Hanlon teaches us to never attribute to malice what can be perfectly explained by stupidity. To which I add: but these are not mutually exclusive.
Multiple authors, from Plato to Bonhoeffer and contemporaneously Yuval Noah Harari, tell us that stupidity is the most powerful force in humanity. While the Peter Principle reminds us that stupidity rises to the top.
Stupidity clearly explains the era we are living through, part of a social cycle in which complacency leads to the devaluation of truth and expertise. With the glorification of ignorance leading to a massive increase of stupidity in the population.
Remembering Sherlock Holmes: “once all possible explanations are eliminated whatever remains must be the truth.” While also remembering that multiple causes and conditions can be true at the same time. It’s really unfathomable to believe that Trump is oblivious to the amount of political capital that he is burning with this tariff stunt.
The destruction of the American system and economy, the destruction of global alliances, the colonial aspirations, the destabilization of the world and global economy all seem impossible to explain by known factors.
The need for retribution, the psychopathic lack of empathy, the back room dealings with oligarchs, the sheer amounts of open corruption, the domination of the news cycle, the need for attention, etc. all seem to fall short to explain what’s going on.
Is this just what happens when a person becomes a black hole of pure narcissistic stupidity and surrounds himself of stupid sycophants, or is there something else?
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Hanlon teaches us to never attribute to malice what can be perfectly explained by stupidity. To which I add: but these are not mutually exclusive.
Multiple authors, from Plato to Bonhoeffer and contemporaneously Yuval Noah Harari, tell us that stupidity is the most powerful force in humanity. While the Peter Principle reminds us that stupidity rises to the top.
Stupidity clearly explains the era we are living through, part of a social cycle in which complacency leads to the devaluation of truth and expertise. With the glorification of ignorance leading to a massive increase of stupidity in the population.
Remembering Sherlock Holmes: “once all possible explanations are eliminated whatever remains must be the truth.” While also remembering that multiple causes and conditions can be true at the same time. It’s really unfathomable to believe that Trump is oblivious to the amount of political capital that he is burning with this tariff stunt.
The destruction of the American system and economy, the destruction of global alliances, the colonial aspirations, the destabilization of the world and global economy all seem impossible to explain by known factors.
The need for retribution, the psychopathic lack of empathy, the back room dealings with oligarchs, the sheer amounts of open corruption, etc. all seem to fall short to explain what’s going on.
Is this just what happens when a person becomes a black hole of pure narcissistic stupidity and surrounds himself of stupid sycophants, or is there something else?
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He successfully got nations like Israel to praise him and give him free “wins” for looking tough. Even Mexico/Canada if we discount how they immediately laughed at him afterwards. He somehow fooled himself into thinking the same applies to every other nation.
I have no idea.
One possibility is that he genuinely has no idea how tariffs work and genuinely thinks everyone but him is stupid and/or wrong. Maybe he does actually truly believe that other countries pay tariffs and that he’s going to get America six trillion dollars for free. I certainly could never complete a sentence with a straight face that begins with “Donald Trump isn’t so stupid that…”
Another possibility is that he just doesn’t give a fuck. Maybe he hates everyone and feels like everyone in the world is laughing at him, and he just wants to punch the world in the face, consequences be damned. MAGA in general seems to view strength as something that can be measured by how many faces you punched last week, and they tend to venerate violence for its own sake, so maybe this really is just about being an asshole because you can.
It is also conceivably possible that he’s being clever like a fox and thinks that this will bring the world to its knees and then he can negotiate from a position of strength… but he’s so fucking stupid that I really can’t entertain this idea for long.
He has been saying for years that tariffs like the 1800’s made the US most financially prosperous we’ve ever been.
Most likely, like so many other things, someone around him said it and he believed it. Trump doesn’t do nuance. He doesn’t know how it all worked. He listened to enough to believe he understood and has built some kind of narrative to believe in. He also doesn’t back down once he digs in unless he has a way to pretend like he either ‘won’ or can pretend like never happened in the first place.
I honestly believe he believes they work the way he keeps saying they do. The guy believes most of what he says. He thinks he’s brilliant because he’s surrounded by people who keep telling him he is. That everyone else are just haters. He’s a victim. We’re all monsters. He deserves what he’s taken. Etc etc.
He has never cared who he hurts to get what he wants.
TLDR: He believes it will work and won’t back down until he has a way out.
trump is mind numbingly stupid. He, without question, does NOT understand how any of this works.
trump is incredibly easily manipulated. Stroke his ego and give him a complicated explanation using big words that a couple of other people agree with and you can convince him of anything.
trump is incapable of considering the consequences of his actions. If he sees a shiny object he will walk through lava naked to get to it.
My guess is there are a few unnamed people behind the scenes pulling the strings coordinating this whole trainwreck in order to facilitate an epic wealth grab. Privatization of public services, devaluation of markets so they can make massive purchases at record lows, etc.