The other day I was driving through Staten Island.

For most of us in New Jersey all we have ever experienced of Staten Island is the highway between Goethals Bridge in New Jersey to the Verrazano Bridget that connects us to Brooklyn and beyond. We have no desire to stop and explore. There is no there for us. I mean they had Fresh Kills Garbage dump but not a destination most want to visit and its closed now.  And the cast of the Jersey Shore demonstrate to those of us who love the shore why we called Staten Islanders bennies and generally avoid them at all costs.

Please don’t get me wrong. I am sure there are very nice people from Staten Island. Colin Jost and Pete Davidson are funny and are from there. But then again Antonin Scalia grew up there which is yet another reason never to stop there because no one I know wants his cooties.

Anyway, I was musing about this while stuck in the permeant traffic jam that is route 278. I was not listening to the radio because I didn’t want to hear the news (who does these days)  music seemed to noisy for a traffic jam  I guess I could have listened to a podcast but my go tos were either in summer hiatus or Rosie and I had already listened to them while on twice daily inspection of the neighborhood.  

Did I mention that I was hot. The air conditioner in my car is on the fritz and only working at about 50% capacity. And I couldn’t open the window unless I wanted to suck down exhaust and listen to people arguing in the car in the next lane.

So I was little bit miserable. A lot bored, when I spied an old Victoiran house on top of a nearby hill. It reminded me of one few things from Staten Island that seemed worthwhile. The television show “What We Do in The Shadows.”

Never seen it? It is the story of four centuries-old vampires  who have mastered immortality but remain utterly defeated by Staten Island parking, local politics, and household chores. Imagine The Office if the employees were undead narcissist.

There is Nandor, the Relentless wjp once conquered kingdoms, yet can’t figure out email, American customs, or why nobody respects his authority anymore.

Laszlo a centuries old libertine who approaches every problem with absolutely misguided certainty accompanied by ridiculous statements said with Shakespearean conviction.

Guillermo their mortal servant who longs to be a vampire but spends all of his time p vampire messes, buying groceries, and disposing of bodies. His loyalty is rewarded with…more chores.

The vampire that hit closest to home was Craig Robinson, the energy vampire. Rather than drinking blood, he feeds by trapping people in soul-crushing conversations about municipal zoning, printer maintenance, or PowerPoint updates. Every office has one—you just never realized he was supernatural.

That is until they introduced Evie Russell, the emotional vampire. So clever. Who in the course of their life has not run into an emotional vampire.  Someone you have friended, dated, or made a significant other who before you knew it had sucked the emotional life out of you leaving you a husk of your former self and having to re-build your emotional infrastructure from scratch and wondering how you got here.

Thinking about it, Evie had a particularly insidious way of draining  people by making them feel sorry for her with a constant stream of tragic, self-pitying stories.

Gosh, that sounds familiar.

Who else produces a constant stream of self-absorbed, self-pitying and self-centered complaints about how badly the press, the courts, his political opponents, foreign governments, former allies, late-night comedians and practically everyone except the fellow in his bathroom mirror treat him?

You know the person I mean.

The Mar-a-Lago Martyr.

The Orange Evie.

The Whiner-in-Chief.

The only man capable of occupying the most powerful office in the world while sounding like someone has once again given him the wrong table at the country club.

His speeches and social-media posts have become an endless recital of grievances. The press is dishonest. The judges are corrupt. Prosecutors are deranged. Elections are rigged. Allies are ungrateful. Foreign countries are treating us unfairly. Television hosts are untalented. Celebrities who dislike him are washed up. Even Canada, according to a recent lamentation from the Presidential Pity Palace, has treated the United States “very unfairly for decades.”

One might reasonably ask whether there is anyone on Earth who has treated this poor billionaire, television celebrity, golf-course proprietor and twice-elected president properly.

Apparently not.

At the recent White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the Tangerine Tragedian began pleasantly enough before returning to his emotional feeding ground: complaints about reporters and insults directed at the people who displease him. It was less a comedy routine than Thanksgiving dinner with a wealthy uncle who has cornered you near the liquor cabinet and wants to explain, again, why everybody is jealous of him.

Then there is Truth Social, his electronic fainting couch.

During one six-hour stretch in July, the Sultan of Sulk reportedly posted 43 times. A few weeks earlier, he unleashed more than 100 posts in another digital eruption. Apparently, governing the United States leaves considerable downtime between breakfast and the first tee.

The individual complaints are almost beside the point. Like Evie Russell’s stories, they accumulate. One grievance follows another until we are no longer discussing policy, budgets, wars or the future of the country. We are discussing him: who insulted him, who betrayed him, who failed to praise him sufficiently and which unpleasant fact must be transformed into another story of his persecution.

That is how the emotional vampire feeds.

Evie drains her victims by forcing them to feel sorry for her. The Mango Martyr does something even more ambitious. He drains an entire country by demanding that every event be experienced through his emotions.

If he is angry, we must all be angry.

If he feels humiliated, the nation must seek revenge.

If a reporter criticizes him, the press becomes an enemy.

If a judge rules against him, the justice system is corrupt.

If an ally disagrees, the ally becomes a traitor.

If reality itself refuses to cooperate, reality must be fired and replaced by someone more loyal.

And it works.

Every morning, millions of Americans awaken to discover what has offended the Apricot Aggrievance since they went to bed. Television panels analyze his latest tantrum. Members of Congress rush to defend it. Administration officials translate it into something resembling policy. The rest of us argue about it over breakfast, mutter about it during the day and carry it to bed with us at night.

He posts. We react.

He complains. We explain.

He wallows. We slowly become exhausted.

Like all emotional vampires, he does not merely consume attention. He consumes joy. He turns holidays into political rallies, tragedies into opportunities for self-praise and national celebrations into another airing of personal grievances. Even moments that should belong to the country somehow end up revolving around the Great Pumpkin’s hurt feelings.

By the time he is finished, we are too tired to discuss the cost of groceries, the national debt, housing, health care or whether the republic is being quietly dismantled while everyone debates the latest Truth Social eruption.

Perhaps that is the real danger of being governed by an emotional vampire. It is not simply that he is exhausting. It is that exhaustion becomes a political strategy.

A drained country is easier to frighten.

An angry country is easier to divide.

And a country that spends every waking hour tending to one man’s limitless emotional needs has precious little energy left to tend to its own.

Traffic finally began to move. The Victorian house disappeared behind me, and the air conditioner coughed out another lukewarm breath.

For a moment, I wondered whether the vampires of Staten Island might actually be preferable.

Nandor may be incompetent. Laszlo may be depraved. Colin Robinson may bore you into unconsciousness. Evie Russell may leave you emotionally hollowed out.

But at least they are fictional.

And none of them has the nuclear codes.