happy anniversary

Trump is a complete idiot.

Most people probably voted for Trump for the entertainment.  It's like reality TV, but for real.  Trump does the deranged clown, and the masses can laugh and cheer.  After one year on the job, he is unlikely to have disappointed anyone.  Those repulsed by his ways see themselves confirmed anew every day.  Those who picked him for the wrong reasons would probably do so again.

It doesn't matter that he hasn't built a wall against Mexico with his own small hands and that the American taxpayer will pay for this wall, should construction ever start.  No one cares about the wall.  His tweets are a scream.

How good an entertainer Trump really is can be seen in the sad demise of Saturday Night Live.  This used to be the epitome of political comedy.  A few weeks ago, the Federal Communications Commission had to reclassify it from humor to factual.  What used to be hilariously satirical is now documentary – though no less hilarious for it.

When Fire and Fury, Trump's anniversary gift, was released the other day, I read an interview with the author Michael Wolff.  He claims to just have walked up to the White House one day with the suggestion of covering the first 100 days of the presidency for a book.  No one was responsible for books, and no one showed him the door.  In a move that would have awed Tom Yates from House of Cards, he remained for 200 days, turning to inventory whose presence is not noticed or questioned.  He apparently picked up the best parts by overhearing conversations while waiting in obscurity for appointments that never happened.

The book reveals an angry child with staggering insecurity.  Trump's afraid of being destroyed by anyone and everything.  Fighting back is his default mode of operation (mostly through words rather than actions).  Wolff claims no worries of revenge because of Trump's short attention span.  He only focuses on what's in front of him – as long as it is in front of him.  When he engages in politics, it's in unrelated fits and starts.

There's no vision and no strategy.  Like a monkey throwing darts at a wall, he sometimes hits the target, but what looks like the first step towards success always turns out to be haphazard and of no consequence.  Trump started his job by talking to Taiwan as if it were a country.  This sounds sensible if you ignore diplomatic conventions that only exist because they've existed for ages.  As part of a foreign policy, it would start interesting discussions and might break the deadlock across the Taiwan Straight.  As a monkey's dart, it was soon forgotten.

There have been many more darts over the first year, and a few nuclear hand grenades as well.  They landed to great effect where no one would have expected them.  There were even some legislative accomplishments, though they need an unorthodox perspective to appear as successes.

If you think that earning less than $100k is un-American, the tax reform bill makes perfect sense.  There's simply no reason why anyone choosing to earn less should be rewarded.  Same goes for health care.  Instead of pitying the poor, Trump wants to liberate them from the yoke of socialized medicine.  If you don't want to have to choose between treating an illness and feeding your children, do your patriotic duty and earn a respectable salary.

The masses continue to cheer.