好英语网走向自我毁灭的特朗普
“And he’s going to get re-elected.”
“他会再次当选的。”
Not a day goes by without several friends — Republicans as well as Democrats — saying that to me. It’s the blunt coda to a bloated recitation of Donald Trump’s failures during this pandemic. It’s a whimper of surrender following a scream of disbelief.
每一天都会有几个朋友这么对我说，有共和党也有民主党人。这为列举唐纳德·特朗普大流行期间的众多失败添上了生硬的结尾。这是在难以置信中发出尖叫，然后啜泣着举手投降。
Tens of thousands of Americans die; what does the president do? Spreads bad information. Seeds false hope. Reinvents history, reimagines science, prattles on about his supposed heroism, bellyaches about his self-proclaimed martyrdom and savages anyone who questions his infallibility. In lieu of leadership, grandstanding. In place of empathy, a snit. And he’s going to get re-elected.
数万美国人死去；总统又做了些什么？传播不良信息。播撒虚假的希望。重新编造历史，重新想象科学，喋喋不休地谈论他所谓的英雄主义，对他自诩的受难满腹牢骚，猛烈攻击任何质疑他的绝对正确的人。没有领导力，只有哗众取宠。没有共情，只有窃笑。然而，他会再次当选的。
With that refrain we perform a spiritual prophylaxis. We prepare for despair.
有了这句话，我们就能开始做精神上的预防。我们准备迎来绝望。
But somewhere along the way, we started to confuse a coping mechanism with reasoned analysis. We began to treat a verbal tic as inevitable truth.
但在这个过程中，我们开始将应对机制和理性分析混为一谈。我们开始把讽刺的言语当作不可避免的真理。
It isn’t. While Trump may indeed be careening toward four more years, it’s at least as possible that he’s self-destructing before our eyes.
并非如此。尽管特朗普可能确实正在跌跌撞撞地走向继续执政四年之路，他至少有可能在众目睽睽之下走向自我毁灭。
Maybe a toasty beam of sunlight is all that we need to wipe out the coronavirus? What if we just injected disinfectant into our veins? He floated both of those fantasies on Thursday, when he might as well have stepped up to the lectern in a tin foil hat. They’re the ramblings of a dejected, disoriented and increasingly desperate man.
也许只需一束温暖的阳光，我们就可以消灭冠状病毒？如果往血管里注射消毒剂会怎样？周四，他提出了这两种想入非非，他还不如干脆戴着锡箔帽（有人认为锡箔帽可用来防止电磁波和思想控制，这个词进而被用来嘲笑受迫害妄想者和阴谋论者。——译注）上讲坛呢。这是一个沮丧、迷失、日益绝望者的胡言乱语。
As Katie Rogers and Annie Karni reported in The Times, the president feels isolated and embattled and is panicked that he’ll lose to Joe Biden in November. That state of mind, they wrote, prompted his executive order to halt the issuing of green cards, which is precisely the kind of base-coddling measure that he resorts to “when things feel out of control.”
正如凯蒂·罗杰斯(Katie Rogers)和安妮·卡尼(Annie Karni)在《纽约时报》上的报道，总统感到孤立，四面楚歌，担心自己会在11月的大选中输给乔·拜登(Joe Biden)。她们写道，正是这种心态促使他下达了停止发放绿卡的行政命令，而这正是他“感觉事态失控的时候”会采取的那种讨好票仓的心爱招数。
He can read the polls as well as the rest of us can, and they show that while he stands there nightly in the White House briefing room and blows kisses at himself, Americans aren’t blowing kisses back.
他可以像我们其他人一样看到民意调查，它们表明，尽管他每天晚上都站在白宫简报室里对着自己抛飞吻，但美国人并没有用飞吻回敬。
A month ago there was much ado about a slight uptick in Trump’s job-approval numbers. But the real story was the slightness: Past presidents had experienced greater bumps during crises, when Americans tend to rally around their leader. For Trump there was no such rallying — just a grudging, incremental benefit of the doubt.
一个月前，对特朗普工作的认可率出现了小幅上升，让不少人大惊小怪。但事实并非如此：在危机期间，历任总统都曾有过更大的支持率上升，而美国人在这种时刻往往会团结在领导人周围。对特朗普来说，这样的团结没有出现——有的只是一种勉强而渐增的姑且相信。
A fleeting one, too. His uptick quickly took a downturn, reuniting him with his anemic norm. According to the polling average at FiveThirtyEight as of late Friday afternoon, 52.5 percent of Americans disapprove of his job performance. Only 43.4 percent approve.
而且这种相信是转瞬即逝的。上升的支持率很快就降了下来，使他恢复了虚弱的常态。根据周五下午晚些时候FiveThirtyEight的民意调查，52.5%的美国人对他的工作表现并不满意。只有43.4%的人表示认可。
True, his favorability ratings weren’t any better in 2016 — in fact, they were worse — and he got to the White House regardless. But the dissonance of that victory could be explained partly by what he represented: a protest against the status quo. Now he is the status quo, and voters have had a chance to sample the disruption that he pledged. It tastes a lot like incompetence.
