We all want to be loved? I’ve learned enough of life and love to suspect exceptions, but Trump, I realized this weekend, is not among them. His RNC speech was full of “love” and gratitude, with sprinkles of “God,” especially while imparting the assassination attempt.
Trump: “A lot of people say it’s the most iconic photo they’ve ever seen. They’re right, and I didn’t die. Usually, you have to die to have an iconic picture.” I wrote a bit about that.
Trump is rarely honest but often sincere, so I believed him when he spoke of “the love shown by that giant audience of patriots that stood bravely on that fateful evening in Pennsylvania… This beautiful crowd, they didn’t want to leave me… love written all over their faces.”
Trump is willing to take a bullet for them, as they were for him, as Corey Comperatore did. If “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for others,” Trump too – he seemed to be telling the American people – did his share.
God, too, contributed his loving share. “I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God,” he told the cheering, often weeping, crowd, who chanted back, “We love Trump!”
It reminded me of the conclusion of Orwell’s 1984:
[Winston] looked up again at the portrait of Big Brother. The colossus that bestrode the world! The rock against which the hordes of Asia dashed themselves in vain!... The long-hoped-for bullet was entering his brain. He gazed up at the enormous face… O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
Trump’s triumphant love also reminded me of a photo I took nine years ago when he announced his presidential campaign. It was at Grounds for Sculpture (GFS), a vast and wonderful sculpture park and museum in Hamilton, New Jersey. It was hard to miss the enormous 25-feet-tall work and its source: Alfred Eisenstaedt’s V-J Day in Times Square.
The jury was out for a long while about the identity of the two, recently determining it’s likely sailor George Mendonsa and dental assistant Greta Friedman. My daughter, Keshet, was five years old when we visited GFS, and she took her own stand – on the sailor’s right shoe.
This weekend, I showed this picture to Keshet and her friend. The latter instantly disliked the imagery; “It looks forced,” she said, “and the woman looks dead.” Keshet disagreed, “I think she’s just letting herself go, and that’s ok.” She changed her take upon reading Eisenstaedt’s account:
I was walking through the crowds on V-J Day, looking for pictures. I noticed a sailor coming my way. He was grabbing every female he could find and kissing them all—young girls and old ladies alike.
“I don’t like this guy,” Keshet concluded, “he’s gross. Who does that?”
We read together Greta Friedman’s answer:
It wasn’t my choice to be kissed. The guy just came over and kissed or grabbed. I was grabbed by a sailor and it wasn’t that much of a kiss, it was more of a jubilant act that he didn’t have to go back…
“Well, I’m happy she wasn’t distraught,” Keshet said. Then we read a bit about Friedman’s story. Born to a Jewish family, Greta fled Nazi-controlled Austria in 1939 to the United States. Her sister emigrated to Mandatory Palestine, while her parents, Unable to leave Europe, died in Nazi concentration camps. She graduated from college in 1981, when her children did.
I asked Keshet what she thought about the title the sculptor Seward Johnson gave to his work: Unconditional Surrender. “It fits.”
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