I’m 82 years old, and I retired from teaching two years ago. My last class was an online world religions survey class. My granddaughter Ti Ti took the class while living near Inle Lake, Myanmar. She wrote about the class and her final in College Days, a part of my website.

I have spent the last quarter century teaching a litany of humanity classes. However, I’d jump at the opportunity to teach again, especially art history. A lifetime ago, I took The Arts from Louie Palmer during my junior year at Muskingum College. It was a 10-hour class that had to be taken in their junior or senior year. The class contained two large lectures and small sub-sections weekly. My decision to take it during my junior radically changed my life.

These two photos are from my college yearbook of Louie teaching a lecture and a sub-section.

Everyone should take art history in high school and college. You will learn more about who painted a picture or sculpted a figure than their work. For example, name a famous artist in any of the various artistic fields. Whoever that artist might be, that person was driven to address some personal issue and pain. Vincent van Gogh faced a litany of medical and psychological problems. Pain drove him to paint. This is van Gogh’s Starry Night, which he painted from his hospital room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in 1889. One of his major problems was his eyesight. Nonetheless, van Gogh painted a nighttime scene of the village from his hospital room while wrestling with his list of health-related problems.

Starry Night

Modest Mussorgsky wrote Pictures at an Exhibition because his best friend, Viktor Hartmann, tragically died at 39. Hartmann painted The Great Gate of Kiev, one of the ten suites Mussorgsky used in his Pictures at an Exhibition.

When faced with pain or problems, all people respond to that catalyst. During my journey down my yellow brick road of life, I dealt with various significant problems. My parents moved from a nice middle-class community and school system to Mt. Lebanon just before junior high school. The next half a dozen years taught me two things: I was dumb and poor. Mt. Lebanon was a golden ghetto and the 19^th-best school system in the country. I wrestled with my mistaken feelings for the rest of my life. It made me a good teacher and a caring person. I felt the pain of students and those who lacked money. The adage, no pain, no gain, is a reality.

Nearly two decades ago, I did two dances with death due to a subdural hematoma and prostate cancer. My near-death experiences taught me something that everyone thinks they know. Everyone knows that they will die someday. Unless you did the dance, you know your time here is finite...intellectually. I know that truth; I can feel it in my gut.

Every person in the world is motivated by pain. The obvious choice is Trump, who faces various pains in his life. Growing up under his father adversely affected him. In his adult life, his feeling of inferiority added to his narcissism. He wants to be loved, but his desires are like a drug addiction. The more inferior Trump feels, the more he is obsessed with being loved and wishing to be great. His role models are Putin, Xi, and Kim. Some believe that Trump ingratiates himself with Putin due to Putin having something derogatory about Trump. Trump is willing to sell his soul to Putin to avoid another failure.

David Brooks wrote about Trump in The New York Times. Brooks points out the dichotomy in Trump’s mindset. Brooks wrote Trump “tends to be prideful, and pride, especially in a puffed-up man, tends to be fragile. This kind of magnanimous man seeks godlike self-sufficiency. But he also needs to be admired, and that admiration can come only from the masses, whom he privately holds in contempt. His approval addiction is voracious and he refuses criticism, even when it is meant to be helpful, from his own supporters. Such a man lives with the secret fear that he might in fact be ordinary or insignificant.”

This is a good example of what Brooks wrote.

While we are all driven, that isn’t the central issue. It is merely a fact; we are all driven. The question is how we address our drive. Again, we are facing a Kierkegaardian either/or dilemma. Either we become like Trump—an angry, unhappy, narcissistic person, or we become a different person.

At the beginning of this article, I mentioned that I loved teaching art history. One of the greatest Italian Renaissance painters was Domenico Ghirlandaio. An Old Man and His Grandson is one of his most famous works. I could go into detail about the S-shaped curve road, the dark and light contrast, the poignant moment of love, and the time-worn face looking at his grandson.

An Old Man and His Grandson

However, I want you to see that this painting, considered his best, was finished only a couple years before Ghirlandaio died. He understood the moment about which he painted. Ghirlandaio is in juxtaposition to Trump. The Kierkegaardian either/or dilemma lies before each one of us. The option is open to us.

Trump’s choice is me. Everything is for our Orange President. Does anyone believe that he is concerned about anyone other than himself? That isn’t the question. The question is, when will Republicans in Congress muster enough courage to stand up to Trump? He puts tariffs on Canada and Mexico and then delays them for a month. Next, he will be putting tariffs on the EU. Then Trump will renege on that. Man, if you are looking for a macho man, I won’t place a bet on Trump.

To make it even more ridiculous, Trump is a coward, and the Republicans in Congress are afraid to stand to him. They are etching for all time how much they are weaklings. As Shakespeare wrote, “Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”

Here are a couple of videos of Jimmy Kimmel's spin on Trump.