Trump's Role As A Russian Eunuch

Watching Donald Trump's panoply and excess raises questions. Didn't this guy go disastrously bankrupt over a decade ago? Isn't it true that no banks would loan him money? If Trump has a colossal reputation it ought to be as a colossal financial failure. When U.S. banks refused to loan to him, European banks stepped in, but there are questions about why. Did they extend credit to Trump after he was guaranteed by Russian friends? The point is, he owes billions. He is not in the driver's seat.

In unfolding Trump news stories we read the resilience of Donald Trump seems to have more to do with powerful friends helping him out, cosigning his loans. Many of those friends appear to be Russians. They've kept him afloat because he's been useful to them and might be more useful in the future. Well that time has come. He's now president of the United States, the most powerful country in the world. But he's on the hook.

All along, his finances have been dicey. We don't know how dicey because he's hidden that, but very dicey by all accounts. Billions owed, much of that debt overseas debt, much of it Russian obligations. Being obligated to foreign powers is not appropriate for a leader of a country.

Which is why Donald Trump's life of obscene excess reminds me of the Indian maharajahs during the Raj.

During that period when the British ruled India, they kept the old Indian princes on their thrones and allowed them to live in splendor and powerlessness. They were political eunuchs, no powers at all, just show. Photographs from the period reveal a bizarre excess, a pathetic gaudiness. A gaudiness that reminds me of Donald Trump. Pomp and puppetry. The vulgar excess of Trump's personal style says something about what he lacks. He's compensating for feelings of powerlessness with excessive show. What power he exercises appears to be exercised by his puppet master through him the way the British used their princely puppets during the Raj, keeping them in splendor but reserving all powers to the master.

This cannot be a good state of affairs. The vast luxury of the Indian princes who dined on peacock tongues while millions starved became a greater insult to the people of India when they woke from their imperial nightmare and threw the British out. These princes were useful idiots, like Donald Trump, providing expensive showy cover for the foreign ruler, letting the natives believe they still ran their own affairs.