Watching Trump unspool on Twitter over the weekend, I was thinking about friendship and neighborhood.  I know it sounds odd, but hey, Trump is probably one of the worst neighbors, ever.  It came to mind.

I live in a pretty friendly, semi-urban neighborhood of closely-spaced, brick-block houses.  Built just after World War II, the houses are close together, with small yards and curious neighbors.

It works for us.  We know all our neighbors, at least to wave at.  We entertain, invite each other in, motion people up for a drink if we’re playing music on the porch, we worry for each other if something looks hinky, and we gossip furiously about anyone who’s not there.  You know, all the usual stuff.

These are my neighbors.  They’re not friends, exactly.  You get to choose your friends, but neighbors… you get who you get.  You either learn to accept the people on your street or hang inside every day in air-conditioned gloom.  We choose to wave and smile, and that means we have to accept a certain level of crazy.  Sure, everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, advantages and foibles, and so on.  You accept those differences.

But there are also places in everyone where we’re so far enough past ‘rational’ it’s hard to make it out in the rear mirror.  And we accept that part of each other, too.  Call it altruism if you like, but it’s self-serving, too.  You don’t pick fights with neighbors for good reason.

Trump is the anti-neighbor, of course.  He’s constantly blathering on about how this person or that group are terrible and need to be… removed, somehow?  His rhetoric is extreme, so there’s never an alternative to his hate.  He goes on about the dishonest FAKE MEDIA (sorry, I’ll stop the caps now);  Crazy Joe and dumb as a rock Mika; any woman who isn’t a ten (“Look at that face!  Would anyone vote for that?”);  totally corrupt Mexico; pathetic Mayor of London, yadda, yadda.

Oh right.  And, of course, the boring, pathetic, careless, no help, really dumb, stupid, sad, colluding, obstructionist Democrats.  Along with anyone who isn’t a Republican.  Maybe not all Republicans, either.  Maybe not even most of them.

Eric Trump said out loud what his father seem to think inside.  Talking about the Democratic party, Eric said, “To me, they’re not even people.”  While The Donald hasn’t said that same thing explicitly, it’s been the undercurrent.

When Trump disagrees, he never shows any basic sympathy or understanding.  Trump doesn’t do ‘disagreement’.  Anyone who disagrees with the Don can’t still be good, in Trump’s eye.  That person/organization/institution/leader/nation has to be irretrievable bad, and in ways that cannot be undone.   He always frames it as an existential problem, at least for him.

Trump’s invective has an ominous narrative.  He talks about all those wonderful Americans who are victims, badly and endlessly abused, and how much he’s going to help us.  But when Trump talks about ‘us’, he makes it clear he’s really talking about his base.  He carefully separates out Democrats, painting them as the evil creators of everything bad, reporters and newsgroups as dishonest and vindictive liars, liberal critics and urban voters as queerly un-American, and so on.

Hmm.  Come to think of it, that’s exactly what the Republican Party before Trump was doing so well, too.  I especially loved their constant hyper-masculine posturing about how liberals and democrats weren’t manly enough.  Come on, Newt!  Pull the other one!  They were unashamed in their desire to be the men’s party.  Talk about being queer, in the current sense.  Put on your wig and wear it, honey!

Anyway, I think Trump could easily get the ‘Worst Neighbor’ award if he moved here.  What a goober.