Greenland

“Hey, so can I buy you”, said the fool? 

“Hmmm, I don’t understand. We’re a part of a country. What do you mean, Can I buy you? You do understand that isn’t the way things work, don’t you? I mean, of course, you’re joking, right?”

Well, it’s a bit less than clear actually. Our dearly beloved president seems not to understand much of anything actually.  He seems to believe that he can do anything he wants, and that everything is for sale (see, The Art of the Deal), and it’s always only a matter of the sale price. I assume that means that if Trudeau sent Trump a missive to the effect, “Hey, we really like New York, and intend to buy it. What’s your best price?” Trump would consult with the guy who actually wrote “The Art of the Deal” and try to come to some price level, at which bargaining could begin.  The fact that he doesn’t own it (New York) would be viewed as irrelevant. He is the president, so he can do anything he wants, right?

This is the real risk with Trump. Yes, he is evil, i.e., he does things almost anyone would consider evil. But that he is clueless, knows nothing about almost everything, knows no boundaries, respects no one and no thing, therein lies the risk of our president.  Eventually, someone around him says, “No, you can’t do that”. And then he gets pissed and fires that someone.  Have we ever seen a turnover at high levels of our government such as we have seen since Trump?  I don’t think so.  He fires folks like he’s still on The Apprentice. And I think he actually doesn’t understand that there are rules to live by as President. Because he has never followed any rules. He simply acts, whimsically, all the time, and the subject matter is irrelevant, because he doesn’t understand anything.

So, how could we even imagine giving him the keys to the nuclear arsenal? How could we trust him to make rational decisions about War and Peace? How could we trust him to make decisions about the future of America, and maybe even The World? Well, clearly, we can’t. Yet we are doing those exact things. Why are we acting so obviously recklessly? An interesting question, that.

Partly, I believe that the people in charge, republicans mainly, are star struck with their power. They have been given this power by the American people, and by God, they are going to hold on to it. That they may be destroying the wellbeing of the country, or the values and principles on which the Nation thought it was founded, matters less than the sheer fact of power.  Like money, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. We can see that clearly whenever Mitch McConnell says or does something. He seemingly always acts in his self-interest, i.e., staying in power.  If that self-interest collides with what is best for America, Mitch’s priorities always take precedence.

But, I think something else is also going on, and it is broader than the self-interest calculations of republicans. People actually voted for Trump, despite knowing almost everything about him worth knowing. He was/is known to be a complete narcissist, a sociopath, ignorant, and perhaps stupid almost beyond imagining, a core racist, a likely Neo-Nazi, a misogynist, and . . . well, more is unnecessary. You get the point. And knowing all those things, people still voted for him.

We actually know that Hillary won the election on the popular vote.  But, given our system, he won via the Electoral College. That’s the system by which we reward small states for being small—the tyranny of the minority. Whether that system needs to be trashed in view of the Trump election is for another day.

But, that more than a few thousand folks decided to vote for Trump is what is at issue here. How could that be? In this country? Approximately 62.9 million people voted for Trump.  That’s million, not thousand. How could that be?

Well, apparently, we have a lot of angry people in this country. Some of those people are, like Trump, racist. Some are militant white nationalists, maybe even neo-Nazi’s. Some despise women (remember Hillary??). Many (millions??) fiercely oppose all forms of abortion. Many more oppose anything to do with homosexuality. Many, many Americans seem really angry at Government, per se.  Hillary represented the status quo of Government. Trump was the Great Destroyer. They voted for the Great Destroyer. And that “Make America Great Again” slogan? It was interpreted many different ways. But first and foremost, it presumed that America was not now (then) as great as it had been in bygone days—you know, those days before our first Black president, before the Clintons and everything they stood for.  Remember, many, many people still idolized that dim bulb Ronald Reagan (St. Ronald of Reagan), the man who sold arms to Iran in exchange for hostages and then used that money to buy arms for terrorists in Nicaragua.  Reagan actually believed in that Laffer Curve, and gave us the largest deficits in the Nation’s history. He made it ok again to be a racist.  But they loved him, despite all that.

And over the years, as we traded away our industrial might for lower prices, many people suffered, and they blamed government—they didn’t/don’t care what government—irrelevant. Trump represented the opposite of everything they loathed in this country.  That he was stupid, or racist, or whatever, they did not care. He wasn’t Hillary. He was not part of the existing power structure, and so they voted for him.

But what they did not know in voting for him, is that he not only doesn’t care about them, but he does not care about anything but himself. And, further, he is profoundly ignorant, and seemingly, profoundly stupid. Now stupid means the relative absence of intelligence, or reasoning ability. It relates to the brain’s ability to bring in information and to make sense of that information. Ignorance is different. Ignorance means the absence of information, and is often related to the absence of education. Arguably, during our education, we acquire information on a variety of topics. That information is then processed by our brains to give us an understanding of the world, and pathways to expanding that understanding. Stupidity implies an inability of the brain to process and make sense of such information.  Trump seems to lack both qualities. That is, he seemingly has no real understanding of the world in which he lives. And, beyond that lack, when presented with information, he seems to lack an ability to process the information in useful ways.  He simply acts and reacts according to how it makes him feel. He especially looks for applause. He desperately wants to be rewarded with shouts of Huzzah, with smiles, with pats.

Now, I think the voting public remains relatively unaware of his real failings as a human being. Whenever Trump is criticized, Fox News, yells Lies, and Trump yells Fake News.  And because his public desperately wants to reject that other world, they respond in kind. They yell, “Lock her up”, or “shoot them”, whatever suits their mood.  But what they do not understand is that he is an even bigger risk to them than anything his opponents would have been.  Because he is profoundly ignorant and even stupid, he can and already has made decisions about our nation that threaten its very existence.  His tax approach, his environmental stances, his approach to both allies and foes alike seem to most informed folks disturbingly hostile to rationality. He is, in fact, an existential threat to our very being. But his supporters have not yet figured that out. They are still too angry, and they continue to blame all their woes on the past and on anyone who represents that past, i.e., the Democrats.

And so the campaign goes on, his perpetual campaign. He doesn’t really govern; he campaigns. Even when he golfs, he is campaigning. Every meaningless jibberjabber coming out of his mouth, is in the interest of keeping him in power, because it is the only thing that will soothe his savage beast mentality.  So, unless enough folks get off their asses and actually vote, we will have him for another four years. And we actually may not survive as a democracy for such a period.

So, if you care about survival, people, you better get off your couches, switch off the TVs, and ready yourself to throw him out of office in 2020 by VOTING.