Donald Trump: Every brag a blot.

My father's carving of Don Quixote, bought in Spain in the 1950s.

     Donald Trump was praising himself on social media the other day. No news there. Now if a day passed when he didn't puff himself — that would be something special. Otherwise, to even report the fact of our president prattling on about his own superlative self is like sharing  the bulletin that molecules are flitting through the air, or that water is rushing across the landscape, seeking its own level — it happens everywhere all the time, and to notice it is to state the obvious.
     Yet this week, regarding some droplet flung from his firehosing self-puffery, spattering more salve at the festering open wound that is his ego, I thought again of a line from Cervantes, translated by Edith Grossman as, "Self-praise is self-debasement" mentioned in my 2017 examination of our then-new president through the lens of Don Quixote.
     But for some reason, this time I paused. Something wasn't quite right. There is a problem with that quote, particularly "self-debasement." A clunky word, not one you'd ever use. You'd never say, "I'm not that good at bowling — this isn't self-debasement; it's true."
     We can do better. 

     I wondered what the original was, and found it in Chapter XVI. Don Quixote is ruefully singing his own praises, pointing out, in Miguel Garci-Gomez's translation: "though self-praise is degrading, I must perforce sound my own sometimes, that is to say, when there is no one at hand to do it for me."

    Which makes Trump's constant upchuck of auto-flattery all the more puzzling, because it is so unnecessary. There is always someone at hand to do it for him; many someones. He's surrounded by a hallelujah chorus of lackeys, lickspittles and lapdogs — and those are just the L's — scrambling over each other to pay tribute like piglets fighting for position around a sow. He needn't bother. But bother he does. Because that echoing void where a soul might go demands to be fed, 24-7, and as an addiction expert once said, "It's hard to get enough of something that doesn't work in the first place." I am often accused of hating the man but the bedrock truth is, I pity him. I can't imagine a worse punishment than just being who he is.
     "Self-praise is degrading" is an improvement on "self-praise is self-debasement." But we could still do better. Let's look at the original Spanish for clues: "Las propias alabanzas envilecen."
     "Propia" is own, as in your own self. "Alabanza" means praise, often in religious sense, as in worship. There is Alabanza Christian music, singing of the glories of God. So "Las propias alabanzas" means, literally, "The self-praise." We could flip it to "praising yourself," which sounds better.
     "Envilecen" is a verb, meaning to debase, or degrade.
     We could try, "praising yourself is shaming yourself." An improvement on the translation I used in 2017, "self-praise is self-debasement," though the doubled "yourself" grates as much as the doubled "self" did. Or spice it up even more with a bit of the vernacular: "singing your own praises is cutting your own throat"? Even better. 

     But we live in a time when language is sandblasted into an endless series of smooth bloops and bleeps, thoughts polished smooth like pebbles so we can continually slingshot them at one another through social media. It's often said of our president that every accusation is a confession, so why not build on that and observe that every brag is also a blot? "Every brag a blot." Now, that's a keeper.