Two essays appeared last Friday in The New York Times opinion pages, one by David Brooks and the other by Paul Krugman demonstrating not only the promise that is Caesar Disgustus but the pitfalls as well.
"We're all educated by our peers," wrote David Brooks, "and, over the years, a good portion of Donald Trump's peers have been thugs. Operating in the New York construction world meant dealing with S&A Concrete, co-owned by 'Fat Tony' Salerno of the Genovese crime family, and John Cody, the notorious head of Teamsters Local 282, who was convicted on racketeering and tax evasion charges.
Building casinos in Atlantic City brought Trump into similarly genteel circles. Trump's hero was Roy Cohn, who unfortunately was born too late to serve the emperor, Caligula. To go to Trump parties in the 1980's was to be surrounded by C-list celebrities and shady business types voted Most Likely to be Arraigned in high school." (1)
Trump's latest 'fixer', Michael Cohen is cut from similar cloth. Brooks notes that he once "worked for a lawyer who pleaded guilty to bribing insurance adjusters. His ex-business partner in the taxi industry was convicted of assault in New York, arrested on battery in Miami and pleaded guilty to criminal mischief in New Jersey (2).
"About 15 years ago Cohen set up businesses for two doctors, one of whom was later charged with insurance fraud and grand larceny, the other indicted on racketeering charges. as a personal injury lawyer, he frequently represented people accused of insurance fraud....
"If not for the Trump and Cohen peer circle", quips Brooks, "white-collar prisons would be sitting empty". further noting that all this occurred before the two discovered the benefits and delights of conspiring with Russian Oligarchs. (3)
But Brooks, seeking as he does a silver (if not gold--tRUMP is mesmerized by gold) lining behind every dark face, suggests that perhaps there is an 'evil genius' at work here demonstrating an understanding of the world that the so-called 'educated elites' have wholly missed. He cites here our evolving understanding or, perhaps fatally, our misunderstandings with North Korea, China, and Iran.
The educated elite, the Foreign Policy crowd, the readers of "Foreign Affairs" , countless studies by the likes of the "Council on Foreign Affairs", and reports by international agencies, assumed, according to Brooks that that if we treated these nations with deference and respect they would soon be acting like us and become part of one big international family.
But Brooks, seeking as he does a silver (if not gold--tRUMP is mesmerized by gold) lining behind every dark face, suggests that perhaps there is an 'evil genius' at work here demonstrating an understanding of the world that the so-called 'educated elites' have wholly missed. He cites here our evolving understanding or, perhaps fatally, our misunderstandings with North Korea, China, and Iran.
The educated elite, the Foreign Policy crowd, the readers of "Foreign Affairs" , countless studies by the likes of the "Council on Foreign Affairs", and reports by international agencies, assumed, according to Brooks that that if we treated these nations with deference and respect they would soon be acting like us and become part of one big international family.
"This is the vanity of the educated class going back for centuries. Since we're obviously so superior, everybody else secretly wants to be like us. It's wrong. Thugs gotta be thug. Religious fanatics gotta fanaticize". (4)
So by engaging in brinkmanship, and picking fights our "bully" tries to demonstrate who, figuratively and, in the case of North Korea quite literally, has the greater nuclear button. As of his writing, these schoolyard tactics have yielded some result; Brooks noting that there has been a warming of the relationship with North Korea, prisoners have been released, a nuclear test facility has been closed. Similarly, in regards to China, the Chinese have promised to lower tariffs on U.S. automobiles.
Brooks stopped short, as well he should, from endorsing Caesar Disgustus concluding, rather ambiguously:
"Please don't take this as an endorsement of the Trump foreign policy. I'd feel a lot better if Trump showed some awareness of the complexity of the systems he's disrupting, and the possibly cataclysmic unintended consequences. But there is some lizard wisdom here. The world is a lot more like the Atlantic City real estate market than the G.R.E's." (5)
Perhaps, but with all due respect for our modern Caligula's explicit connections with, and implicit understandings of, the depravity of the human soul, it is dangerous to imply that when the lizard speaks, he speaks words of wisdom. The Jurasic world of dog-eat-dog or, in this case, lizard-eat-lizard, quickly degenerates into the hellish nightmare of a Hobbesian "State of Nature", which, in a nuclear age, will leave few, if any survivors.
Indeed, in the days immediately following Brooks' cautious optimism, North Korea has cancelled meetings with South Korea and has threatened to cancel the upcoming summit with tRUMP.
The difficulty in tipping one's hat, however furtively, to our modern Caligula was hinted at by economist Paul Krugman in an accompanying essay on the same opinion page. "Let Them Eat Trump Steaks" (6), Krugman exclaimed, in reference to yet another of the business 'geniuses' failed enterprises.
"In general, Donald Trump is notoriously uninterested in policy details", noted Klugman in staggering understatement. "It has long been obvious, for example, that he never bothered to find out what his one major legislative victory, the 2017 tax cut, actually did. Similarly, it's pretty clear that he had no idea what was actually in the Iran agreement he just repudiated.
