Well, the thought that an adult male might appear in the debate last night was ill founded. I love children - I love childlike - but I do not love childish. Childish is most often applied to an adult who behaves in an immature fashion - one who blames others for his own failings - who cannot take responsibility for his acts - or lashes out when his hands are caught in the cookie jar with a woeful, "He made me do it." Childish is prone to tantrums. Childish believes that by merely accusing another of being a crook or a liar makes it so. That, in essence, was Donald Trump's debate performance last night. What Trump showed was a childish seventy year old man, incapable of showing grace, incapable of accepting responsibility for any of his acts - if, God help us, he was elected, it would be the first four year old to lead a country since the age of monarchies - and even then it required a regent to rule with the child.
Trump's use of the word "bigly" twice was no mistake - it was a child's attempt at language - an unschooled child with a tin ear for words - or for arranging his thoughts in a sentient manner. Calling his opponent "such a nasty woman" does little to describe her but it condemns you to schoolboy taunts. His accusatory style - (paraphrasing here) - "You should be in jail not running for President" is the last cry of the tiny sore loser - no, sorry, the last cry was his refusal to say if he would concede gracefully if he lost this election. This is a man who is seeking to lead a revolution - not to reform poverty or injustice - but to establish his power - his right to rule - his desire to turn back the world to some sixty years ago when Poppa Fred Trump warned him if he kept doing "that" he would be sent away to a military school.
This is not a candidacy - it is a cry for redemption from parents who are no longer around to redeem him - it is the cry of a man who has passed into late middle age without ever traveling through the hard, rocky, maturity that others learn to scale by making their own way in the world - he remains the little boy who tore at the little girl's pigtails and stuck her with the sharp point of his pencil - this is the same man who spoke of grabbing a woman by her private parts - and ironically, he has come up against one woman who has seen it all - and who was able to keep calm while four year old Donnie had his tantrum before all of America.
Note to Melania Trump. What Donald said and continues to say is not "boy talk" - real boys may curse a bit from time to time but they do not treat others as objects - and if they do - they get punished for it, not elected President.
PS. About all that puppet talk. I happen to love puppets - when I was a child during WW2 my late older sister Simone would make Mexican puppets for the goodwill panAmerica movement that was sweeping the country. Jose Carioca and all that. They were hand puppets. How I recall Papacito in his handmade sombrero and Mamacita in her bright many tiered dress. Yes, we loved Mexico in those days. Ironic that Trump has chosen to be the personal Pinnochio of a Russian dictator - but here Hillary was wrong - he was no puppet - rather, Trump is a marionette, with his strings tied to Putin's hands - tossed between the Russian oligarch and the American fascists - easily manipulated, but prone to having his strings all tangled up like his words. Poor Little Donnie - if you keep going this way, lying, misbehaving, and disrespecting the less fortunate of this world, you will never lose your wooden self and become a real boy. Words of advice from Jim'ny Crickett himself.