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Has Anyone Found Trump’s Soul? Anyone?
Do you remember President George W. Bush’s remarks at Ground Zero in Manhattan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks? I can still hear him speaking of national grief and national pride. This was before all the awful judgment calls and fatal mistakes, and it doesn’t excuse them. But it mattered, because it reassured us that our country’s leader was navigating some of the same emotional currents that we were.
还记得9·11恐怖袭击发生后，乔治·W.布什总统在曼哈顿世贸中心废墟上发表的讲话吗？我现在还能清楚记得他提到国家的悲伤和民族自豪时说的话。后来他做出了种种糟糕的决定、犯下种种致命的错误，而这个讲话今天也无法为之开脱。但这个讲话很重要，因为它让我们确信，我们国家的领导人当时正经历与我们一样的情感冲击。
Do you remember President Barack Obama’s news conference after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., that left 28 people, including 20 children, dead? I do. Freshest in my memory is how he fought back tears. He was hurting. He cared. And while we couldn’t bank on new laws to prevent the next massacre, we could at least hold on to that.还记得巴拉克·奥巴马总统在康涅狄格州纽敦校园枪击案发生后举行的记者会吗？我记得。那次枪击案导致包括20名儿童在内的28人死亡。我记忆中最清晰的是他强忍眼泪的样子。他很伤心，也很在意。虽然我们不能指望有新的法律来阻止下一次大屠杀，但我们至少可以坚信奥巴马是真情流露。
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One more question: Do you remember the moment when President Trump’s bearing and words made clear that he grasped not only the magnitude of this rapidly metastasizing pandemic but also our terror in the face of it?再问一个问题：记忆中有过这样的时刻吗——特朗普总统的言行表明，他不仅明白这场迅速蔓延的大流行病有多严重，也明白我们面对这一疾病时的恐惧？
It passed me by, maybe because it never happened.我没有印象，也许是因为根本从未有过。
In Trump’s predecessors, for all their imperfections, I could sense the beat of a heart and see the glimmer of a soul. In him I can’t, and that fills me with a sorrow and a rage that I quite frankly don’t know what to do with.尽管特朗普的前任们有各种不尽完美的地方，但在他们身上，我能感觉到跳动的心，我能看到微微闪光的灵魂。在特朗普身上，我什么都感觉不到，这让我充满悲伤和愤怒——坦白讲我不知该如何处理这样的情绪。
Americans are dying by the thousands, and he gloats about what a huge, rapt television audience he has. They’re confronting financial ruin and not sure how they’ll continue to pay for food and shelter, and he reprimands governors for not treating him with adequate adulation.成千上万的美国人正在死去，他却在吹嘘电视前有多少人为他着迷。民众面临着财务崩溃，不知道接下来买食物、付房租的钱从哪里来，他却斥责州长们对他的奉承不到位。
He’s not rising to the challenge before him, not even a millimeter. He’s shriveling into nothingness.他没有在挑战面前挺身而出，丝毫没有。他正萎缩成乌有之物。
On Friday, when Trump relayed a new recommendation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that all Americans wear face masks in public places, he went so far out of his way to stress that the coverings were voluntary and that he himself wouldn’t be going anywhere near one that he might as well have branded them Apparel for Skittish Losers. I’ve finally settled on his epitaph: “Donald J. Trump, too cool for the coronavirus.”上周五，在转达疾控中心提出的所有美国人在公共场所戴口罩的新建议时，特朗普特意强调说，戴口罩是自愿的，他本人无论如何都不会戴，他可不想跟“胆小的失败者”沾什么边——他大概已经给口罩贴了个“胆小的失败者必备”的标签。我终于为他想好了一个墓志铭：“唐纳德·J.特朗普，冠状病毒面前酷毙了。”
This is more than a failure of empathy, which is how many observers have described his deficiency. It’s more than a failure of decency, which has been my go-to lament. It’s a failure of basic humanity.这不仅仅是同理心的缺失，尽管许多观察者都以此描述他的缺点。这更多地是得体礼数的缺失，也是我一直以来在悲叹的。这是基本人性的缺失。
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In The Washington Post a few days ago, Michael Gerson, a conservative who worked in Bush’s White House, wrote that Trump’s spirit is “a vast, trackless wasteland.” Not exactly trackless. There are gaudy outposts of ego all along the horizon.几天前的《华盛顿邮报》上，曾在布什政府工作的保守派人士迈克尔·格尔森写道，特朗普的精神世界是“一个空旷无迹的荒原”。准确地说不是无迹。那里的地平线上到处都是自负的花哨俗艳。
When the direness of this global health crisis began to be apparent, I was braced for the falsehoods and misinformation that are Trump’s trademarks. I was girded for the incompetence that defines an administration with such contempt for proper procedure and for true expertise.这场全球健康危机的严重性开始显现时，我已经准备好面对那些谎言和虚假信息——它们都是特朗普的招牌。我对无能也有所准备，这种“无能”定义了一个如此蔑视正确做法和真正专业知识的政府。
But what has taken me by surprise and torn me up inside are the aloofness, arrogance, pettiness, meanness, narcissism and solipsism that persist in Trump — that flourish in him — even during a once-in-a-lifetime emergency that demands something nobler. Under normal circumstances, these traits are galling. Under the current ones, they’re gutting.但出乎我意料并令我心碎的是特朗普持续甚至渐长的冷漠、傲慢、小气、刻薄、自恋和唯我，即使在这种需要表现得更加高尚、一生可能只有一次的紧急情况下。在正常情况下，这些特点令人恼火；而在眼下，这些特点让人彻底失望。
