THE ALCHEMIST PRESIDENT
Science was not always as advanced as it is today. Once upon a time a few enterprising individuals had a bright idea: they would look for a way to turn other metals into pure gold.
Can you imagine! Still, “alchemy” was an early form of science in its own way since it involved experimenting with different substances. It was the medieval precursor to “chemistry” as experimenters searched for a way to transform base metals like lead into gold.
The Periodic Table was years in the future along with an understanding of elements, molecules, and atoms. Lest you think only kooks were tempted, Sir Isaac Newton practiced alchemy, too. Needless to say, no one succeeded in finding a way to turn a different metal, or combination of metals, into gold. They had to accept defeat and science chose to move forward along other paths toward the modern world.
President Trump reminds me of these medieval Alchemists even though he has a slightly different goal. He wants to be able to turn any lie into truth . . . on his own say so!
If he could figure out how to turn truth into fiction and fantasy into truth, he would become unstoppable: he would have mastered a kind of “moral alchemy”.
Unfortunately, Narcissism’s mad egoism cannot control such moral transmutations any more reliably than medieval alchemists could control the transformation of base metal into gold. He ought to study history to learn that some things remain beyond the power of mortal man.
The truths and lies of his life will remain forever separated by a wall of reality. Even his craziest Narcissistic punches cannot damage this wall; his Alchemistic tantrums cannot change fiction into fact or fact into fantasy.
That he thinks he can succeed is only a behavioral symptom of his personality disorder, that of an out-of-control Narcissist who believes he can force people to accept as “truth” anything he chooses to tell them no matter how false or fraudulent his claims actually are.
The very fact that he keeps trying is quite sobering. Narcissists seem to have no natural self-regulating mechanism to inform them when they have gone astray; the president’s conscience is eerily silent at crucial moments in his life and his presidency, if it exists at all.
In an earlier epoch he would have been an ALCHEMIST for sure!
