"...a Narcissus [quoting The Festival of Insignificance by Milan Kundera] is not proud.  A proud man has disdain for other people, he undervalues them.  The Narcissus overvalues them, because in every person's eyes he sees his own image, and wants to embellish it.  So he takes care of all his mirrors."
     Donald Trump, in the news media, has been called a narcissist.  Following Kundera's quote above, is Trump not proud?  He reeks of pride, but also he slams those he perceives as enemies, his relentless belittling of Jeb Bush a sharp example.  Yet, Trump grows stronger from attention.  Like a 1950s science fiction movie monster increasing in power from energy blasts meant to destroy it, the unflappable billionaire rampages over his pathetic competition, using the news media as an array of mirrors, projecting his image, dreary power-speak, and self-reinforced belief in his own greatness, linking journalism, ideally objective, to celebrity worship.
     Trump's Republican competitors have tried three tactics to combat him: 1) Ignore him.  If one doesn't attack Trump, Trump won't counterattack.  2) Praise him, and receive praise in return, there's a good little pet rat, keep it up if you want to live.  3) Attack.  If well-worded, the attacker sounds rational and courageous, but Trump's counterattacks will wither and destroy.
     Senator Ted Cruz uses the second tactic.  He claims that Trump has shone a needed light on the scourge of illegal immigration.  Cruz, descended from Cubans, born in Canada, seems to feel contempt for millions of his own Hispanic people.  He's suffered, poll- and attention-wise, from Trump's command of self-glorifying publicity practiced now for four decades--but so have all of the egomaniac's challengers.
     Senator Rand Paul, Rick Perry, Senator Lindsay Graham, and Jeb Bush have all tried the third tactic, without success.  Paul's mocking of Trump got him nowhere, but Trump's counter-gripe directed at Paul got more coverage.  Rick Perry, backed by millions of super PAC dollars keeping his presidential run on life support--while he can't pay his campaign workers--was the first to feel the tycoon's wrath, after the former Texas governor spoke out against Trump's ridiculous exaggerations about the criminality of illegal immigrants.  Graham, after calling Trump a "jackass," suffered the indignity of a wealthy, whining bully of a private citizen revealing a sitting senator's personal cell phone number.  Jeb Bush...well, his fumbles merit their own paragraphs.
     It wasn't long ago, the beginning of 2015, when I, like many others, figured the 2016 presidential race would have Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush as inevitable, more than well-funded nominees, both representing political dynasties.  As the months passed, the idea of Clinton/Bush baggage proceeded to sicken more and more Americans, yearning for the first time since H. Ross Perot (in 1992) to welcome anti-establishment possibilities.  Perot's campaign and rise to national consciousness was comparatively modest in scale to what we have now, with Bernie Sanders (a Socialist), and Donald Trump (a self-financing flamboyant mouth-hole), commanding speaking engagement audiences in the tens of thousands.
     It's true that it's too early to predict what will happen with the Trump and Sanders campaigns.  The same, though, can be said about the formerly anointed Clinton and Bush.  Clinton, mentioned on cable news, even away from Fox, is referred to lately (except by her advocates) as "floundering," while her e-mail scandal seems to have developed into one because she didn't level with the news media and American voters when it first broke.  She handled the scandal exactly like they shouldn't be played: letting information out piecemeal, causing people to speculate, stretching it all out and hoping public amnesia would muffle it.  She released her server, finally, after months of holding it back, and now, according to the Washington Examiner, there may have been two servers.
     That Clinton, an old hand in politics, would allow herself to fuck up her public relations profile like this doesn't point to a successful future presidency.  Her haughty Hillary Clintonesque attitude about this situation, for which she herself is to blame, has displayed confrontation and anger when asked about it by journalists.  She shows a pissed off face instead of controlling her negativity.  Barack Obama, like him or not, is quite skilled at keeping his emotions to himself, parsing them out calculatedly.  Jeb Bush, like Clinton, has also lost control of his public face.
     On August 20, 2015, in New Hampshire, Bush gave what looked like an impromptu press conference; outside, with twelve to fifteen journalists around him, including a few behind.  His demeanor reminded me of a man who's just finished a long shift at work, but has to take care of some annoying business before going home, where he can relax, eat, watch TV, and think about anything but work.  The gathering of reporters, cameras, microphones, candidate and guards, looked and felt spontaneous.  Most people running for president, you'd think, would welcome any opportunity to speak to an assembly of TV journalists (some of them prominent), knowing this will be aired on television, a medium commanded by adversarial Trump, so why not be friendly, likable, and informative, as well as inspiring to voters?  Not Jeb Bush.
     A male journalist, after shouting a clarification question from behind the candidate, received this response: "I'm answering the question!  You don't have to shout at my ear!"
     The lovely Kasie Hunt of MSNBC asked Bush if the term, anchor babies, used by Bush in a recent interview, is derogatory.
     "What other term is there?  What should I call them?"
     He could call them, per the Fourteenth Amendment, American citizens, but that may not be an Amendment he respects as much as the Second.  Another journalist suggested using the word drier and less inoffensive word, undocumented, following that with several more descriptive words.
     Bush scoffed, smiling with exasperation: "You substitute the term with seven or eight words."
     Soon after, Bush strode away with his armed men, beaten by television reporters, his body language saying, I hate this, I hate these people, just get me elected, God, or Satan, or whoever the fuck I made the deal with.
     At the beginning of the year, when we lived in the Clinton-Bush 2016 dualism, Bush's campaign "war chest" began to fill with hundreds of millions of dollars.  We all knew this and what it meant, but he stayed coy about running for president.  Now, only two months after announcing his run, he's facing an opponent he may have known would enter the race, but whose tactics have proven surprising.  Out of respect, one doesn't insult one's political opponents, but that's so late twentieth century.  Trump's jabs have left Jeb Bush flinty and brittle, evident two days ago in the outdoor press conference.  Do we want a leader who can't handle answering logical questions from a dozen journalists about his own statements?  How difficult is that, compared to deciding whether or not to attack North Korea, intensify the anti-ISIS war, or coming up with a sane, workable, and compassionate immigration bill that leaves racist terms like anchor babies out of its, and the president's, language?
     As far as ignoring Donald Trump, can the master narcissist who polishes and maintains so many adoring mirrors in the public and in the news media be ignored forever?

                                                                         Vic Neptune