Donald and Sarah in my mother’s living room

Donald and Sarah in my mother’s living room
by David Benjamin

MADISON Wis. — I couldn’t help it. There on TV, broadcast from somewhere in darkest, dimmest Iowa, was the second coming of Sarah Palin, riffing and jiving, flapping her arms, cackling at her own jokes and speaking fluent bumper-sticker — while Donald Trump stood by, surreally silent and wearing an embalmed-corpse grin.

As I watched the Palin/Trump tag team, I couldn’t help recalling my evil stepfather, Randy, who might well have been their spiritual mentor.

Randy was a mean drunk. For the first decade or so of his symbiosis with my mother, Randy was always drunk, and always talking, always — by his insistence — the center of attention. When alcoholic rot finally forced him to stop drinking, he revealed himself to be the identical horse’s ass that he’d been when he was perpetually polluted. He gave sobriety a bad name.

As Randy turned out, his problem wasn’t booze. It was Randy, a human cesspool of bitterness, nameless recriminations, seething bigotry, misanthropy, misogyny and political nihilism. Every minute of every day, Randy foresaw the collapse of civilization beneath a swarthy horde of barbarians eating welfare caviar and driving pimpmobile Cadillacs. Randy loved America, mainly because he was American. Randy despised America, because it let too many other people be Americans.

But Randy’s hatred wasn’t strictly a matter of nationalistm. It was universal and ecumenical.

Entering a room where Randy lurked, sunk into an easy chair and scowling at the TV, was like finding yourself in a locked room with an abused Doberman. Though he might seem quiescent for a moment, you could depend on him to commence foaming through his lips and baring his fangs.

Randy’s rage had no rational source. By surviving World War II untouched, he’d earned a free Bachelor’s Degree on the GI Bill, plus cheap beer at the VFW. He was a tenured manager in a generous company, with a pension plan and free health care. He had an inexplicably loyal wife and a couple of nice kids by a previous marriage (not to mention three stepchildren who couldn’t stand him). He had money in the bank, a regular stool at his favorite bar, a big house in a nice neighborhood in a beautiful city, a late-model car and Mom to drive him around after the DMV took away his license. Despite himself, Randy had a piece of the American dream.

And he hated it.

An encounter with Randy typically began with an offhand remark that was outrageous, usually bigoted, always angry and visceral, and entirely devoid of reason, foundation or temperance. He was setting you up. Respond politely or hold your tongue and he would escalate, with a comment even more vicious and preposterous, daring you to talk back, raising your blood pressure, teasing out your indignation. He would keep up the flow of venom, slurring, spewing and slandering until — “JESUS CHRIST, RANDY!” — you’d snap. Everybody, eventually, snapped. Ghandi would have cracked. Martin Luther King would have resorted to violence. The Dalai Lama would have forsaken the lotus position to kick Randy in the nuts.

Once empowered by your anger, Randy owned you. He got personal, slinging insults, disparaging your character, brains and looks, your manhood, your worthiness to occupy space on the planet. He sneered, sputtered, muttered and upchucked a barrage of provocations so unjust and scurrilous that you began scanning the room for a blunt object heavy enough to obliterate his face and drive his teeth into his spinal cord.

Rather than that, you just fled, as fast and far as possible. I stopped visiting my mother, for 25 years, while Randy was in her house. The Elks Club, a sort of local refuge for obnoxious drunks, wearied of his act, refused him service and told him never to come back.

So, last week, I listened to Sarah’s dipsoid stream-of-consciousness in Iowa. I watched Donald waiting itchily for his turn to roar. And I thought of Randy. Couldn’t help it.
He would have loved these two.

Palin and Trump — like Randy — are geysers of inchoate grievance, erupting at predictable intervals to scald and inflame every living thing within range of their voices. Like Randy, they see a world that has betrayed them personally and dashed every cherished hope for every white Christian. Like Randy, Palin and Trump know whom to blame for America’s cowardly descent into a mongrel-breeding hellhole and a landfill for the scum of the earth.

And they’ll tell you. Over and over again. At the top of their lungs. ’Til you’re ready to tear your hair and run screaming from the room.

But here’s the part that momentarily had me puzzled. Nobody was fleeing that stadium in Iowa. Crowds were cheering. What’s wrong with these people?

But I think I’ve figured it out. Yes, Palin and Trump are the apotheosis of the obnoxious drunk. From a safe distance, however, a blowhard with a snootful can be strangely amusing. His rants, raves, calumnies, dark fantasies and free associations have a certain sideshow charm. And sure enough, now and then — like the proverbial infinite number of monkeys — the obnoxious drunk will say something you wish you’d said (if only you weren’t sober).

But as the gap shrinks between you and that bitter, overbearing, racist rummy, the less fun he seems. You stop laughing and you inch toward the exit.

I know. Trump’s not a drunk. He just acts like one, crying in his beer, blaming others for our troubles, pretending that he’s bigger, better, smarter, richer than he really is. Donald lets the booze do his talking without any booze. He gives sobriety a bad name.

Meanwhile, he’s getting closer. Closer to winning a primary or two, closer to nomination, closer to the White House. Closer to being right there, with you and me, in Mom’s living room, all the time, with no way out.

And he just won’t shut up.