Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Friday, May 12, 2017

Unified Theory Of Trump

Reporters, politicians and political analysts have all approached Trump with the wrong filter; I'm as guilty as they are.  They have looked at Trump as a political animal who calculates moves from an ideological perspective.  This leaves them flummoxed when Trump makes what would normally be a self-destructive action.  But he does it and keeps right on going.

It is better to think of Trump as a 70 year old 3 year old. Which is to say, Trump has never learned to see other people as anything more than extensions of his own self.  And he reacts to everything entirely as emotional stimulae.  This is the point of David Roberts' tweetstorm yesterday.

Trump sees everything through the filter of how it reflects on him.  Does this make me look or feel good?  Then it is objectively good.  Does this make me look or feel bad? Then it is objectively bad.  So the revelation that Trump basically fired Comey because of Comey's "mildly nauseous" comment fits perfectly into this and "Trump's Razor" which  posits that the stupidest explanation of his behavior is likely the correct one. Comey meant that he was nauseous that he might have tipped the election one way or another, but Trump saw it as a slight against him, combined with the fact that Comey wouldn't pledge fealty to Trump and shut down the Russia investigation.  Boom, Comey gets fired and Trump can't understand what the big deal is, because he's a child who can't understand other people's perspectives.

This lends itself to an interesting conclusion about the Russia investigation.  The best explanation from the available evidence is that several of Trump's campaign figures were colluding with Russian hackers to expose unflattering stories about Hillary and the Democrats.  Trump himself is unlikely to have been involved.  However, the Russia story makes him look bad, so he is in the process of obstructing justice, which is - you know - a CRIME, because the story makes him mad.

Here are the basic options:

A) Trump colluded with the Russians to swing the election.
B) Trump did not collude with the Russians, but he's obstructing justice because he has the emotional intelligence of a three year old.

Which one scares you more?

UPDATE:  I mean, holy shit.  Doesn't he know it's NOT a good thing to be constantly compared to Nixon?

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