General Nuisance: The comical medal borrowing behind Donald Trump’s year-book photo
One wonders whether the fresh-faced, slightly gormless-looking young man in the photo taken of Donald Trump for his New York Military Academy yearbook in 1964 could have turned out any differently. It’s a nice fantasy, but probably not.
After all, he was a frighteningly rich person even at such a tender age. He’d been simultaneously coddled and bullied by his family and was, most of all, a white man in the early 1960s. We’d all like to believe that we can rise above our stations and become more than the surroundings we grew up in, but that takes integrity, intelligence and determination. Looking at the school days of the 45th and 47th President of the United States of America, we can see that they never had those attributes to any degree that mattered.
You might be surprised to hear that, especially due to his being enrolled at the New York Military Academy. Not an institution known for going easy on its pupils, right? Surely there must be something there that speaks to some strength of character? Well, you’d be surprised. After all, the only reason he was there was because his dad got sick of how much he was slacking off at his previous schools and then discovered his collection of switchblades. He wasn’t an actual tough-nut or anything; he just really loved West Side Story.
So, the young Donald was packed off to NYMA and… basically continued dossing about and caring more about baseball than any of his actual classes. If you ask him, he was a prodigy at America’s pastime, impressing all who watched him and being scouted by Major League Teams. I don’t want to blow your mind too much, but there may be reason to believe that Donald Trump may be, perish the thought, telling a few lies here.
I know, an absolutely bananas idea, but hear me out here.
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| (Credits: NYMA) |
Was Donald Trump a nightmare in high school, too?
It makes a lot of analysis of Trump’s school days quite difficult, as the biggest source we have on them is Donald Trump himself. A man who has the same relationship to the truth as a butcher has to a pig. He will take it, kill it, then carve it up into something unrecognisable from its original form, yet a lot more digestible to the rubes willing to give him money for it. One of the few things we do know about his time in NYMA is, as a matter of fact, his baseball records.
It turns out that, far from the generational talent he claimed to be, he was pretty mediocre. This seems to stem from the rest of his time in education. Nothing all that special, nothing all that dire. Probably speaks to a mind that could have been pretty good had he actually tried, but couldn’t be fucked too. Much easier to just try and charm, bribe or in some cases, outright bully his peers or teachers to get where he wanted to be.
There’s a very telling detail of this in that very yearbook photo this article began by discussing. In amongst the ears, the sash and the immaculately coiffed hair, you’ll see a number of medals pinned to his chest. Being a military school, these are medals handed out for academic and sporting excellence, along with excellence in conduct. Donald Trump didn’t earn any of these medals. Instead, he borrowed them from a friend of his.
Then, infamously, the fraud went from military school to draft dodging. He really did start as he meant to go on, didn’t he?
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