Being in a good mood is overrated. It’s true that it makes life more pleasant for others, but it’s also true that sometimes we need to get angry — although I always advise my friends to be angry without bothering those who are not.
A couple of days ago, I was not at my best. I had just got up and gone down to the bar; I was against the clock, writing a tedious article for a tedious Spanish magazine; I was trying to go diving in a huge cup of coffee; and even the sunshine on the windows and the damn squawking of the seagulls, the dirty flying rats, was annoying me.
Then I was interrupted by a middle-aged lady, sometimes it happens, who wanted to say hello to me. “I read all your articles,” she said. With great effort I smiled, nodded, and said all those stupid things you say when you’d rather be laying your neck across a train track than exchanging pleasantries with strangers. But to my surprise, several minutes passed, and the lady was still there, standing in front of my table strewn with papers, talking to me about my own articles, not even about hers, something I would have appreciated, being a subject matter I was less likely to be already intimately acquainted with.
This went on ad infinitum, and I was almost determined to leave discreetly. She talked to me about Spanish politics, about style, about writers she liked, and about how hilarious she thought it was the day I wrote such and such a thing. More minutes passed, I was still sitting on the terrace, and the lady was still there, blocking the sun, standing in front of my table, telling me everything I should do with my literary life, in the middle of the most irritating morning in recent centuries.
After minutes that seemed like centuries, bringing up topics of conversation to which I replied with forced smiles and empty phrases, the lady had something else to say: “How is it possible that you are so funny in your articles and so boring in person?” At that point, the monster we all carry inside emerged: “Madam, how is it possible that you are so ugly when my readers are all so beautiful?”
Now in addition to being “boring,” I am “rude.” You could see that one coming.
I write this to explain that I understand Trump’s expression on his mug shot. If he had been fingerprinted, claws would have been found. He has no reason to be in a good mood. And it’s about time we let people be angry, especially when they have reason to be, like the former president, even if they are at the same time quite also happy inside, because this Great Progressive Hatefest against him is only boosting him in the polls.
I’m likely to get my smile back this very afternoon. At least, that seems more probable than getting the ugly lady back as a reader, but I’m not sure how long it will take for us to see Trump laughing his ass off. His grumpiness is a pose, a defense strategy, though what may be true in his anger could be interesting. We are often angry out of frustration at having done something wrong. I have always thought that some of the messes Trump got into were unnecessary and that avoiding them would have saved him a lot of headaches. But I understand, rest assured, that if you buy Trump, you get the whole package: the one who laughs at rivals with a sharp sense of humor, the one who wages the cultural battle without complexes, the one who builds back the national economy, the one who stands up to America’s enemies, the one who seeks law and order, the one who stumbles through countless plots, the one who tells the Democrats to their faces the things no one else dares to tell them, the one who starts second-rate battles even knowing he will lose them, the one who has an outburst on an open mic for the whole country to hear…
Be that as it may, Trump has made his angry and defiant expression a symbol of struggle, and it is exactly what might most help his candidacy. A few days ago I was telling you about Javier Milei, and a good part of his success in Argentina is that he has managed to become a symbol for his voters. Trump, who now markets T-shirts and mugs with his mug shot, says it all in that look. It is pure gold. And not everyone can pull it off. I, before my own outburst, gave the ugly lady the same police station Trump look, and it was completely ineffective in scaring her away. I wish Trump would set up an academy to instruct students in the subtle art of being bitchy.
Translated by Joel Dalmau.
