The Family That Preys Together

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

“Wennerström was devoting himself to fraud that was so extensive it was no longer merely criminal–it was business.”
"You will be investigating thieves, bullies... the most detestable collection of people that you will ever meet- My family."
― Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Ages and ages hence, there will come that revelatory eye-rubbing period when everyone except for your dyed-in-the-wool Neo Nazi white supremacist (aka your die-hard Trump voters) will wonder, "What the fuck happened on Election Night 2016?" From the epicenter that was post-war Nuremberg, I'm sure many Germans who'd survived that war asked themselves the same question about Election Night 1933.

     "But... but, he swore he had the nation's best interests at heart, that he would make our nation great again!"

     Yet, it could at least be said that Hitler (even if only perhaps he had no family to speak of) never resorted to nepotism to position his family at the top echelons in the new government. But if Adolph Hitler had children, one gets the uneasy feeling they'd be alarmingly like Trump's two eldest sons Erik and Don Jr.

     As just one simple reminder of what we're talking about, let's look at a recently-unearthed fact within the Trump family dynamic: That Donald Jr. and Ivanka wanted to screw Tiffany Trump out of her inheritance. Trump admitted as much on the Howard Stern Show during the campaign and he may have said it for all 1% families when he told Stern, 

     “I have a friend who is also like a very rich guy. And he said how his children hate the new children coming along and everything else; I said, 'Yeah, because every time you have a child, it's 20 percent less to the people.”

     In normal families, it's expected for the older siblings to get jealous over the seemingly lessened attention to them whenever a new baby comes into the family. Eventually, however, in normal families the older siblings get over it and lovingly accept the new one into the family dynamic. In families such as the Trumps, it's not the lessening of attention they worry about but the lessening of their inheritance no matter how massive that legacy will be. And, in true psychopathic fashion, Trump seems OK and accepting of that.

     And maybe, some day, Tiffany will simply drop out of sight, ashamed to be associated with her family, and will wish to strike out on her own. Perhaps she'll fake her own death as had the 16 year-old Harriet Vanger in Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. But, knowing her three older siblings... who knows how it'll happen if it does?

Breaking Fast With Tiffany

Even though I don't personally know the girl, I and, I'm sure, several of you have always suspected that Tiffany Trump is the Marilyn Munster of the Trump family. It's her normality and likeableness that automatically makes her an outcast in this bizarre collection of freaks that in itself is reminiscent of the Vanger family in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Being a First Daughter, she'll dutifully do her part for the sake of the family, keeps her opinions to herself but not a bit more. Who can forget October last year when, after a debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump leaned in to kiss Tiffany and she gracefully leaned away like Esther Williams getting out of the path of a Great White?

     Trump himself admitted on Election Night, “I'm very proud, because Don and Eric and Ivanka and—you know, to a lesser extent 'cause she just got out of school, out of college, but, uh, Tiffany, who has also been so terrific...”

     So, it shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone who knows the first thing about this Vanger family come to life, this personification of the DSM-V that Trump's pride in his children is predicated on how much money they can grub. And, speaking of which, apparently being each an heir to about a billion apiece isn't enough for some of the spawn who still dream of that three-way cut. 

     It bears repeating, especially to anyone who has yet to read the internationally bestselling Millennium trilogy by left wing Swedish novelist and journalist Stieg Larsson. Larsson was the kind of liberal this country needs in the field of journalism and at this precise time. With all due respect to the Mueller investigation, we need a left wing antidote to the noxious right wing fascists currently running loose over hill and dale.

     Mikael Blomkvist was little more than a thinly-disguised version of Larsson himself. Expo, also, was the real-life Millennium. However, even Blomkvist never spent 1977 training far left Eritrean female guerilla fighters in the use of mortars. Until virtually the day of his death, Larsson tirelessly pushed back against right wing extremism that, as in the US, sometimes in Sweden rears its ugly head.

     As with his creation Blomkvist, Larsson was primarily a financial journalist who went after far right wing industrialists such as the ones who tried to engineer a fascist takeover of Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration in 1933. One would be hard-pressed if not outright confounded to think of a single American financial journalist today who would've considered it a calling, if not a quasi religious mission, to investigate fascist freaks such as the Trumps. These people have no loyalty to each other except when they share in the iniquity in which they're steeped, and have been steeped, practically from the cradle. And, as Tiffany shows, they will screw one of their own over a bigger percentage. Because that's what shockingly selfish people like the Trumps do.

     Barron, watch both sides of the street when you cross. Your father, after all, never even mentioned you on Election Night.