The problem with the Trumps (plural) is that when you get drawn into that family vortex you are more or less losing. Or are you? I am forced to think. First, the news. Ivanka was said to create a problem because she had an unpaid job in the White House. She was sitting in on meetings and probably gaining access to all manner of things we call security and classified. Now, just announced, Ivanka has a paid job.
Guess what? She is her daddy's paid advisor. Sort of like Steve Bannon and some of those other right-wingers in the West Wing. Except they don't sleep there as far as I know.
If not for daddy
If Ivanka was just a normal nothing type she would be deemed intelligent and attractive and perhaps live happily ever after. But she is as caught as any celebrity is. At least on some days, being a celebrity is sad indeed. If not for being a Trump, with all that has happened and is bound to happen, Ivanka would be free from slurs, insults, fans, and hangers-on. She could breathe.
On the man side
Men are two sorts these days.
There are most of us, shy, funny and distinctly low profile. Then there is the kind of guy who might learn ethics from a Roy Cohn and politics from a Roger Stone and chops from a Howard Stern. That would be Donald Trump. To serve him now after having served him all her life, must elicit a sigh of resignation. The man she calls father likes to scare people at night.
Then there's the mental illness thing
Among the string of nearly unrepeatable tweets that float around Ivanka now are some that see the new job as mental health-related. Is the president really a Nut Case? Was LBJ a nut case? Was W? Is any man in mega-power not a nut case? The skewered nature of our world leads to the following conclusion.
Perhaps the Trump family is reality TV whose aim is to show us the most disastrous side of what it means to give as much power to presidents as we do. Trump may be loco but so far W and LBJ lead him in evil if you count evil in the number of deaths inflicted. Then again, words can kill -- and do.