Steel Balls

Steel Balls

This will shock you, but I think President Trump made a mistake comparing himself to Captain Bligh in the epic historical saga of Mutiny on the Bounty. This was predicated by the major east coast and west coast state governors banding together to do what they believe is best for their citizens despite what President Trump says or does.My guess is that he is only aware of the movie by that name and has never bothered to learn that it is a true story about the mutiny of the HMS Bounty in 1789 in the South Pacific Ocean. That event was, at best, a controversial failure of leadership by a man, Captain Bligh who had suffered the frustration of having peaked in his career early by going from a top position with Captain Cook’s staff to knocking around from post to post during a time of waning stature of the British Navy. Captain Bligh was put in charge of a relatively puny commercial vehicle called the Bounty that has some five small cannon and a few muskets. The whole reason why a mutiny was even possible was because the Bounty was so small as to not warrant a squad of Royal Marines to protect and defend the Captain’s command against a mutinous crew (technically only about 60% of the crew, some twenty-five men in total). They were transporting breadfruit for Christ’s sake and it was going from the East Indies to the West Indies to hopefully provide a cheap food source for the slaves on the sugar cane plantations. This was such a Rube Goldberg operation that the Captain’s cabin on the Bounty was retrofitted to be a hothouse for the baby breadfruit plants, leaving Captain Bligh to find less commodious lodgings elsewhere on the ship.

The most notable and commendable thing that Capetian Bligh did was to manage to skipper his castaway launch with its fifteen-man crew an amazing 3,600 nautical miles west from Polynesia to Australia and eventually Timor. That act of seamanship and his return to England to pursue charges against his mutineers earned him a promotion to Vice Admiral. And then, seventeen years after his little Bounty boo-boo, he was made Governor of New South Wales. Remember, this was when England was using Australia as a Rikers Island for the human trash they wanted to put out on the curb. Bligh was told to clean up the rum trade down there. Imagine being sent to Chicago during Prohibition and told to get a handle on that whole bootlegging thing being run by Al Capone. Sure enough, old habits die hard and Bligh’s actions led to the Rum Rebellion and Bligh’s removal from command and arrest by the mutinous New South Wales Corps that were supposedly under his command. You can’t make this stuff up. The more I think about it, the more Trump’s choice to compare himself to Captain Bligh seems more appropriate than it initially seemed.

I actually have a better comparison that works on the same basic underlying theme of quashing a mutiny. The Caine Mutiny is a great film for those of you who haven’t seen it. It is an acclaimed film starring Humphrey Bogart, Van Johnson, Fred MacMurray and Jose Ferrer. It was based on a Pulitzer Prizing winning book by the well-known WWII author, Herman Wouk. Bogart plays Lt. Commander Queeg. the captain of the minesweeper USS Caine, a minor player in the WWII Pacific Theater. Queeg, like Bligh, is a strict disciplinarian who has problems with any challenges to his authority and has a dearth of mental stability. The interesting point of similarity between Queeg, Bligh and Trump is that they all play a balancing act between extreme authoritarianism and insanity. It is perhaps the worst combination for good leadership that exists. Subordinates operate out of fear surrounded by utter confusion.

It is no coincidence that the heroes of both Mutiny on the Bounty and The Caine Mutiny are the antagonists who perpetrate the mutiny, Mr Christian and Lt. Maryk. They both suffer from great doubt about their action and it is that very humility that makes them heroic. The Bounty crew that are driven only by dreams of a life of leisure with Polynesian maidens and the Caine officers (specifically Lt. Keefer) and crew are less than noble in their motivations. But Christian and Maryk are more concerned about the safety of their crew and the importance of their mission to their masters (the British Navy and the U.S. Navy). Despite the propriety and imperative of command, there is nothing about authority that supports the abuse of power that both Bligh and Queeg display. It took seventeen years for Bligh’s shortcomings to become more visible in New South Wales, but Queeg’s unfit state comes through clearly in the trial of Maryk and Keefer for mutiny.

During that trial, Bogey, playing Queeg shows his paranoia and schizophrenia under cross-examination by using a set of steel balls as his version of worry beads. The tougher the questioning, the more the hand ball juggling by Queeg. It becomes an unforgettable affectation that viewers can never forget as the steel balls click and clank away against each other.. It becomes the ultimate “tell” of the troubled mind. The bell around the authoritarian cat’s neck.

President Trump doesn’t carry steel balls to calm his nerves, but his “tell” has been equally visible during his daily “Coronavirus Briefings”. His Mr. Christian or Lt. Maryk is being played by Dr. Fauci. We all know these have ceased to be briefings for the benefit of the public. They long ago crossed over and became spin rallies organized by Trump to show the world (consisting mostly of his base) what a wonderful job he is doing managing the crisis. Besides the opposite being the case, the situation has crossed another challenging threshold. In the same way that Queeg moves from authoritarian to paranoid the more he is challenged and presented with irrefutable facts that prove his incompetence under fire, such is the path of our President.

I feel that anyone who has watched the downward spiral of the past weeks of daily briefings understands the nature of the problem and probably senses the building tension in the room. It is as clear as Queeg’s clacking of the steel balls in the courtroom. Indeed, these briefing displays would seem to be Donald Trump’s courtroom and while he managed with the help of his collaborator Mitch McConnell in avoiding justice in his impeachment trial, neither Mitch nor any of Trump’s other henchmen (and he has brought them all out for support) can mask the unraveling of his psyche and his very presidency. Justice will be done and what a shame it must come at the expense of the lives and well-being of Americans, but such is the predicament we find ourselves in. At least the populace now has to look away to not see the weakness within the man. He tells the world he has steel balls and now the world hears them rather than sees them.