TWEET OF THE WEEK: Donald J Zuma

Welcome to Tweet of the Week. Every Friday I will use this column to hand out an award to one person who has tweeted something of significance. There are no strict rules, only that the tweet in question must offer an important insight, define a debate (notorious or otherwise) or mark an occasion.

This week the Tweet of the Week goes to @realDonaldTrump for:

"Meryl Streep, one of the most overrated actresses in Hollywood, doesn’t know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She is a....."

Profile: Donald J Trump is the president-elect of the United States of America. He has some 19.6-million followers on Twitter.

Citation: After actress Meryl Streep delivered what was wildly heralded as a "brave" speech attacking Donald Trump at this year’s Golden Globe awards, Trump responded, as is his wont, with a series of juvenile tweets, of which the first is this week’s Tweet of the Week.

The second instalment, following on from the first above, read: "Hillary flunky who lost big. For the 100th time, I never ‘mocked’ a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him......."

And the third concluded, "‘groveling’ when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media!"

Truth is, Streep’s speech was anything but brave, just the platitudinous reiteration of a series of mainstream criticisms. It was delivered, however, in front of a room full of celebrities, which helped instantaneously elevate it to the level of profundity. Either way, Trump didn’t take well to it.

It hasn’t taken Trump long to move beyond parody. Power has that effect. Clowns are entertaining when they are performing in the circus. Put one in charge of a nuclear arsenal and their antics quickly take on a different feel. Not that Trump was joking about Streep. The man was deeply wounded, as he so often is. His self-esteem is fragile indeed.

That is what’s called an understatement. Something Trump is incapable of. In truth, his insecurities run very deep. So deep, in fact, the bottom of that particular hole has yet to be found.

Consider this: a few days prior to Streep’s act of bravery, Trump took to Twitter, for no reason other than the fact that he could, to denigrate actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had taken over from Trump as host of Celebrity Apprentice.

The two tweets read:

"[1] Wow, the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got ‘swamped’ (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT. So much for.... [2] being a movie star-and that was season 1 compared to season 14. Now compare him to my season 1. But who cares, he supported Kasich & Hillary."

Forget the Streep tweets, this is the comment that really matters; the one that is most revealing.

Here is a man elected president of America. So far as affirmation goes, it doesn’t bet bigger than that. But it wasn’t enough.

The prospect of his replacement in any way replicating his performance on no more than a television show had to be quashed. Underpinning that desire is an ego as brittle as it is dangerous. And the pretence for it all, that Schwarzenegger supported Hillary Clinton? Well, that’s the kind of petty vindictiveness usually the sole preserve of children.

But it’s the behaviour of demagogues too. And we have seen no end of it closer to home. Jacob Zuma, who has turned on everyone from artist Brett Murray to cartoonist Zapiro, feigns a thick skin but the truth is, he bleeds very easily.

"Each time when I come here, I am abused by members of your house," Zuma complained before Parliament last year. That is the way of things with demagogues. "Respect" is their calling card but deference is their desire.

Of course that doesn’t mean criticism should be indulged for its own sake. If it is unfair or unwarranted, by all means, fight back. But rarely do demagogues fight back on the facts. Their first resort is their emotions and to put on public display their private wounds for all to see.

It’s pain they are interested in, and how much of it they feel. "Mommy, it hurts," they say, hopeful a response will come back from the void, "There there, you are a brave boy, let me make it better."

It never does.

And so it goes, the perpetual and petulant pursuit of validation.

Petulance is an unbecoming trait in a leader. But it goes down a treat with victims. For them, in their chosen leader, they have a surrogate for all their hurt and suffering. Attack their leader and you are attacking them. When Murray’s painting The Spear was being vandalised, physically and in abstract, someone helpfully suggested he should be stoned to death. Death is, of course, the ultimate cure. Those demagogues who have transitioned into full-blown dictators have often embraced it on a grand scale.

In-between Twitter and death, there are of course many ways for someone in a position of power to try to satiate their desire for affirmation. The sort of virtual school-ground thuggery Trump indulges in is one option. But you do wonder, who exactly is he talking to? If he is calling to the void, Twitter is not going to respond the way he wants, or needs.

Someone called Amy Jeanne Zhu tweeted, "It’s Morning in America again!!! Thank you President-Elect Donald Trump!!! So proud of you!!!!" Trump retweeted it, with a "THANKS!"

Now, your first inclination might be to say Ms Zhu was being sarcastic. She wasn’t. She is a fanatic and her timeline looks like those walls of photos you see in movies, in the basement of an obsessed stalker. Only they are all pictures of Trump.

That’s the sort of universal echo chamber Trump is after. "We don’t want two-thirds. We want three-thirds", Jacob Zuma said in 2013. Well, quite.

Whether Trump is America’s Zuma or Zuma is SA’s Trump is a question for the ages but, one way or the other, there is much more from the Zuma repertoire of demagoguery and hurt the US can brace itself for. The acrimony with the media aside, most of others are beginning to manifest already.

There is the victimhood and the permanent narrative that he is a misunderstood altruist, unfairly maligned and picked on for no good reason.

There is the cronyism and nepotism as those who abase themselves before him are rewarded and protected.

There is the populism, as things like religion and personal belief are substituted for principle and used to justify or explain political decisions.

There is the bipolar attitude to the rule of law and the Constitution, denigrated and celebrated as the situation demands.

And, always, there is the disdain for accountability and transparency. In its place, obfuscation at best, secrecy at worst, becomes entrenched.

This and much else besides, America can look forward too.

It is all held together by a kind of deliberate, belligerent and pragmatic ignorance. As there is no society in the world where people are not unfairly maligned, where patronage plays no role, personal belief does not inform politics, the rule of law does not fail and secrecy is never necessary, these facts are used to justify an extension of them.

The universe of the demagogue is the universe of false moral equivalence. The resultant confusion, as the media and public battle desperately to distinguish fair point from straw man, is enough to befuddle the masses.

The result is an endless war of attrition and the impression that the man at the centre of it all is indeed a victim of some sort or other. It is a fight that ultimately shores up their reputation rather than damaging it. And so America can brace for a great deal of frustration too.

Of course, when that fails, there is always lying. The ultimate act of immunity.

Power buys you immunity. With it, you can answer questions at your whim, on your terms and in your own time. And what you say in response matters, it cannot be ignored.

A universal weakness in all constitutions, the world over — one without a solution — is that they all assume benevolence. But between the lines of all those great texts is where demagoguery is most at home. And that is where both Donald Trump and Jacob Zuma reside.

Twitter is such a space. A home for humanity’s raging Id. It has sucked Trump in, as it does so many politicians, whose egos make them believe that out there in the seething mass of love and hate they can find what they are after: to convince their detractors and be affirmed by their admirers. Perhaps then, there is some good news in all of this — Donald Trump is going to be no less frustrated.

Perhaps that is one lesson only Zuma has learned. He couldn’t care less about Twitter. He last tweeted in October 2013.