Not my daddy
History is replete with autocrats who bestowed paternalistic titles on themselves, or encouraged their use. For his seventieth birthday Joseph Stalin’s terrified sycophants decreed him “Father of Nations” for his establishment of “people’s democracies.” Haitian president François Duvalier cultivated the moniker “Papa Doc.” And, of course, there’s the fraternalistic obsequies from Orwell’s 1984, where the unseen dictator is known only as Big Brother.
These titles, sometimes co-opted by dictators, are usually seen for what they are by their detractors, and the judgment of history has often been the ultimate detractor. History has a habit of mocking self-styled conceits.
As near as I can tell, it was, Nato’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, after showering Trump with orchestrated grovels over his unlawful attack of Iran, bizarrely referred to Trump as “daddy.” Trump lickspittle Jesse Watters of Fox “News” has also been quick to refer to Trump as “daddy.”
Never one to miss an opportunity for vulgar self-promotion, Trump has seized on the idea. And never ones to miss a disgusting chance to make money, Trump’s fundraising toadies are now selling online “merch,” probably made in China, from t-shirts to coffee mugs proclaiming Trump “daddy.”
After Trump returned from the Nato summit in The Hague, the White House proclaimed “Daddy’s Home,” accompanied by a video featuring the song “Hey Daddy (Daddy’s Home)” by Usher. It’s all intended to be overbrimming with the idea that Trump is a benign father figure, and Americans are all his children.
Well Trump hates many of his actual children. He has fraught relationships with Don Jr and Eric, a weird relationship with Ivanka, a nonexistent relationship with Tiffany and an absentee relationship with Barron. And we should never forget that babies don’t just come from fathers, they also come from rapists, and Trump is an officially judicated rapist.
Sorry, but Trump is not my daddy. He isn’t anyone’s daddy, for that matter. Trump is too busy being the baby, the one that’s constantly up in the middle of the night whining and screaming for the milk of attention. Trump is not my daddy, he’s not my friend, and he’s not my president. He’s simply the worst person in my lifetime, and the surreal, never ending nightmare is that the worst person in my lifetime somehow got elected president of the United States.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.