Since the begin­ning of the Cold War, the U.S. pres­i­dent has been self-styled and wide­ly, if at times grudg­ing­ly, accept­ed as “the leader of the free world”. Less than a month into his sec­ond term, Don­ald Trump has  super­seded “leader” with “lout”.

What Pres­i­dent Har­ry S. Tru­man bold­ly des­ig­nat­ed “the great­est nation that the sun ever shone upon”, is now run by a pres­i­dent who des­ig­nates any­thing he doesn’t like as a lie, backs that up with anoth­er lie, and holds a leg­isla­tive body whose job is to act as a check and bal­ance in such thrall they agree with what­ev­er he claims as divine truth.
An inabil­i­ty to dis­cern a lie when it bla­tant­ly and prov­ably is, speaks vol­umes about the lim­its of one’s lev­el of social devel­op­ment, edu­ca­tion and aware­ness of the world beyond the playpen.
That it’s on full-throat­ed dis­play in an admin­is­tra­tion over­see­ing the world’s (for the moment) most pow­er­ful econ­o­my and mil­i­tary, is as deplorable as it is dangerous.
Deal­ing with a world fraught with hot wars, trade wars, famine, cli­mate change, expo­nen­tial growth of AI and the polit­i­cal and social upheaval they spawn, would test the resolve, inge­nu­ity and wis­dom of the best lead­ers the world has ever known, None of them exist in the present day.
Those whom  Amer­i­ca needs and used to con­sid­er as friends, allies and part­ners, expect and require state­ments and poli­cies that adhere to the four core prin­ci­ples of  diplo­ma­cy: “nego­ti­a­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, build­ing rela­tion­ships, and pro­mot­ing interests.”
Note the absence of the words “only self” before “inter­ests”.

                           INSTEAD…

What’s been offered so far is the equiv­a­lent of a board game thought up by a ten-year old who only lets oth­ers play if he makes the rules and is declared the win­ner no mat­ter what.
Trump repeat­ed­ly pro­claimed he would set­tle the Ukraine-Rus­sia war on the day he was sworn in.
A month late and count­ing, his sin­gle-hand­ed solu­tion is to ignore Ukraine and NATO, effec­tive­ly hand Vladimir Putin a par­don for start­ing the con­flict and tell him he can keep ter­ri­to­ry he’s tak­en by force  in defi­ance of inter­na­tion­al law.
If that’s the “art of the deal”, it’s no won­der Trump has over­seen some 13 busi­ness fail­ures, includ­ing an air­line, a bot­tled water com­pa­ny, a uni­ver­si­ty and a casi­no bankruptcy.
Giv­ing cre­dence to, or rely­ing on Trump’s nego­ti­at­ing skills and eco­nom­ic ideas makes about as much sense as believ­ing and act­ing on the rav­ings of a street cor­ner preacher.

                 AND ON OTHER  FRONTS

When you replace non-par­ty affil­i­at­ed civ­il ser­vants with unqual­i­fied, ring-kiss­ing loy­al­ists, you replace account­abil­i­ty with open sea­son for mis­man­age­ment and corruption.
When you par­don and thus con­done vio­lence, you lay the grounds for tyranny.
An inabil­i­ty to con­ceive of effects beyond the moment, mean­ing con­se­quences, gen­er­al­ly dis­ap­pears by the time a per­son reach­es late teens.
The vot­ers of Geor­gia elect­ed a Trump-wor­ship­ping con­gress­man who pro­pos­es renam­ing Green­land “Red, White and Blue Land”.
That, and think­ing you  can arbi­trar­i­ly rename an inter­na­tion­al body of water over which you have no sov­er­eign­ty, is on the same devel­op­men­tal lev­el as small chil­dren who cov­er their eyes and think no one can see them.
So too is a fail­ure to recog­nise or admit that not all your prob­lems are some­one else’s fault.
A case point is accus­ing Cana­da of being a major con­trib­u­tor to the flow of ille­gal migrants and fen­tanyl into the U.S.
Accord­ing to offi­cial U.S. gov­ern­ment fig­ures, “ 0.2% of US bor­der fen­tanyl seizures and 1.5 per­cent of  Bor­der Patrol encoun­ters with migrants were at the Cana­di­an border.”
By way of per­spec­tive, in 2022 almost 90 per­cent of the ille­gal guns used in violent crimes in Toron­to alone involved weapons smug­gled from the U,S., where gun laws are far more lax (read less sane), than in Canada.
When the forces of law, order, gov­ern­ment over­sight and rea­soned oppo­si­tion are dis­missed as ene­mies and/or shoved aside, you are akin to mis­man­aged klep­toc­ra­cies like Zimbabwe.
When the Press is threat­ened with law suits in order to muz­zle crit­i­cism of the lead­er­ship, is black­mailed with implied and even overt threats that fail­ure to get in line could result in a licence to con­duct the law­ful busi­ness of news being revoked, you court ignorance.
When wealth and will­ing­ness to bow to and serve the whims and foibles of a leader with­out ques­tion count for more than decen­cy, dig­ni­ty, com­pas­sion and a sense of the  com­mon good as the defin­ing points of your first month of your sec­ond shot at being “the  leader of the free world”, you can hard­ly expect those who looked up to and wel­comed you as a friend, ally, and part­ner not to see lout, as opposed to leader, and act accordingly.

Com­ments are wel­comed. Click CONTACT on the site header.
To receive e‑mail alerts to new posts, Click SIGN-UP on the header.