does Trump have a gold-plated toilet?  Apparently not, but, knowing of Trump’s fondness for gold, the Guggenheim Museum offered him one in 2018. 

Sloth

The President’s reluctance to work, or even engage in the appearance of trying, is well documented. He doesn’t read.  He is a textbook example of a sloth.  He may be our most lazy modern President unless you consider watching TV and tweeting work.  Proof of Trump’s sloth is documented in how he schedules and uses “Executive Time,” time on his calendar spent by himself with no meetings or phone calls officially scheduled.  Approximately 60 percent of his time was so categorized.

Don’t forget golf, which is work for some people. Trump has played golf over 290 times since becoming president.

Wrath

Unless you have a thick skin, don’t anger the President. Trump doesn’t hesitate to unleash his wrath—his strong, vengeful anger or indignation—against anyone who upsets him.  He’s called for Representative Adam Schiff to be arrested.  He’ called former National Security Advisor Bolton “a Creepster.” James Clapper is a “proven liar.”  The list goes on.

Trump is also threatening punishment against cities, always headed by a Democratic mayor, that he calls “anarchist cities.” He’s threatening to cut off federal aid and take other punitive action.

Beware the Wrath of Trump!

Envy

Who does Trump envy?  Other heads of state who are richer than he is or who head nations not hampered with the rule of law and democracy.  Think Vladimir Putin and other dictators.  Also Barack Obama.  Why else would Trump hire an actor to play President Obama in a video of Trump firing him?

Trump is envious of Obama’s popularity, but can’t seem to figure out why people don’t like him.

Pride

Hubris, inordinate self-esteem.  How many times have you heard President Trump describe himself as “great” or “the best?”  He is a self-described genius, driven by ego.  A man who trusts his gut.

Catholic theologians view Pride as the worst of the seven deadly sins, in part because it spawns the commission of the six others. 

Most of us do not aspire to be guilty of the Seven Deadly Sins. One wonders, however, if the personality traits that helped Trump achieve this distinction are not the same characteristics that made him successful or at least appear that way.   

The President has the appearance of being extremely successful. The amount of Trump’s fortune remains a mystery. In April, Forbes estimated he was worth $2.1 billion.  That was after losing a billion or so due to the pandemic.  Others question these numbers.  Trump has a track record of appearing to be wealthier than he is.

But who cares?  Maybe the goal is to look like he is rich. The motivation?  When he was younger, to get women.  When he was older, to persuade banks to lend him money even when the information in front of them told them they should not.  Now, looking wealthy is baked into his persona.  Trump looks in the mirror and sees “winner.”

That is consistent with his mastery of the Seven Deadly Sins.

J.E. Dean of Oxford is a retired attorney and public affairs consultant. For more than 30 years, he advised clients on federal education and social service policy.

Brian Jungen is a member of the Dane-Zaa tribe of the First Nations of Canada, historically referred to as the Beaver tribe.  His mother was Dane-Zaa, his father a Swiss immigrant.  Jungen was raised in the rural town of Fort St. John, British Columbia, until his parents died in a fire.  Afterwards, he lived with his Aunt, an unhappy experience. A loner and he spent much of his time outdoors. His parents recognized his artistic talent and had supported it.  Determined to see where his talent would take him, he enrolled after high school in the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design.  “That was pretty rough.  I was a small-town kid, and I didn’t know anybody my age.  I’d never lived in the city.  I did meet other 18-year-olds, but they were city kids and way cooler than me.”  He graduated from the Emily Carr Institute in 1992, with a degree in visual arts. He subsequently studied art history at Concordia University in Montreal.

Jungen’s early works were drawings.  His real inspiration occurred in 1998, when he visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.  He saw fossils and butterflies exhibited with Native American art “as though it was nature, not culture.”  He wrote that the museum displays depressed him.  Later he passed Nike Town, Nike’s New York City’s flagship store.  “I saw the Air Jordans in display cases, and that’s when it really all kind of made sense.”  The shoes were red, white and black, the colors of the Haida, the Kwakwaka’waka,  and the Bella Coola nations, the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest.  “Professional sports play a role in society that serves like a ritual and ceremony.  Having experienced that within my own family–the dancing and drumming that I participate in–I know how important that is.  So I wanted to use that–use things that people would recognize in their everyday world.”

Prototypes for a New Understanding (1998-2005)

Jungen says, “a lot of my exposure to my ancestry is through museums” where the confiscated items were displayed in glass vitrines (display cases), as were the Air Jordans in the Nike store.   At the time, he was reading books on his history and had discovered in1876, the Canadian government banned Indian art and seized masks, blankets, and other objects in order to suppress Indian culture. Coincidentally, he was reading Levi-Strauss’s The Way of the Masks. “I was doing a residency, which provided both money and time for art making.  So I bought these Air Jordans.  I started taking them apart and reassembling them.  But it was unplanned – the works evolved as I made them.”  