的确，他在2016年的支持率也不比这更高——事实上还要更糟糕——但他还是入主了白宫。然而那场胜利中发出的不和谐音，一定程度上可以用他所代表的东西来解释，也就是一场对现状的抗议。然而现在他就是现状，选民有了机会去体味他当初所承诺的破坏。那滋味很像是无能。
Other numbers tell an even scarier story for Trump. In all three of the battleground states that enabled his Electoral College victory three and a half years ago, he’s currently behind Biden — by 6.7 percentage points in Pennsylvania, 5.5 in Michigan and 2.7 in Wisconsin, according to the averaging of recent polls by RealClearPolitics. That website also puts him behind by 3.2 points in Florida, a state he won in 2016 and must win again.
对特朗普来说，其他数据甚至更可怕。根据RealClearPolitics最近民调的平均结果，在三年半前帮助他赢得选举人团选举的三个摇摆州中，他目前落后于拜登——在宾夕法尼亚州落后6.7个百分点，在密歇根州落后5.5个百分点，在威斯康辛州落后2.7个百分点。该网站还显示他在佛罗里达州的支持率落后了3.2个百分点，他在2016年赢得了佛罗里达州，现在他必须再赢一次。
Wisconsin alone should terrify Trump. In 2018, the Republican governor was ousted by a Democrat. So were the Republican lieutenant governor and attorney general. Then, this month, Wisconsin voters replaced a conservative incumbent on the state’s Supreme Court with a liberal challenger, her victory not just surprising but resounding. There’s no way to spin that in Trump’s favor.
只需看威斯康辛州就能吓住特朗普。2018年，这里的共和党州长被一名民主党人赶下台。共和党副州长和司法部长也是如此。然后，这个月，威斯康辛州的选民让一位自由派挑战者取代了该州最高法院的保守派现任法官，她的胜利不仅令人意外，而且具有轰动效应。这个结果无论怎么解释也不会对特朗普有利。
According to monthly polling by Gallup, the percentage of Americans who indicated satisfaction with the way things were going in the country plummeted to 30 percent in mid-April from 42 percent in mid-March. Only twice before in the past two decades has there been a one-month decline that precipitous.
盖洛普(Gallup)的月度调查显示，对国家现状感到满意的美国人的比例，从3月中旬的42%骤降至4月中旬的30%。在过去20年里，单月内如此急剧的下降只有两次。
Maybe this drop was less a referendum on Trump’s stewardship than a recognition of the coronavirus’s devastation. But maybe not: Surveys reveal that a significant majority of Americans believe that he acted too late to stem the virus’s spread. He’s also out of step with most Americans’ appraisal of what will and won’t be safe in the immediate future.
或许，这种下降与其说是对特朗普领导能力的全民公投，不如说是对冠状病毒破坏力的承认。但或许也并非如此：调查显示，绝大多数美国人认为他在阻止病毒传播方面行动太晚。而且，对于近期内什么是安全的，什么是不安全的，他的评估也和大多数美国人不一致。
Amid Trump’s dizzyingly mixed messages, he has rooted for a return to some semblance of normalcy around May 1 and has chided a few governors for overzealous lockdowns. But in a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that was released on Wednesday, only 12 percent of Americans said that the social-distancing and shelter-in-place directives where they live went too far, while more than double that number — 26 percent — said that the precautions weren’t stringent enough. Sixty-one percent said that they were on the mark.
在他发出的种种令人眼花缭乱、含混不清的讯息之中，他支持于5月1日左右恢复一些表面上的正常，并指责几位州长实施的封锁措施过于激进。但美联社与全国民意公共事务研究中心(The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research)周三发布的一项民意调查表明，只有12%的美国人认为他们所在地实施的社交距离和居家令太过分了，而超过两倍的人——26%——认为预防措施还不够严厉。61%的人认为这些措施是适当的。
In a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll, 65 percent of Americans said it could take until June or later for gatherings of 10 people or more to be safe. And in a Yahoo News/YouGov poll, only 22 percent of Americans supported the protesters who have been demanding an end to their states’ restrictions, while 60 percent opposed them. President Trump has egged those protesters on.
在《华盛顿邮报》和马里兰州大学联合进行的一项民意调查中，有65％的美国人表示，要保证10人或以上的聚会安全，可能要等到6月或6月以后。在Yahoo News/YouGov的一项民意调查中，只有22％的美国人支持那些要求结束本州限制的抗议者，而60％的人表示反对。特朗普总统怂恿了那些抗议者。
Is he following some gut instinct or just flailing? I vote for the latter. Lately he has contradicted himself at a whole new pace and to a whole new degree, and he has undercut his own party’s talking points.
