The Obvious Result
It’s finally happening. Trump’s policy pronouncements, probably tweeted while sitting on the toilet, have veered wildly from free trading to isolationist protectionism; from pro gun control to capitulating to the demands of the NRA; from attacking private businesses and the Post Office to insulting television personalities and petty feuds. He’s threatened everything from nuclear war to global trade war. He’s promised to eliminate the deficit while piling on an additional $1.5 trillion with the stroke of a pen. He regularly threatens to jail political opponents. He’s unstable, morally unfit for office, and basically living life in the White House as the cheesy reality television star he is. In short, United States global policy has taken on the characteristics of a washing machine load of soiled towels, on high spin banging from side to side, only to be stopped by a power failure to make it all come to a halt before it floods the floor with filth.
In all of this chaos, Trump’s behavior has now become normalized. The behavior of this shitbag infesting the White House has numbed our population to the most outrageous, totally corrupt conduct by any public official in US history. His public speaking style is that of the ramblings of a moron. He holds no standards of behavior; he has no foundation; he rambles incoherently about critical issues of national security; he has no grounding in true belief. He’s a wind vane spinning wildly in the political winds. He tweets a foundational principle – and within hours, he reverses himself. He went after Amazon, claiming it was cheating the Postal Service out of billions of dollars and not paying sales tax. Trump’s attack temporarily tanked the stock 15% or about $100 billion in market value. His ranting about a trade war with China cost the Dow Jones 3,000 points.
The response of normal people? Depression. Fear. Foreboding. The response of Trumpists who are just as goofy as he is? Euphoria at the prospect of the second coming of the Man in the Sky caused by global chaos. The response of the markets and other global powers? Whipsawed. Only, something changed after the on again off again threat of trade wars and attacks on Amazon. After a year and a half of random idiocy, reversals, threats and nonsense, the markets have learned to ignore him. He’s roiled the markets with wildly divergent tweets, numbing the influential with idiotic ramblings. Those who pull the levers commerce have now learned to disregard his bullshit. The market has learned that his random and wildly divergent tweets really have no basis except to garner attention for himself. There is no basis in policy, no foundation, no ideology. Our national policy has the same characteristics of that of a chimpanzee banging on a laptop keyboard. He tweets simply for self gratification and attention. Business leaders have learned that a random tweet doth not make policy – only when an adult (what few are left) speaks do they listen. Otherwise they ignore His Orangeness.
For the first time, with the possible exception of the depths of the Watergate scandal, our country has no one at the helm. The key lesson that I’ve learned is that the Founders so ingeniously designed our form of government that it can actually operate to some level with no leadership in the White House. Its resiliency is further demonstrated by a hopeless deadlocked Congress which is also providing no direction, no responsible leadership, or even any common sense.
How long can we go like this? Who knows, but my real fear is that as more and more people learn to ignore the rantings of the lunatic in the White House, his anger at being ignored will drive him to more and more outrageous conduct that will hopefully one day awake the Congress from its coma. And that won’t be pretty.