Today The New York Times featured an account of an interview with the President in the Oval Office. He was interviewed by four journalists.

It is difficult to take the measure of another human being. The Homosapien is a layered mammal, quite like and unlike other quadrupeds, say your dog or cat. A member of the species, I am pushed and pulled by a genetic inheritance rooted in bygone generations. Also the influences of past experience, some were catastrophic and some affirming, all matter, they are inscribed within my body. And I remember none of this. Instincts are haunted and likely reason as well. Every individual is a submerged self, their essential personality.

You can read the Times description of the Trump interview by CLICKING HERE. I have been acquainted with a few individuals cut from a similar mold as the President of the United States. My policy has been to avoid them if I could. Sometimes one cannot avoid them. Circumstance may dictate the only option is to deal with the person self-defined as — your enemy. A fool would imagine him/herself to be in any alternate scenario.

I owe a debt of gratitude to a friend for introducing me to Charles Bukowski, a poet and short story writer. A Bukowski story, The Unaccommodating Universe supplies me with the anchoring metaphor for taking the measure of the President of the United States.

The story narrator is Carl. Carl sits at the end of the bar at the Lion’s Nuts Bar. Two attractive young women departed the bar earlier in the evening after suffering insults from the male patrons. The girls return with their pimp. The pimp intends to settle the score with the customer who delivered the most pointed insult to the two women. A fight ensues, the bar is destroyed, the pimp dies face down in the street, a bullet in his belly. Bukowski writes a rollicking story. I have no doubt he witnessed such encounters, knowing how these things play out.

Here is a sliver of the Bukowski tale. The pimp announces his intention, to all present in the room.

“I’ll decided what’s too much,” the pimp said.
“I intend to see that this kind of shit doesn’t continue.”

“So what are you going to do?” asked Carl, looking at the razor in his hand.
“Kill somebody? You want somebody’s balls in a sack?”

“I wouldn’t mind that, I might arrange that.”

Betting on the Muse, by Charles Bukowski, The Unaccomodating Universe

As I suggested before the President of the United States emulates the behavioral pattern of a pimp.

A “rock’in good” website on Bukowski poems and stories. CLICK HERE.