In 1999, Jungen had a one person show at Charles H. Scott Gallery in Vancouver, where he introduced the series “Prototypes for a New Understanding”.  The series consisted of original masks made from Air Jordans.   He believed sport culture has much in common with Indian culture.  Performance is a part of both cultures as both required the use of regalia in special events and ceremony.  “It was interesting to see how by simply manipulating the Air Jordan shoes you could evoke specific cultural traditions whilst simultaneously amplifying the process of cultural corruption and assimilation.  The Nike sculptures seemed to articulate a paradoxical relationship between a consumerist artefact and an ‘authentic’ artefact. I experiment until I can find a way I can manipulate them or take advantage of their iconography, without completely changing them.  I like the fact that people can still recognize what the source material is.”

Jungen’s choice of AirJordans was intentional; the sports industry had appropriated so many names such as The Chiefs, Braves, and Redskins.  “I felt that if these professional sports teams felt that they had every right to use this terminology, then I had every right to exploit their materials for my artwork.” Jungen certainly would applaud the Washington Redskins decision to change their name.  Air Jordans went on the market in 1985 and sold for $65.  Jungen made 23 masks, the same as Michael Jordan’s team number.  Jordan owns one of the masks.  “They became the iconic sneaker that everyone wanted, and they’re still like that.  I was interested in paralleling that with Native art and now Native art is bought and fetishized.”  Today a new pair of Air Jordans can sell for as much as $200.00, and Nike has produced 23 versions.  Collectors treasure and display their collections of vintage Air Jordans, some vintage shoes sell for as much as $31,000.

Shapeshifter (2000)

Another of Jurgen’s concerns is the trash we discard that helps to pollute our environment.  He remembers his mother: “She was constantly trying to extend the life of things, packages, and utensils.  Once we had to use the back end of a pickup truck as an extension for our hog pen.”  In 2000, while he was reading the history of whaling, the extermination of an animal significant in a variety of ways for the Haida culture, he happened upon a large number of broken white molded plastic chairs that were discarded at the curb. “Everything kind of clicked. “  Consisting only of white plastic chairs, “Shapeshifter “(2000)(57’’x260’’x52’’) forms the skeleton of a whale.  The whale sculpture was hung from the ceiling as if on display in a natural history museum.  Jungen referred to the whale as captured, “a parallel of the First Nations individual who is both marginalized and fetishized by mainstream culture.”

Jungen’s works go beyond his concern for the dispossession and appropriation of Native American arts to concerns for consumerism and the environment.  “Untitled” (2001) was a work of sculpture seemingly made of ten stacked cheap wooden palette’s used to move mass produced goods.  On closer inspection it is evident that they are not cheap palettes, but carefully and beautifully hand-made by the artists from red cedar, the wood used by Northwest Coast Indian carvers.  The piece questions our first impressions, and our response to common objects; and it asks us to further examine and change our understanding.  The work quietly suggests this understanding can extend to our judgment of people.  In the same year, Jungen produced “Isolated Depiction of the Passage of Time”(2001) (44’’x46’’x39’’) was indeed a dozen stacks of plastic food trays.  They were color coded to match statistics on the length of jail sentences given to First Nation individuals.  Inside the stack a video continually played The Great Escape.  “Court” (2004) was a life size replica of a basketball court made of 231 wood sweatshop sewing machine tables with hundreds of holes for attaching the sewing machines.  It is a reminder that Air Jordans are made in sweatshops in Indonesia. Jungen’s political statements are intended to make us think.  “Politically, I think persuasion is better than force.”

Crux (2008)

Jungen also incorporates arts and ideas from indigenous peoples around the world.  In 2008, he went to Australia and camped on Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbor, with the Sydney airport nearby.  Influenced by looking at the night sky and hearing planes go over, he created “Crux” (2008)(26’ x 20’) a mobile made from luggage which he tore apart to create the animals seen in the constellations, observed for thousands of years by the Aborigines, “those who sleep on the surface of the earth under the night sky.” These constellations made from suitcases, were hung from the ceiling enabling viewers to see them in the sky.  Most easily identifiable are the large Alligator, a pink and purple Emu, a Shark (a gray Samsonite suitcase), and a Red Eagle.  An over-turned rowboat is included; Jungen used it to go back and forth from the Island to the mainland.  The work was made for and first displayed at Australia’s contemporary arts festival.

Performance Bonnet (2019)

Jurgen has manipulated many different materials to create his unique works of art.  In 2016, Jungen returned to Air Jordans for an exhibition featuring masks that are more abstract.  Unlike his earlier masks, these can be worn.  “Performance Bonnet” (2019)(32’’x31’’x30’’) is one of several of this new type.  Masks traditionally were of animals and were worn as part of dance rituals asking the spirit world for help.  Each mask allows the wearer to become one with the animal represented and therefore enter into the spirit world.  

Jungen lives on his ranch near Vancouver in British Columbia, where he can hunt, raise animals and work.  He prefers the peace and quiet of living alone. He is still a hard working artist and continues to respond to the world around him.  Some of his latest works are “Plague Masks” (2020), which responds to our current COCID-19 pandemic. 

In a recent interview Jurgen commented, “A lot of young people, when they see my work in museums, they kind of lose it because at first all they see that I cut up all these Air Jordans.  There’s this kind of sacrilegious shock a lot of kids have.  And then they see what it’s become.  There’s this switch that happened.  I like that. I like that is happens.”

