EGOS, ONE THROUGH THREE


     I have made a sort of list--of contemporary egoists.  My three I's would be shocked to find themselves lumped together.  But they seem to me to be the three worst, biggest, and most obvious egoists in the world.  Not just in the United States, though all three belong there, live there. The three biggest egoists in the world.

     Let me start with the easiest one, Donald Trump, a.k.a. "The Donald," "Trump," and "Ass."  He calls himself "The Donald."  He parades the name "Trump" in gold letters everywhere he can.  And he is the world's most absolute ass.  If there were a Trump logo, it would show Trump kissing his own ass.

     Poor Donald.  Self-named "The Donald," a parody of the idea of ego (if there can be such).  A man with (as he sees it) awsome power--and his own television program (which he bought) to demonstrate (with personality and dramatic grandeur) that power.  (If it weren't unnecessary, he could be called No-Trump.)

     The second is almost as easy.  LeBron James is a great basketball player.  The media crowned him "King James" when he was just a boy, and he wore his crown with embarrassing arrogance.  He once volunteered to play--one game--for any European basketball team that wanted to pay him a million dollars for his brief appearance.  Soon his reign will be over--is already over, in fact.

     There have been other super-star athletes who had titles.  Sportswriters called Babe Ruth "The Sultan of Swat"--and he was.  But he wasn't an egoist.   Muhammid Ali was "The Greatest"--and he gave himself that title.  He paraded it, and in the way he paraded it made it a mocking, challenging joke--until he actually became "The Greatest" in his fight with the U. S. Government over the Vietnam War.  And Ali remains a great and important world citizen.  But he was never just an egoist--even when he called himself "The Greatest."

     Paul Hornung was maybe once a candidate for  the egoism title, but his stage was smaller, and over time got smaller still.  When he was a senior in college he was the Notre Dame team.  He kicked off, passed, ran, and punted--and did all four stupendously.  The only thing he couldn't do was catch his own passes, or--despite his greatness--make Notre Dame win games.

     When the Notre Dame team came onto the field in South Bend, Indiana, they all came rushing out of the tunnel and 50,000 people roared like they were roaring for champions.  And then Golden Paul strolled out, all by himself, helmet tucked under his arm, golden curls blowing in the wind, waving to the adoring crowd.  Rome was never more thrilling.

      But in the NFL, though Hornung was a star, and even a superstar, he had lots of company.  And though he was a great running back, that's all he was.  Years later, his professional career long behind him, Paul became again a sort of legendary hero in his hometown in Louisville, Kentucky.  And there is a huge and wonderful picture of him, at his best, painted on the side of a tall building.  And Paul had for years a sports talk show on television, which he hosted from a local bar.  The golden curls were gone, his head as shiny as his supersized helmet had been in the glory days.  And then one night the golden curls came back. . . .

    The third of my three super-egoists is somewhat different from the others.  He reached the status that let him be a major egoist by election.  Not that he was elected as an egoist, or to be egoist-in-chief. But once Barack Obama was elected President of the United States he became an amazing egoist.   He was young, handsome, bright, articulate, personable, and though many Americans hated him for being black, they couldn't do so publicly.

     Obama got himself caught in the mire of  America almost immediately.  Campaigning, he had promised to close the U.S. Concentration Camp and Torture Facility at Guantanamo in Occupied Cuba.  He didn't do it.  He escalated the U.S. military offensive in the Middle East, despite his campaign promises.  And then he introduced drones, and used them to kill people without having to risk American lives.  Anybody killed in the American offense in the Middle East had always been identified as a terrorist after his or her death, and Obama continued that policy.  Anybody a drone killed was automatically an enemy combatant.

     When Bradley Manning exposed U.S. war crimes, Obama declared him "guilty" of a major crime.  In saying that--before Manning had even been charged with specific offenses, the commander-in-chief become a dictator.  And now he calls Edward Snowden a "traitor" for exposing American war crimes.  Mr. Obama was a lawyer.  And he must know that to conceal a felony offense is a felony.  The legal terms are "misprision of a felony," and "accessory after the fact."

     America has, in its recent history, one warrior president after another--and more than its share of criminal presidents.  Since 1958--when American troops (me included) invaded Lebanon in hopes of having a war there--the United States has been at war.  Even Gerald Ford sent gun-boats into North Korea.  And Jimmy Carter attempted to start a war by trying to invade Iran.  Luckily, the North Koreans didn't resist Ford's invasion, and American technology failed Carter, causing all the helicopters carrying troops to crash in the desert, their engines clogged with sand blown up into them by their rotor-blades.  And Bill Clinton, too:  but only with bombs, so no Americans would get killed.  And when the U.S. bombed a bridge in Bosnia that just happened to have a civilian train loaded with Bosnian civilians crossing it when the bomb hit, that was not anybody's fault, because the bridge had been "assigned" as a target by the U.S.command.  And the Bushes.  The Oil Bushes, murdering for oil.

     Becoming the U. S. president, Mr. Obama inherited a murdering job.  And though he promised to end the murdering, he continues it--and has made it even more "sophisticated."  And as a college freshman taught me in 1960, in my first year as a university teacher, "sophistication" is not a good thing.
   
     But Mr. Obama is sophisticated, and is obviously proud of what he is doing.  And he is raising two little girls who will grow up to know what their father has done.  His ego is more important to him than anything else.  If Mr. Obama were killing "white" people, he would have a problem.  But he is killing Arabic people, and they don't count.  They are America's new "niggers," these last twenty-five years. And for Mr. Obama, killing them is more important than justice or honor or decency or right.  More important, too, than his daughters.

     Ego blinds.  And it has blinded Mr. Obama.