There is a psychological theory called the Dunning-Kruger effect, demonstrable in political news for some time. It occurs in human thinking when a person of lower intellectual capacity believes that he or she has expertise in many areas, far beyond actual understanding or ability.
This is now the norm for presidential politics in the U.S., each time the President meets with other leaders or pronounces absolute dictates, changeable within 24 hours. Vladimir Putin, speaking with Trump only through his personal translators, repeatedly mocks and makes gleeful sport of him with phrases which Russians understand, and which contemptuous humor, even in English translation, entirely escapes the President.
Putin knows Trump is far beyond his depth and so do the Saudis, Qataris, Israelis, the Iranians and their underground friends. Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (his father King Salman, a younger son of the country’s legendary founder, is debilitated, delegating governing authority to his own favorite son), in a delighted, unsubtle dig at Trump’s lack of sophistication, trucked in a whole trailer of Big Macs for his dining pleasure as part of a lavish welcome.
The global diplomatic corps, totally in the know on what both Putin and MBS are up to, is in stitches, splitting sides laughing. Trump, clueless, brokers a Saudi goodwill donation – personally to him, facilitated by the U.S. Defense Dept. (!), of an enormous, tricked-out megajet sky palace for his use, to be “donated” later to Trump’s Presidential library. Conservative estimates say $1 billion minimum will be spent to make it security-safe for a presidential jet….about the time Trump leaves office. So much for saving taxpayer’s money.
This is all happening in real time, not as a bad fantasy movie but the new outrageous norm. Money buys power. Power can be sold; in a dictatorship it is confined to one ruling office. Power in a democracy is given by the number of votes – greater than those of the opposition – for a national election’s declared victor.
So the sitting President, happily enriching himself quite largely, is fleecing ordinary folk foolish enough to buy his memecoin, and flattering Arab oligarchs canny enough not to trust his offers to build megahotels in the desert.
Putin and the Saudis know such chimeras, constructed with other people’s money, will eventually be sold at loss or declared bankrupt after Trump leaves office, for that is his pattern: Rely on me, I’ll make you rich! Oops, sorry, it’s the market’s fault. It’s Biden’s fault (Biden beat him once by simply standing upright speaking American English).
This is who we – by less than ½ per cent of the electorate – made President, speaking for us on the world stage, disregarding any treaties he chooses, trash-talking those opposing him and winning every golf tournament at his own properties by posting fake scores. Weight-loss drugs, which he reputedly takes, can make him slimmer but cannot give him intelligence nor reform his absence of ethics or character.
This inflated, boundaries-lacking persona is who the United States now is to the world, these days. Let’s eat it, soldier on through the very few years left in this White House debacle and do far better, next time, avoiding a repeat clown show: Trump has peopled his administration’s secretariats with actors like himself – not professionals.
Even RFK has admitted that we should not take medical advice from him. The Attorney General responds to dictates from one of Trump’s most notorious henchmen, a man whose face and opinions would easily fit into a catalogue of Nazi sympathizers. All partners in a hideous reality TV show, the cost of which will take generations to recoup. God bless the USA…we will eventually triumph, and have to explain to our grandchildren how all this was allowed to happen.
Linda Berry is a Northsider.