"In each case, it was about ego rather than substance: scoring a 'win,' undoing his predecessor's achievement.". (7)
That, and as Krugman points out, his overweening mendacity, his hatred of the idea that someone, somewhere is on public assistance. The obscenity of this Krugman excoriates, pointing out that Disgustus and his Ilk have been sucking the public teat for their entire lives. But this is fodder for another essay. What I want to do is go back to the original observation: Disgustus has no mind for policy, particularly public policy. He is willfully ignorant and wears his ignorance like a crown.
It is this ignorance, ignorance squared so that he is ignorant of that which he is ignorant, that makes this man so dangerous. Tony Schwartz, the real author of "The Making of the Deal", explained in numerous interviews and at a speech given at Oxford University leading up to the U.S. election, that he simply couldn't get tRUMP to sit down and explain his deals. Instead, Schwartz called the other parties to get explanations of what had transpired. To his dumbfounded amazemen,t he discovered that their understandings and that of tRUMP almost never coincided. Each party, after a 'deal' was struck, walked away with an entirely different understanding of what had transpired and what had been agreed to.
Now we have Disgustus--desperate to accomplish anything--praising the North Korean leader for some small concessions made during the build-up to an "historic" (with Disgustus everything is in superlatives), summit. But the North Koreans have reason to be cautious, for as the talks loom near on the horizon, the U.S. and South Korea engage in joint military exercises right on the North Korean border--a subject long sensitive to the North Koreans, and about which they have long voiced their outrage. Moreover, on the brink of the meetings, Disgustus unilaterally withdraws from the agreement with Iran over Iran's nuclear program isolating this country not only from our European allies but breaking an agreement reached in conjunction with Russia and China as well. Why then should anyone trust the U.S.? Qadaffi trusted us and where did he end up?
The danger here is serious and multiple. If such a summit does occur, it must not take place with only the two principles meeting together. Several nations and observers must be present for
Disgustus can be relied upon to do no prep work, study no history or issues, and appear before our adversaries as but-ignorant as sloth will allow. And we can rest assured that he will compound this ignorance by declaring to the world in as many superlatives as his limited vocabulary can conjure the outlines of an agreement that was never put upon the table laying the foundation for later claims of Korean bad faith and the need for drastic actions. This is what happens when a narcissistic sociopath who operates in his own closed universe dances upon the world stage.
"An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh"
Impeach and Imprison
_______________
That, and as Krugman points out, his overweening mendacity, his hatred of the idea that someone, somewhere is on public assistance. The obscenity of this Krugman excoriates, pointing out that Disgustus and his Ilk have been sucking the public teat for their entire lives. But this is fodder for another essay. What I want to do is go back to the original observation: Disgustus has no mind for policy, particularly public policy. He is willfully ignorant and wears his ignorance like a crown.
It is this ignorance, ignorance squared so that he is ignorant of that which he is ignorant, that makes this man so dangerous. Tony Schwartz, the real author of "The Making of the Deal", explained in numerous interviews and at a speech given at Oxford University leading up to the U.S. election, that he simply couldn't get tRUMP to sit down and explain his deals. Instead, Schwartz called the other parties to get explanations of what had transpired. To his dumbfounded amazemen,t he discovered that their understandings and that of tRUMP almost never coincided. Each party, after a 'deal' was struck, walked away with an entirely different understanding of what had transpired and what had been agreed to.
Now we have Disgustus--desperate to accomplish anything--praising the North Korean leader for some small concessions made during the build-up to an "historic" (with Disgustus everything is in superlatives), summit. But the North Koreans have reason to be cautious, for as the talks loom near on the horizon, the U.S. and South Korea engage in joint military exercises right on the North Korean border--a subject long sensitive to the North Koreans, and about which they have long voiced their outrage. Moreover, on the brink of the meetings, Disgustus unilaterally withdraws from the agreement with Iran over Iran's nuclear program isolating this country not only from our European allies but breaking an agreement reached in conjunction with Russia and China as well. Why then should anyone trust the U.S.? Qadaffi trusted us and where did he end up?
The danger here is serious and multiple. If such a summit does occur, it must not take place with only the two principles meeting together. Several nations and observers must be present for
Disgustus can be relied upon to do no prep work, study no history or issues, and appear before our adversaries as but-ignorant as sloth will allow. And we can rest assured that he will compound this ignorance by declaring to the world in as many superlatives as his limited vocabulary can conjure the outlines of an agreement that was never put upon the table laying the foundation for later claims of Korean bad faith and the need for drastic actions. This is what happens when a narcissistic sociopath who operates in his own closed universe dances upon the world stage.
"An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh"
Impeach and Imprison
_______________
(1). Brooks, David. "Trump's Lizard Wisdom" The New York Times. Friday, May 11, 2018. Pg. A27
(2). Ibid
(3). Ibid
(4). Ibid
(5). Ibid
(6). Krugman, Paul. "Let Them Eat Trump Steaks" The New York Times, Friday, May 11, 2018. Pg. A27
(7). Ibid
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