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown six years ago, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and Chesapeake College’s Institute for Adult Learning.  She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

Social distancing, let me begin, not the familiar six feet apart, but the social distance between the Midwest and the Coasts and why that makes a difference.

Where I grew up, Donald Trump didn’t. Midwest ears are as attuned to his self-indulgent rhetoric as senior living centers are to heavy metal rock.

Where I grew up the news people probably paid some attention to the New York Times, but then put it aside. Then in my fifties I found myself living and working in New York City (NYC) and the Times was delivered to the back door of our apartment. I got a daily lesson in the socio-economic distance between the Times and Midwestern points of view. Their similarity: both used newsprint.

In NYC and the citadel of the West Coast culture, Los Angeles, venues were instructive. My wife and I went to the jazz clubs, but the venues of the future were elsewhere. Elsewhere was where you saw the future—where the latest fads in drugs and sex were on offer and display.  

In the Midwest you found out about the latest fads, well later. You were downstream, in what is increasingly a streaming world. The censors who used to pay some attention to content at NBC, CBS and ABC were out of work. Indeed, the Networks were rapidly giving way to Netflix and it’s late followers. The youthful vanguard was looking for splash—the venues and channels that were re-defining culture offered up sensations. 

But let me turn back to politics—the public expression of our views about the direction of our country. 

While few, if any, admired the man, well the man was at least “telling it like it is”. Or so many thought. Many felt so distanced from what Trump was attacking that they overlooked his social behavior. 

And, Hillary Clinton’s late career move was revealing. When she decided to run for office, she didn’t return to Arkansas where she had been First Lady for twelve years. Nope, she moved to New York—well to a suburb of the City. It is one of those bubble suburbs—a gated community without the guard stands.

I must admit to befuddlement. The 2016 election left me confused. I thought my Midwestern friends would reject Trump regardless of feeling some affinity for either his new Party and/or some of his positions. Of course, many did. Trump was not crowned; he eked out razor-thin wins in a handful of key States while losing the popular vote. 

Now, the Coastals have written him off. They sneer, “I told you so”. And in many respects they are right. Daily, regardless of the news source, we learn of another self-delusional tweet. But, elections in the United States offer up two people and we must choose.

Most of my friends believe the choice is clear and today’s polls bear that out. My earlier befuddlement causes me to be more cautious and occasionally the devil’s advocate.

I worry for America. We have not been at our best for some time. Yes, I can write about slices of Her dynamism and end the column on a positive note. But then I look at our choice in November.

Donald Trump has confirmed my earlier and oft expressed view. But, Joe Biden?

Monarchies have not infrequently been governed by a King or Queen that was, shall we say, beyond his or her freshness date or capacity. Is that America’s fate at this most challenging moment?

Vice President Biden, it is said, is on the threshold of making the most important decision of his candidacy—choosing a running mate. Succession is on almost everybody’s mind.

If the importance of his choice is true then it is important for the public to take measure not just of the choice but also of the process.  Joe Biden is a derivative candidate—he derives strength from others. His signature credential is not what he has done; it is his association with Barack Obama. His victory was earned not by his superior campaign but because he was anointed by the estimable Congressman, Jim Clyburn, from South Carolina. And he has chosen to stay home (mostly) and now some in the commentariat are suggesting that debates should be foregone. 

Biden has turned to identity politics for this “most important decision”. Appealing to the feminist wing of his Party, he pledged to select a woman as a running mate. Then rather quickly his most ardent supporters narrowed it to a “woman of color”.

Until quite recently I was not familiar with some of the women on what the scribes of today say is the list. These are women who should be considered, for sure.

But let me come back to the process, because if my Midwestern intuition is correct that is where Biden has taken a turn too far, for many. Why, they would ask, has the candidate pool been so affected by identity politics that “day one” readiness is a missing criterion?

Oh for that moment in history when both political parties were on the doorstep of Dwight Eisenhower. They were both looking for a leader. And do we need one now.

American politics must offer to all the opportunity to be President, that is for sure. Many believed that was confirmed when Barack Obama was elected. Indeed President Obama won in 2008 with 52.9% of the vote while President Trump was elected with 46.1% (prevailing in the Electoral College).

I hope, for my children and grandchildren’s sake that America will again overcome socio-economic and political distancing and seek out demonstrated leadership. I hope when that happens that both Parties will show up at the doorstep of a woman. 

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al recently published Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

The Board of Directors of Chestertown RiverArts supports the creation of the proposed street murals dedicated to anti-racism. RiverArts’ mission is “growing community, creativity, and connection through the Arts.” Our support of the mural project builds on our commitment to creating a more inclusive community where all citizens are welcome and valued.

We believe that public art should attract attention and create dialogue; it can be transformational to society. This mural project will continue to open a discussion that our community desperately needs. We support the project as a complement to the strategic action and policy changes that are needed to change the centuries old inequalities that split our community.

Pamela White
President, Board of Directors
Chestertown RiverArts