In the fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, a small child point­ed out that a vain leader was rid­ing naked in a pro­ces­sion meant to show off what he had been conned into believ­ing was the most mag­nif­i­cent wardrobe ever created.

Only then did the pub­lic dare to admit to them­selves what the king’s courtiers were too tim­o­rous to tell him.
Today’s equiv­a­lent of the small child is a  cou­ple of clicks of a com­put­er mouse that can sum­mon up the wis­dom of the ages, fact-check pub­lic state­ments and expose obfuscation.
But no one seems will­ing to heed it, or to fol­low the advice of Sir Win­ston Churchill , a leader described as hav­ing “uncom­pro­mis­ing con­fi­dence,” and “ a steel hard­ened will”: “ Crit­i­cism may not be agree­able, but it is nec­es­sary. It ful­fils the same func­tion as pain in the human body. It calls atten­tion to an unhealthy state of things.”
Instead, the rule for doing busi­ness of any kind with the U.S. would-be king is essen­tial­ly: Flat­ter exces­sive­ly. Don’t expect promis­es to be kept or poli­cies to be con­sis­tent. Repay the non-cour­tesy with more flattery.
Not that it’s like­ly to hap­pen, but those who play the game bet­ter hope he nev­er comes across the wis­dom of the ancient Greek philoso­pher Aris­to­tle: ” Peo­ple gen­er­al­ly despise where they flatter.”
But just in case, why not try oth­er ways of get­ting stuff done (and undone) by appeal­ing to (read: manip­u­lat­ing) vanity?
For starters, con­vince he who puts his name in cap­i­tal let­ters on planes, golf cours­es, resorts and the ever-mul­ti­ply­ing lines of mer­chan­dise he sees mon­ey in hawk­ing, that any­thing with US on it, is actu­al­ly his brand.
It might neces­si­tate includ­ing TRUMP in the logo on USAID box­es, but at least the world’s most vital gov­ern­men­tal aid agency would be back in busi­ness, and the hun­gry and suf­fer­ing are unlike­ly to reject it as fake news.
Make the point that that friends have to be won, so the more of them you have the more of a win­ner you are.
Then trade deals, alliances and diplo­ma­cy might have a fight­ing chance at suc­cess, as opposed to floun­der­ing in uncer­tain­ty verg­ing on chaos.

                           FOOLS

The term “fool” dates to the ear­ly 13^th cen­tu­ry, when it meant a  “sil­ly, stu­pid, or igno­rant person.”
The exam­ple of Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Binyamin Netanyahu would seem to be proof pos­i­tive that both­er­ing with any­thing but flat­tery to get what­ev­er you want, makes you one.
Netanyahu’s brazen­ly insin­cere gift to Trump of a let­ter nom­i­nat­ing him for the Nobel Peace Prize was the equiv­a­lent of  sug­gest­ing giv­ing the Israeli  Air Force a Good House­keep­ing Award for its efforts in Gaza and Beirut.
He has also laud­ed Trump as hav­ing a “bril­liant vision” for Gaza.
Well, yes, if you  don’t under­stand or even acknowl­edge terms like “eth­nic cleans­ing”,  and  don’t con­sid­er Pales­tini­ans as peo­ple, with both a right and his­tor­i­cal roots to be in Gaza.
Maybe that’s why the Israeli gov­ern­ment thinks (unfor­tu­nate­ly so far, cor­rect­ly) that it can get away with killing sev­en­teen peo­ple, most of them chil­dren, wait­ing out­side a clin­ic, with a high frag­men­ta­tion muni­tion designed for use against clus­ters of ene­my troops on a bat­tle­field, to kill one “Hamas oper­a­tive”, with the unc­tu­ous state­ment: “The IDF regrets any harm to unin­volved individuals …”
They’re gam­bling — and not with­out evi­dence — that they can take every­one who might oppose such per­fidy as fools. And the evi­dence is on their side.

                         THE FECKLESS

How many Texas-scale floods, record-break­ing hur­ri­canes, ram­pant wild­fires, sear­ing heat and drought, melt­ing ice­caps and glac­i­ers will  it take before the real­i­ty man­ages to pen­e­trate the fog of will­ful igno­rance, greed and “gimme now and nev­er mind lat­er” men­tal­i­ty that delin­eates the ethos of Trump’s cab­i­net, and MAGA?
The lev­el of inchoate non­sense they will accept from their “king” seems boundless.
This week’s prime exam­ple was when a New York Times reporter tried to fol­low up on an asser­tion by Trump that he wasn’t sure who had ordered a halt on weapons sup­plies to Ukraine.
REPORTER: “What does it say that such a big deci­sion can be made inside your gov­ern­ment with­out you knowing?”
TRUMP: “I would know if a deci­sion was made. I will know. I’ll be the first to know. In fact, most like­ly, I’d give the order, but I haven’t done that yet,”
A day or so lat­er, the Wash­ing­ton Post’s edi­to­r­i­al board trum­peted that “Amer­i­cans deserve an unflinch­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into Biden’s health” espe­cial­ly his men­tal fit­ness, dur­ing his tenure as pres­i­dent.If it prompt­ed moves for clos­er and more pub­lic scruti­ny of the decline or oth­er­wise of sit­ting pres­i­dents, that would be useful.
Cer­tain­ly we who have no say over but are broad­ly affect­ed by the cog­ni­tive pow­ers of who­ev­er is in the White House would wel­come it.
But we won’t  hold our col­lec­tive breath in hope or  expec­ta­tion that Wash­ing­ton Post own­er Jeff Bezos — or any of his fel­low bil­lion­aires — will for­sake a  posi­tion of courtier to assume the role of the small child who called out the naked king.

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