Wednesday, August 16, 2017

We must let the show go on.

J. K. Galbraith once said that governing was rarely more than a choice between "the disastrous and the unpalatable." He was part of the Best and the Brightest of the Kennedy administration. Occasionally, looking back, you can see they chose poorly, disaster is much worse than distasteful. But, they chose, and these were men of intelligence, educated, business leaders. Their problem was they couldn't factor in humanity. There is no effective way to quantify humanity.

I don't know what kind of business man Donald Trump is. I am not even sure what kind of game show host he was. I can tell you when he gets stuck between disastrous and unpalatable he cannot choose. He waffles, choosing one, then the other. In the end he "dances with who brung him." Angry, dissociated people.

When his policies fail he is sure that it is the subversive work of some underground cartel bent on his failure. Ignoring the more obvious and likely cause; all of his suppositions are faulty because he has no experience governing. With a rugged determination and almost unwavering linear thinking he cares presses forward with the same demands no matter how futile, no matter how often they have failed. His thinking is linear and unflinching in the face of logic.

I watched the infrastructure interview as it degraded into the Charlottsville fiasco in the garish, gaudy Trump tower. And I couldn't help but feel sorry for General Kelly as he watched his employer take an unpalatable situation and magically, effortlessly turn it into disaster. It doesn't matter who is chief of staff, who are the advisers, who is "cleaning house" if the person at the wheel wants to drive into the ditch.  He could reanimate Mother Theresa and she couldn't add any dignity or decorum to the situation.

Maybe this experiment was needed, maybe we had to try electing someone that was not an insider. Maybe we could have picked someone who could control his temper. He never misses an opportunity to miss a chance to prove he can be a leader.

I'm not sure where this will end, but it will probably be bad. How bad is more than likely going to be driven by how long. It is in motion and we are stuck in the wagon, everybody, because whether Trump wants to admit it or not America is still part of the international community. We are all in this together.

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