Donald Trump has no strategy, no beliefs, and no principles.The president’s surprise decision to bomb Syria, after months of declaring far and wide that he would do no such thing, is causing some whiplash. What could have motivated this abrupt change? …
Trump has no political experience, no record of serious thought on foreign policy. He was for the Iraq invasion before he was against it. He has pledged to decimate ISIS while affecting an isolationist bent. This suggests that he is little more than a narcissistic con man. He lies more often than he tells the truth, and his lies typically serve one purpose: they are meant to make him look good. It is more likely that Trump did what his generals told him to do because he wants to be the sort of person who is respected by generals. It is likely he started caring about dead Syrians because the press suggested that only a monster wouldn’t. He did not bomb Syria because, in the battle between isolationism and interventionism being waged in his soul, the weight of his office tipped the field toward the latter. He’s a simple, vulgar person who makes decisions for simple, vulgar reasons.
To suggest otherwise gives Trump credit he hasn’t earned. There is no strategy. There is no grand plan. There is no moral, ethical, or philosophical calculation. There’s only Trump, and how he feels from one moment to the next.
–Sarah Jones
Donald Trump Has No Strategy, No Beliefs, and No Principles
The thing is, WE KNEW THIS ALL ALONG!!!
All caps is considered shouting. Yeah, I’m yelling this angrily.
Trump is no different now than when he ran for president. And he was no different then than all the years he’d been in the public eye.
I know references to “the Scorpion and the Frog” and “the Farmer and the Viper” are cliches, and I’ll admit I’m not especially fond of those fables; I like to believe people can change, and that we should extend trust, at times, even if doing so is a risk.
But Trump never gave the slightest inkling he’d change, or want to change, or even thought he should change in any way.
The only surprise here is that he’s as bad as he appeared to be all along. Not worse. We saw how unqualified, childish, bigoted, short-tempered, self-entitled, ad nauseum, he was. We just hoped he’d somehow change for the better.
Greg Stillson has become president. But in this case we all saw this future coming.
I’m with you on trusting people, especially in hiring and friendships; sometimes, they do change. The thing about Trump is mostly the difference between people who saw him for what he was — a con artist, and a lazy one — versus people who believed his self-promoting baloney. And that perceptual gap is, as you note, unchanged since the 80s. Back then, some people thought he was a can-do genius, just like today.
And the result of being a strategy-deprived, moral-values-free fucktrumpet means that when you DO do something it’s just as likely to be boneheadedly, pointlessly stupid: http://firedirectioncenter.blogspot.com/2017/04/another-opening-another-show.html
My favorite part of this piece of little theater was Assad not even waiting 24 hours to start flying warplanes out of the airfield. Here’s his buddies Putin and Trump going to the mat for not giving him the ol’ Gaddafi conge’ and he won’t even give them a day stand-down to make Trumpie’s little cruise missile tantrum look like it did anything worth a lick other than burn 80-something million taxpayer bucks to blow some empty hangers to flinders.
What a buddyfucker! Y’just can’t trust some homicidal despots.