Spent a couple of weeks in Italy and Spain and found the political atmosphere surrounding our President quite the topic of discussion. Everyone who finds out that you are an American has one of two questions to ask. Is he crazy or is he just dangerous. I found myself shrugging a lot and just mumbling that I was still finding out myself. For a long time Europeans have looked at our President as the leader of the world. They didn’t always want to, but that was the reality. As such our Presidents, even George Bush, at least most of the time, have managed to maintain a certain dignity and Presidential image. Trump has broken that image, presenting himself as a petty con man, crooked businessman, hands on misogynist and double-dealing loudmouth. It’s an image that’s pretty hard to sell as leader of the world. Hell, it’s pretty hard to sell as human. And that’s taking into account the fact; they are pretty much only interested in his foreign policy, which is his strongest area of almost function.
Trump’s military, security and foreign policy appointments, with the possible exception of Rex Tillerson have been pretty good so far, especially if you discount Mike Flynn and compare them to the absolute disaster that he has created in his domestic cabinet jobs. But most Europeans don’t care what our Secretaries of Education or Interior do. They confine their judgments to what Mathis and McMasters are doing with our military and foreign policy. That, needless to say, has them worried. And the reason they are worried is very simple. Trump lies – on just about everything he says. Which leaves everyone wondering if we are facing world peace or the end of the planet. Trump is the original loose cannon and he has his finger on the button of the biggest cannon in the history of man.
The big question, the one which most Europeans are asking, is – is it all a bluff or is he ready to start a nuclear war? Is he batshit crazy or just standard unhinged? There might be an answer to that question if the disinterested party Trump has appointed Secretary of State had any inkling of how important his job really is. But Rex Tillerson has shown no interest at all in doing anything like a competent job. That’s not surprising when one considers that he stated quite plainly that he never wanted the job in the first place.
“I didn’t want this job. I didn’t seek this job,” Tillerson told the Independent Journal Review in an interview. All he really wanted was to retire on his $180 million golden parachute to his equestrian farm and quietly play in the horseshit for the rest of his days. Instead he took one of the most important jobs in the world, which kept anyone who was competent from taking it, and is currently busy showing us how the job shouldn’t be done.
We know that Trump is a clown whose ego keeps him from ever bothering to find out what he doesn’t already know, which is most everything, but to place a man with no interest, in the most important Foreign Policy job in the government of the most important country in the world is just beyond stupid. Tillerson is proving what an incompetent asshole Trump really is by not doing his job and thereby crippling our relations around the world. Anyone who saw Tillerson stare blankly at reporters questioning him and then turn and walk away without even acknowledging the questions, let alone answering them, saw a performance of such unalloyed hubris as to make them want to see him fired on the spot.
Tillerson has to learn that he is no longer the head of the biggest oil company in the world. He is now a public servant and he has to start acting like one or he has to get he hell out of town. This government that Trump has brought to us, filled with super egos and a decided lack of intellect or performance is the result of Trump, himself expecting this job to be like being CEO of his own country. That is not the job and it is unfortunate that he was not intelligent enough to understand that before he took office. However, the main problem, is that neither Tillerson nor Trump has any belief that the State Department has any true place in our Foreign Policy. Tillerson is convinced that diplomacy hasn’t worked. Trump believes that it can’t work unless he personally carries it out. That leaves no place for the Secretary of State or the State Department.
Why did Trump appoint Tillerson? Only, it appears, was because it said in the instruction book that he needed a Secretary of State. Tillerson a millionaire with a background in oil and Russia was available. Trump seems intent on being his own Secretary of State or using his son-in-law as the next best thing. Jared Kushner may be a clever lad but he has zero experience running the foreign affairs of the most powerful nation on earth and so far it shows. His wife’s old man came into office saying he was against all wars and within the first 100 days he has bombed Syria and Afghanistan while threatening almost everyone else with whom he has spoken.
Sure the Europeans are worried about what we are going to do. Every time someone fires a shot, anyplace in the world, they have visions of a repeat of WWII and begin seeing themselves reliving Dresden and London. It appears that there is really only one thing that will make the Europeans feel safe and that is Trump out of office. Unfortunately that may be good for our foreign policy but when one looks at the alternative it will be a disaster on the home front.
Mike Pence will certainly be more presidential but the reality of a Pence presidency is, we will be burdened domestically with a phony religious fanatic whose view, of the four freedoms is limited to being able to put a Nativity scene in front of every town hall in the Midwest.
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This Sunday was earth day, a celebration of our planet, the one that Trump and his idiotic appointees are trying desperately to destroy. This is another area about which the Europeans are confused and depressed. They don’t understand, when the rest of the civilized world is finally coming to the realization that climate change is, at the very least, partially man made, and that we can actually do something about our rapidly declining habitability; why the President of the United States seems to think that the solution to the problem is more oil. Because of his failure to release his income taxes, there is no definable way to ascertain the nature of Trump’s investments but if you just follow the ludicrous nature of his moves with regard to energy, you have to come to the conclusion that Trump is deeply invested in oil and coal both in his domestic portfolio and in his Russian one. Not only deeply invested in fossil fuels but significantly panicked over them.
Forget the environmental impact of energy for just a second and consider only its economic values. Any unbiased viewer can immediately see the death of oil as an investment looming in the immediate future. Coal is already gone as an investment and despite Trump’s brazen lies to the coal workers of America who now number less than the employees of Arby’s, also as a source of jobs. So too, job creation by the oil industry has disappeared in comparison to that of sun and wind, which creates hundreds of times more jobs then the fossil fuel industry.
Despite these economic facts, Trump has appointed Scott Pruitt, as EPA Secretary. This is a man who doesn’t believe in climate change, who wanted to eliminate that department altogether before he was appointed its head. He has appointed Rick Perry, the empty brain that walks like a man, as Secretary of Energy. Before his appointment Perry solidified his basis of knowledge in the energy field by admitting that he didn’t know Energy included nuclear. You can go dow the line in almost every department of the cabinet and see where Trump’s culpable ignorance has influenced his choices and led him to pick people who, rather than being able to create a government will be culpable in the destruction of ours.
So why is this happening? According to David Brooks, “Donald Trump is epically unprepared to be president. He has no realistic policies, no advisors, no capacity to learn. His vast narcissism makes him a closed fortress. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he’s uninterested in finding out.” And this is putting it kindly.
The reality is that Trump only wanted to be president to feed his monstrous ego. He displays zero interest in doing anything that will benefit either those who voted for him or those who didn’t. All his decisions are made to make him look better, to enforce his “brand” or to attack anyone who has not been complimentary to him.
Trump is far too intellectually wanting to understand any kind of complicated situation and always reaches for the most simplistic of solutions no matter how labyrinthine the problem. His sociopathic ego drives him to be right, no matter the implications or ramifications of any proposition.
The great danger to the United States, to Europe, to the world is that someone or something will push Trump into a corner from which his limited intellect can see no solution other than his natural inclination to attack and he will plunge the planet into a nuclear holocaust. Let’s hope we find a way to get this clown out of office before that happens.