Remember the parable of the duck and the scorpion? It goes something like this: A scorpion needed a way to get across a river and tried to convince a duck to give him a ride. The duck had obvious misgivings: Scorpions can kill. The duck, however, relented when the scorpion convinced him that he wouldn’t sting him. Why would he? They’d both drown.
But half way across, the scorpion struck. They both were doomed. In his last, dying breath, the duck asks, “Why?” The scorpion’s reflexive response: “It’s my nature.”
I thought of that during the course of last week’s Republican presidential debate.
For a while, I had actually toyed with the idea that Donald Trump, the flamboyant, take-no-prisoners, “Art of the Deal” billionaire, was setting up this record-setting TV audience–as well as his competition–for the ultimate “a-ha” moment. For beneath all this peevish bluster that was channeling disaffected America’s frustration and anger was actually an astute, witty, well-informed, straight-talking, political iconoclast.
But scorpion-like, it isn’t his nature. So the belligerent bombast machine doubled down. And, as we’ve been seeing, keeps on doubling.
Donald Trump, quite obviously, is not politically incorrect. Would that he were merely that. No, Trump is pathologically insufferable. He will continue to out himself as a faux candidate pandering to his perverse fan base in his ultimate reality show. As a result, he will ultimately flame out and self destruct.
But he will game the process as long as he can–because he can. Long enough, presumably, to take the duck down with him.