Journalists, politicians, pundits, and people in general are scratching their heads trying to figure Trump out. Is he the “Stable Genius” he claims to be. Does he play three-dimensional chess and we simply cannot figure it out? Does he have a secret plan? Is there a method to his madness?
I think we should not waste any more time with such analysis but simply agree that Trump is basically stupid. He doesn’t know what he is doing. He is too dumb to know he is in over his head. And he has been very lucky in that a large part of the American voting public is also dumb and therefore feel a certain kinship with the fool in charge.
Academically, Trump was a very mediocre student. How mediocre he really was is difficult to ascertain as he has threatened schools who would release his transcripts. He is too lazy to think about things, to wonder, to question assumptions. He does not read anything. This poses an enormous problem to the national security officials who should brief him daily on the threats America faces. He is not curious; he doesn’t want to find things out. He thinks he knows everything.
This makes him an easy target for “advisors” with an agenda. Oil lobbyists can easily tell him that climate science is a hoax. Trump is too lazy and too dumb to try to find out whether this is actually true. In exchange for a sufficiently large contribution, he will agree to anything. Peter Navarro, a failed academic who padded his “professional” papers with invented citations from non-existent economists long before AI started doing this, can easily convince Trump that tariffs are paid by the foreign exporters. Nobody who ever attended ECON 101 could possibly believe that. To Trump, too lazy, uncurious and too stupid of trying to find out, it sounds good. “Free money” always sounds good to a real-estate developer and con man.
If truth raises its’ ugly head, such as when unimpeachable government statistics contradict the happy storyline that has been fed to the people by Trump and his sycophants, the “messenger is shot”, i.e. the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the government entity in charge of collecting the data, is fired. That is an extremely dumb move, topped only by the desperate attempts by Kevin Hasset, Trump’s “economic” advisor, to justify this move as being in keeping with “transparency” and as a way of building trust.
Intelligence has a lot to do with curiosity. Intelligent people always want to find out things. They are curious. They read to always learn. They are smart enough to know that they will never know everything. Believing to know everything is a luxury only the truly stupid can afford.
Smart people question themselves, their beliefs, their conclusions and are therefore suspicious of flattery.
Not so Donald Trump.
Joke of the day:
Two day-labourers, Jak and Joe, toil away in ditch. They notice that the boss stands above in the shade of a tree, while they sweat in the sun. That seems unfair, so Jak decides to go up and ask the boss for an explanation.
“It is because I have intelligence” the boss explains.
“What is intelligence?” Jak asks.
“Let me show you” the boss replies. He puts his hand against the trunk of the tree and asks Jak to try to hit it as hard as he can. Jak swings with all his might, but the boss draws away his hand at the last moment and Jak hits the tree. “See, the boss says, this is intelligence.”
Jak, his hand hurting like hell, goes back down into the ditch and explains to Joe that the boss gets to stand in the shade because he has intelligence.
“What is intelligence?” Joe asks.
“Let me show you” Jak replies. He looks around but cannot find a tree trunk. Finally, he puts his hand in front of his face and says to Joe: “Try to hit my hand as hard as you can.”