Trump is the Antithesis of Intelligence and Reason:
“Ask Not for Whom The Bell Tolls, It Tolls for Thee”
This morning I was again reminded of how far America has fallen in terms of a democracy, in relation to reason and rationality. I am an avid fan of Fareed Zakaria, a very intelligent man who attempts to find the truth underneath all of the lies, machinations and obfuscation thrown up into the atmosphere like so much fog. The truth is that America and democracy are living on borrowed time. All that half of Americans want is the destruction or disinfranchisement of the other half. America has been sleepwalking into chaos. How could this happen and where did America lose itself? Where did logic and intelligence go and why is ignorance and arrogance the mantra of the political right?
These are rhetorical questions, yet the answers to them are much more complex than what immediately springs to mind. Americans were once forward looking, confident, considerate and empathetic to the needs of their own people and the world’s people at large. They were unafraid of change, of difference and the unknown. They listened and heard each other, without rancour and without disinterest.
While their were always differences of opinion, civility and discourse were the norm. Leaders and politicians of all stripes actually worked together to achieve goals for the greater good. Today, self-interest, distrust, rancour and ‘alternative facts’ foment an unwillingness to listen, to analyze, to logically rationalize opinions in order to understand and discern what are the best options moving forward for all parties.
Politics and policymaking has become a zero-sum game where winning is more important than the substance of the policy, its costs, effectiveness or rationalitiy.
In this environment, Americans have become insular, preoccupied, fearful and indifferent to the plight of people outside their ‘ingroup’ or physical borders, if not individually, collectively, as though Groupthink were a dominant component of American political discourse. Us and them, – that’s how each half views the other. They have also become adversarial to any group that does not validate their beliefs, especially within the United States.
Whether in terms of politics, religion, economics, immigration, ethnicity, race, climate change, science or America’s laws, opinions are not validated, they are only reinforced. Through media, the internet or in local coffee shops, like-mindedness precludes Americans from talking ‘to’ each other. Their animosity, anger and unwillingness to listen, has destroyed any abiliity to compromise, collaborate or seek rational discourse. Hate has replaced logic and reason.
This was not the case when I was contemplating my future as a teenager. Americans, along with the rest of world had just withstood the Second World War, Korea and were imbedded in the hell that Vietnam became. They had withstood the assassination of a President who provided hope, dreams and a bright future, and were in the process of moving society forward to a new and brighter future, and then the daily onslaught of watching young men die in Vietnam, became reality. At no prior time in American history had it been possible to watch the horrors of war every night, like clockwork. Not only was it visceral, as well, nearly every American family with men of service age knew someone who was there, in Vietnam or in southeast Asia.
The loss, injustice and seemingly meaningless deaths of 58,000 men and women, and the experiences of the 2.7 million Americans who went to Vietnam, changed the American psyche. It was a change that remains in the hearts and minds of those who served, to this day. Many of those who served and returned still suffer. Worse, it is estimated by the American Psychiatric Association that more than 50,000 of those who served in Vietnam subsequently committed suicide.
https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.147.6.772?journalCode=ajp
This fall America may well vote to install a man as president whose lack of self-control, lack of foreign policy knowledge and knee-jerk reactions and decisions may place America’s military personnel in grave danger. Trump’s impulsivity and immature reaction to any perceived grievance can and likely will lead to miscalculations that have dire consequences. War is not a game, nor is the use of military force on a whim, and one need only remember that Donald Trump is a man who sought deferment five times from military service. He has no life experience as a military strategist or soldier beyond playing bathtub wargames with Kim Jong Un.
Trump is a man without a compass. He lies pathologically, is a sexual predator, misogynist, and as illustrated by his actions toward service, a coward. A nercissist and probable sociopath, were it not for the fact that I know America elected this flawed and evil, – yes, evil man-child, I would find it incomprehensible to believe.
Peter Juul and Ken Gude wrote an article in 2017 about Trump’s attitude towards the use of the military. It should be read by every American capable of cogent thought prior to this year’s election.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/reckless-endangerment-president-trump-use-military-force/
They describe Trump as ‘mercurial in nature and largely ignorant when it comes to complex foreign policy issues.’ They suggest that trumps proclivity “to use or threaten force reveals a set of disturbing and dangerous policymaking patterns,” which they suggest fall into four major areas of conern.
- Demoting diplomacy
- Impulsive decision-making
- Having no clear strategy, message or vision
- Not caring if its administration’s actions are even legal under domestic or international law.
Without reiterating the entire article, (only one of many available offering similar observances and findings), suffice to say that Trump’s view of power and the use of force is seen as a tool to manipulate and coerse other governments. Juul and Gude continue,
“Trump will blunder into an armed conflict due to miscalculation or accident. For a President who clearly views military force as his primary foreign policy tool, the patterns revealed by Trump’s behavior…serve as an ominus warning sign for American citizens and foreign leaders alike.”
How did America allow itself to become the country it is today? How did it succumb to avarice and greed such that it is now a country where a man completely devoid of character, honor, intelligence and truth can actually lead the nation?
America has gone from a hopeful, forward looking, trusted democracy to a place where truth no longer exists, where hate is openly stoked, demogogues memorialized and brutal dictators revered. It has gone from a vision of the “Great Society” to the “Dangerous and Ugly Society.” A place where you dare not turn your back on your neighbor or conceivably run the risk of being shot or assaulted.
Guns, greed, right-wing religious zealotry and ignorance are leading America into a place where the ability to listen has been lost, and where science and rationality is actively denigrated. America is being subsumed and enveloped by a cult of angry, hateful and violently wishful anti-government anarchists in the guise of a political party who apparently hate the other half of America’s citizens.
If trump’s vision is the future of America, I, as a spectator to the apocalypse to come, want nothing of it. It actually illustrates Donald Trumps contempt towards those who are aware and alarmed by his immense failings. Trump will destroy America, of that I have no doubt. He is incapable of succeeding as his arrogance, paranoia, ignorance and myopia blind him to his lack of ability and limited intelligence.
The rest of us on this planet are along for the ride, so find a safe place to hunker down, batten down the hatches and rig for silent running.
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