“I don’t take responsibility at all.” “Did you know I was number one on Facebook?” To bother with just one of those sentences while a nation trembles is disgusting. To bother with both, as Trump did, is perverse.“我完全不承担责任。”“你知道我在脸书上排名第一吗？”——在国家动荡不安时，有心思说出这两句中的一句就够令人作呕了。像特朗普这样说出两句，简直不通人事。
He continues to bash the media, as if the virus were cooked up in the bowels of CNN. He continues to play blame games and to lord his station over those of a lesser political caste, turning governors into grovelers and suggesting that they’re whiny piggies at the federal trough.他不断抨击媒体，仿佛新冠病毒是CNN内部炮制出来的。他不断玩推卸责任的把戏，把自己凌驾于那些政治等级比他低的人之上，他想让州长们对他卑躬屈膝，并暗示他们是在联邦政府饲料槽前嗷嗷争食的猪仔儿。
He continues his one-man orgy of self-congratulation, so that in the same breath recently he speculated about a toll of 100,000 deaths in America from Covid-19 and crowed about what a great job he’s doing.他不断玩着沾沾自喜的一人狂欢，所以最近才会一边推测美国将有10万人死于新冠病毒肺炎，一边扬扬自得地夸口自己正在做一份多么伟大的工作。
And he continues to taunt and smear his perceived political adversaries. Last week, on Fox News, he called Nancy Pelosi “a sick puppy.” This is how he chooses to spend his time and energy?他还不断奚落和诽谤他眼中的政治对手。上周，在福克斯新闻的节目上，他称南希·佩洛西是“一只有病的小狗”。这就是他选择消磨时间和精力的方式吗？
At those beloved daily briefings of his, where he talks and talks and talks, he sometimes seems to regard what’s happening less as a devastating scourge than as a star-studded event. Just look at the nifty degree of prominence it’s conferring on everyone and everything involved! He has mused aloud about how well known Anthony Fauci has become. He has marveled at the disease’s celebrity profile.他在自己深爱的每日简报会上一开口就没完没了，有时似乎并不把正在发生的事当作一场毁灭性的灾难，而是一场明星荟萃的活动。看看简报会给涉及到的每个人、每件事带来了多么精彩的露脸机会吧！他曾大声自言自语，感慨安东尼·福奇如今名扬天下。他惊叹新冠病毒肺炎出了大名。
“Become a very famous term — C-O-V-I-D,” he said on Thursday. Was that envy in his voice?“竟然成了个非常有名的词儿——新-冠-病-毒-肺-炎。”他周四说道。从他的调调里听出嫉妒了吗？
He leaps from tone deafness to some realm of complete sensory and moral deprivation.
他从充耳不闻转入了感官和道德全丧的境地。
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“I want to come way under the models,” he said on Friday, referring to casualty projections. “The professionals did the models. I was never involved in a model.”“我想要比模型低很多的数字。”他周五说，指的是病患人数的预测，“模型是专业人士做的。我从来没掺和过任何模型。”
“At least this kind of model,” he added. No context like a pandemic for X-rated humor.“至少没掺和过这种。”他补充道。没有比大流行病更好的限制级幽默背景了。
It’s an extraordinary thing: to fill the air with so many words and have none of them carry any genuine sadness or stirring resolve.做到这一点真不容易：如此大放厥词而没有一个词承载任何真正的悲伤或打动人心的信念。
I can hear his admirers grumble that he doesn’t do camera-perfect emotions, that Obama was just a better actor, that Trump is the more authentic man.我可以听到特朗普的崇拜者们发牢骚说，他不会在摄像机前做完美的情感表演，奥巴马不过是个更好的演员，特朗普则是个更真实的人。
To which I answer: What’s the point of having a showman for a president if he can’t put on the right kind of show? Performances count, even if they’re just performances. And Trump clearly isn’t averse to artifice. Just look at his hair.我对此的回答是：如果让一个喜欢表演的人当总统，但他却演不出好戏，那又有什么意义？表演很重要，即使只是表演。特朗普显然不反对使用道具，看看他的头发就知道了。
A cheap shot? I’m feeling cheap. A loss of life and livelihoods on this scale will do that to you.这种攻击低劣吗？我感到低劣。如此大规模失去生命和生计就会让人做出这样的攻击。
As of this writing, at least 9,600 people with the coronavirus have died in the United States. That’s more than three times the number killed in the Sept. 11 attacks. New York State alone reported 630 new deaths on Saturday. No school shooting has taken even a small fraction of as many lives.我写这篇文章时，美国已有至少9600人死于新冠病毒——这是9·11恐怖袭击死亡人数的三倍多。周六，仅纽约州就通报了630例死亡。相比之下，那些校园枪击案夺走的生命大概只是个零头。
And while I’m not looking to Trump for any panacea, is it too much to ask for some sign that the dying has made an impression on him, that the crying has penetrated his carapace and that he’s thinking about something other than his ratings? I watch. I wait. I suspect I’ll be doing that forever.虽然我不指望特朗普能提供什么灵丹妙药，但还是想看到有迹象表明，不断的病亡已经触动他，持续的哭声已经穿透他的保护壳，除了自己的收视率以外他还能想些其他事——这，不算太过分吧？我观察着，等待着。我怀疑自己的观察和等待将无限期地持续下去了。
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