Trump a Geopolitical Know-Nothing Endangering Humanity
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)
He’s a real estate businessman/television personality, America’s first Reality TV president.
A geopolitical know-thing, he largely knows rubbish fed him in daily briefings, along with what extremist neocons infesting his administration tell him and Fox News disinformation, his favorite channel – all of the above manipulating his thinking.
He’s not intellectually gifted like Jefferson, John Adams and John Quincy Adams, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, Madison, Lincoln, Wilson and Jack Kennedy.
Unlike TR and JFK, he disdains reading, preferring oral communications in simple language. He can’t be bothered with policy papers, nothing more than a brief paragraph or two, if that.
Before inauguration, he admitted liking “bullets or…as little as possible” in print, adding:
“I don’t need…200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page. That I can tell you.”
He instructed his national security council to keep policy explanations on a single page at most.
His daily briefing are far shorter than most of his predecessors. He doesn’t want to be bothered with endless details he lacks interest in.
Last September, AP said his top aides decided he needed a crash geopolitical course to enlighten him on what’s going on in the world.
A television interviewer asked him if he reads. Despite mangling the language all too often, he’s clearly literate.
He’s used to running the Trump Organization, far different from how heads of state operate, especially on the world stage.
GW Bush had a business background. It showed in how Dick Cheney largely ran things. Trump’s penchant for TV watching and phone conversations reflect his dislike for things in writing – tweeting an exception because it’s brief and fits his style of communicating.
Geopolitically, he doesn’t know a Suni from a Shia, nothing about nations America attacked except what he’s told.
Time and again he says favored administration officials and US-allied foreign despots are doing “a great job” no matter the harm their policies inflict on others.
He’s constitutionally ignorant, knowing little about the duties, powers, responsibilities and limits of the office he holds.
He once admitted knowing less than a drunk in a bar about America’s healthcare system – yet favors deplorable changes to what’s already dysfunctional, the nation’s privileged class alone unaffected.
He’s clueless about disastrous US foreign policies preceding him and on his watch, unaware of the human toll, knowing enough about trillions of dollars wasted but doing nothing to change things.
He may actually believe the Big Lie, falsely accusing Assad of using chemical weapons, ordering escalated naked aggression, mindless of the potential consequences.
His extremist one-sided support for Israel, notably by his Jerusalem declaration, helped fuel greater violence instead of working to curb it.
He ran for president without understanding what the job entails, and how decisions he’d make as US leader can shake the world if disastrously wrong.
Presidential politics isn’t like business deal-making. He’s more comfortable before cheering supporters than dealing with the tough job of head of state.
He’s America’s first president with neither government or military experience. Disfavoring details of the job, he’s swayed by information fed him, notably on geopolitical issues, manipulating his thinking, his leadership heading the nation and humanity toward disaster if things continue on their present course.
Candidate Trump said “I was against (Middle East wars). And I was against (them) very early. And we shouldn’t have been in there. And I think it is probably perhaps the worst mistake we have ever made.”
He complained about wasting trillions of dollars, turning the Middle East into a mess, instead of using funds spent on rebuilding America.
“(W)e don’t have the money because it’s been squandered on so many (wrong) ideas,” he said.
Now he’s comfortable spending like a drunken sailor. Wars he opposed campaigning, he strongly supports.
His Syria policy risked launching global war, briefly stepping back from the brink by authorizing limited naked aggression.
Maybe next time, he’ll OK no holds barred, risking direct confrontation with Russia, launching World War III by accident or design.
Since taking office, he escalated the colossal geopolitical mess he inherited, stacking his administration with hawkish neocons, hardened with new additions.
Humanity dodged a bullet overnight in Syria. Will next time certain to come be disastrous? Will Putin remain a passive bystander instead of challenging US aggression in Syria before it’s too late?
If past is prologue, things aren’t encouraging. Humanity’s fate hangs in the balance.
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My newest book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."
