In the Trump movie now playing in the American theater, connecting all the dots requires the artistry of a mapmaker and the insight of a psychic.
Or, perhaps, the critical eye of a movie reviewer.
The leading man, President-elect Donald Trump, is gradually revealing himself to be a hybrid of Daniel Plainview (“There Will Be Blood”), Keyser Soze (“The Usual Suspects”) or Gordon Gekko (“Wall Street”) — each a Machiavellian, sociopathic narcissist bent on reshaping the world in his own image.
Not to put too fine a point on it.
Whomever people thought they were voting for, sayonara to all that. The Trump of Fifth Avenue has returned to his palace. He’s the star of his own movie, and everyone else, especially the Republican base he so skillfully seduced, is mere crowd scenery. Sorry.
It is probably time to concede that, notwithstanding his apparent lack of complex articulation skills, Trump is smarter than he pretended. From the beginning, everything he has done has been calculated toward a reordering of the universe. A better actor than orator, he performed as circumstances required — the everyman, the comedian, the boaster, the flirter, the winker and, finally, the world champ — and plundered the imaginations of the wanting.
