Right now, I am in Japan. As I write this blog, I sit at the desk at my room 1247, at a Toyoko Inn, an all-Japan chain of business hotels. I’ve done two flights, via Beijing, to get here. Then made a 400 km drive from Tokyo to Nagoya, down south, Japan’s fourth largest city, to participate in Tourism Expo, the country’s #1 tourist event. Two days of meetings, one more to come. Then I will be back to Tokyo for shopping and dining. Sergey….
As you know my position, I don’t think that Trump is an idiot. But he has a dilemma. If he presses Putin too hard, Vlad sticks to China, and the West loses the strategic gambit. If he doesn’t press him, Putin continues to kill Ukraine. And the West loses, again. And, in my opinion, Russia loses too.
I think he is crafting a real Big Deal, to satisfy (partly) all the sides: Russia, Ukraine, Europe, China, and, of course, the United States.
Trump and the U.S. diplomacy are doing some fine tuning to sync in all the sides, which is, I suppose, not an easy task.
Zooming out to a bigger picture, I think Trump is producing strategic uncertainty, when no side is really sure of his real actions. He says one thing publicly, and, probably, discusses something else in secret talks with an enemy. This is what happened with Iran when America actually did a cover-up to let Israel finish the job with Iran.
Is Russia the next in the line? We will see.
Trump: insane, or very smart?
If you consider a college student with very limited IQ and well-below average status in most attributes, becoming the most important and most powerful person in the whole world, you may conclude that it must have taken a very smart person to have negotiated that journey.
Yes, Trump was helped by so many Americans being incredibly stupid and moronically insecure, pathetically inept at basic knowledge and concepts, and often being totally illiterate as to what was going on in front of their very eyes.
But he did it. Twice. And I wouldn’t put it beyond him to change the American constitution to enable him to “serve” a third, lifetime term. That would be considered pretty nifty and shrewd by any standards.
I am fed up with supposedly highly-educated people, telling me, time after time for almost a decade now, that Trump will get his comeuppance and will be jailed, or forced to resign, or shot, or any other method of disappearing. Nah, didn’t happen. Not likely to, any time soon.
His UN speech this past week may have some, like me, calling him utterly deranged. Others will say he is a shrewd strategist. He understands the power of spectacle, just like Hitler did in the late 1930s. He brilliantly taps in to voter frustration, and turns outrage into free publicity. He gives the people something, or someone, to blame. He does nothing else, but doesn’t need to. It works for him.
Trump continually commits violence against the truth. Like Joseph Goebbels. And like Goebbels, perpetuating lies and myths over and over again has proved highly successful.
I am not, yet, comparing the unique horror of Nazi propaganda to Trump’s regime, but this horrendous apology of an empathetic human being seems perfectly qualified to emulate that shithousery. So maybe he’s a bit of both.
Trump: insane, or very smart?
By my definition of insane, no, he certainly doesn’t belong in a mental institution. Does he need the services of a mental health professional? Absolutely, moreover I believe he has several serious mental and physical problems. The White House lies.
Is he very smart? Oh please! I have seen YouTube videos of Trump from the 1980s and he was a well-spoken, intelligent person. He could articulate ideas in complete, coherent sentences; nothing like the person he is today. As far as I can tell, Trump cannot complete an entire thought unless it’s written down and he decides to read. He seems to complete the occasional sentence but that’s about it. And no, this isn’t the Biden thing where you can say: “He was always like that.”
I would guess that Trump has two types of people around him. True believers, those who are honestly, hopelessly in the cult. I would use spokesperson Karoline Leavitt as an example. The other group has people like J.D. Vance and Steven Miller in it. These people want to be near power and maybe even grab some for themselves.
It’s this second group that I think is dangerous for the future of Earth. They want power and influence. They understand that Trump is older, easily manipulated and he believes the last thing he was told, as long as it is wrapped in a line about what an honor it is to be near him. No matter how unhinged. He can be made to believe any version of reality.
I’ll share a bit of personal, family history. My Father developed dementia in his early eighties. See if any of this sounds familiar:
- He had six or eight stories he would repeat again and again. How many times has Trump told the same 2020, debunked election story?
- He was too trusting and believed what he was told. This resulted in him sending his retirement money to someone in Ghana. Trump trusts Fox and quotes them… often.
- As it progressed, he became uninhibited and would say outrageous and embarrassing things. “They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats!”
Back to our question: Is Trump insane? No. Is Trump very smart? No. He’s a sad old man who’s dying.