他是在顺应某种直觉还是只是抓瞎？我选择后者。最近，他的自相矛盾达到了一个全新的速度和高度，并且削弱了自家党派的论点。
Also, Trump’s most optimistic pronouncements about imminent deliverance from the current misery represent a bigger gamble than the many others he has taken. If he’s wrong, there’s not going to be any hiding it. If he’s reckless, the toll is Americans’ very lives.
另外，特朗普发出的那些最乐观的宣言——称我们很快就可以从当前的苦难中解脱出来——和他的其他许多言论比起来，是一次更大的赌博。如果他错了，将无处可藏。如果他鲁莽行事，将会以美国人的生命为代价。
I know, I know: He’s Trump. He carries the secret weapon of his spectacular shamelessness, which means that he’ll resort to ploys and lies that even the most unscrupulous of his opponents wouldn’t attempt. He’ll destroy what he must so long as he gets to rule over the wreckage.
我知道，我知道：他是特朗普。惊人的无耻是他的秘密武器，这意味着他将诉诸于即使最不择手段的对手也不会尝试的花招和谎言。只要还能继续统治这个烂摊子，他会毁掉一切需要毁的东西。
And the usual laws of nature don’t apply to him. He was caught on tape bragging about grabbing women by the crotch. Didn’t matter. He got nearly three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. Still he won. If he wasn’t exactly found guilty of elaborate coordination with the Russians, he was certainly shown to be open to it. Onward he rolled, and he kept rolling past his gross abuse of power in dealing with Ukraine and his richly deserved impeachment for it.
而且自然的一般规律不适用于他。有录音逮到他吹嘘自己抓女人下体。但没关系。他的票数比希拉里·克林顿少了近三百万。他还是赢了。与俄罗斯人精心勾结的罪名也许没能成立，但看起来他无疑是乐于看到有这样的配合的。他继续向前，不断超越他在与乌克兰打交道时的严重滥权，他的因此被弹劾完全是罪有应得。
He’s Houdini, he’s Scheherazade, he’s all the escape artists of history and fiction rolled into one and swirled with golden-orange topping. He’s lucky beyond all imagining. But here’s the thing about luck: It runs out.
他是胡迪尼，他是舍赫拉查德，他集所有真实与虚构的逃脱艺术家于一身，顶着一头橙金色秀发。他的运气超出了所有人的想象。但是，有个关于运气的真相：它是会用光的。
There’s incessant talk of how fervent his base is, but the many Americans appalled by him have a commensurate zeal. For every Sean Hannity, there’s a Rachel Maddow. For every Kellyanne Conway, a George Conway. She and her ilk may be wily in their defense of the president. He and his tribe are even better in their evisceration of him.
有人不断地谈论他的选民有多么狂热，但许多对他怀着极大不满的美国人也有着同样的热情。有多少肖恩·汉尼蒂(Sean Hannity)就有多少雷切尔·玛多(Rachel Maddow)。有多少凯利安·康威(Kellyanne Conway)就有多少乔治·康威(George Conway)。她和她的同类在为总统辩护时也许会很狡猾。然而他和他的群体在给他抽筋剥皮时还要更厉害。
And what of the diaspora of refugees from the Trump administration: people like Rick Bright, the government scientist who says he was just stripped of his leading role in the search for a coronavirus vaccine because he wouldn’t parrot Trump’s cockamamie talking points? I predict that as November nears, more and more exiles will speak out, sharing alarming accounts of life inside the president’s hall of mirrors. Trump in turn will mutter about the “deep state,” but the phrase won’t fly when he’s left with such a shallow pool of charlatans around him — and when he’s making such a repellent fool of himself.
被特朗普政府流放的难民们又怎么说：比如政府科学家里克·布莱特(Rick Bright)这样的人，他说，他因为不愿意重复特朗普荒谬可笑的论点，而被剥夺了新冠病毒疫苗研发行动领头人的身份？我预测，随着11月的临近，越来越多的流亡者将大声疾呼，分享令人震惊的总统的镜面世界里的见闻。特朗普反过来会嘟囔着“深层政府”，但是当他身边只剩下一群冒牌货的时候——以及当他自欺欺人丑态百出的时候，这样的词语是帮不上忙的。
Don’t tell me that his nightly briefings are just a new version of the old stadium rallies; their backdrop of profound suffering makes them exponentially harder to stomach. Americans who take any comfort from them were Trump-drunk long ago. The unbesotted see and hear the president for what he is: a tone-deaf showman who regards everything, even a mountain of corpses, as a stage.
别告诉我他每晚的简报只是传统体育馆集会的新版；这些简报的背景是深重的苦难，导致愈发地难以下咽。任何从这些简报中能感到安慰的美国人，早已被特朗普灌醉。而清醒的人看见的和听到的是总统的本来面目：一个把所有的一切——包括堆积如山的尸体——当作舞台的“音盲”戏子。