Bob Shepherd is a skilled writer, editor, teacher, assessment developer, curriculum developer, and polymath.
He has contributed frequently to this blog, and his comments are always brilliant.
Here is his latest musing on the man who sits in the White House and plays the role of president:
The Loneliness of the Teflon Trumpkin, Film Excerpt
INT. OVAL OFFICE – DAY
Trump sitting behind the Resolute Desk. Camera back to reveal Rod Serling standing D.R.
SERLING
His name, Mr. Little. A man with little education, little taste, little knowledge, little concern for other people. Neglected as a child, he grew into a black hole of neediness. And so he used Daddy’s money to build big, erected his name in Midas-gold letters across the landscape–his every action screaming, “I am worth something.” Everything became a zero-sum game. If someone else failed or was worse off, he was better, a “winner,” and so he cheated and harassed and ridiculed the unfortunate, the stranger, the down and out; appealed to the basest instincts of the basest among us; huffed and puffed and blew himself to gigantic proportions, at least in his own little brain. A twisted, malignant, metastasizing tumor of need and narcissism and knee-jerk nastiness, Mr. Little doesn’t know much, but the biggest thing he doesn’t know is that he just stepped over into a place where everything is bigger than he is, where everything is just beyond the grasp of his little mind and his little hands. He just stepped over into . . . The Twilight Zone.
Copyright 2019, Robert D. Shepherd. All rights reserved. For more pieces on Don the Con, go here: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/category/trump-don-the-con/
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Bob, you have done it again! I love it!
Thank you for your keen insights. Trump is indeed a gaping hole of neediness. He is a mean spirited, shallow man that has no leadership skills. He is so out of his depth now that his only tools are distraction and blame.
I have a question. When Mr. Little Needy Brain was holding that Bible in front of the church he used without permission for a photo op while peaceful protesters were being teargassed and shot with rubber bullets to clear a path for him, was he holding that Bible upside down and backward?
He could have learned that trick from any grimoire, but a grimoire is a book, so Trump wouldn’t know how to open it. I suppose that Stephen Miller could bring his copy of Mein Kampf into the office one day and show him how.
He sure doesn’t know which side of the Bible is up, and which side has the title on the cover.
The Idiot spells it: Buy-bull.
HAAAAA!!!!!
That explains, Greg, why he calls it his favorite book!!!!
Here’s how bad a liar Trump is:
But Trump is not bad enough of a liar because he is still fooling millions of Americans.
Have you seen the clip where Trump, without a mask while everyone else has one, is visiting a factory that makes the nose swabs for the COVID-19 test?
Two of the workers, two old white women that looked like they were fans of fast food, too, opened their white work smocks revealing bright, blood-red t-shirts with Trump’s name in huge white print repeated several times from top to bottom. Apparently they were easy to fool, deplorable Trump supporters.
As soon as Trump was gone, the factory destroyed all the swabs that Trump has breathed on as he walked through the factory floor where all the workers had to wear safety gear because they cannot risk infecting the swabs with anything or the test would be invalid and maybe even infect the person being tested.
A perfect description for Napoleon Bon-a-spur
Catherine King said it best on this blog: “Fascism is a personality disorder with a cult following elevated to the level of a political theory.”
Bob, been listening to a new release of Handel’s Saul, from Nicholas McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. This from LA Times review of live performance:
“The nation’s petulant leader is consumed by self-destructive envy. He appears to listen to reason from his children, but then he goes and does what he likes anyway. He has it in for a war hero. He views the enemies of his enemies as his friends, even when they are clearly Philistines. He creates chaos in the Middle East.
“Before you draw any conclusions, it is the Israelite/Philistine conflict we’re talking about and the failed biblical king of Judah, as depicted in Handel’s oratorio “Saul,”…
Two of the oratorios fit with your commentary (Nos. 42 and 62), thought you might like:
Envy, eldest born of hell,
Cease in human breasts to dwell,
Ever at all good repining,
Still the happy undermining!
God and man by thee infested,
Thou by God and man detested,
Most thyself thou dost torment,
At once the crime and punishment!
Hide thee in the blackest night:
Virtue sickens at thy sight!
No, no, let the guilty tremble
At ev’ry thought of danger near.
Though numbers, armed with death, assemble,
My innocence disdains to fear.
Though great their power as their spite,
Undaunted still, my soul, remain:
For greater is Jehovah’s might,
And will their lawless force restrain.
Wonderful, Greg. Thanks for sharing!