Watching Trump irreparably harm the NATO alliance this past week was entirely predictable, in fact I predicted it last spring. (I stand by my prediction that eventually much of the world will have to impose sanctions against the US in order to reign in Trump's malfeasance and idiocy).
But just because it was entirely predictable doesn't mean it was easy to watch. I got nauseous thinking of all the bloodshed that led us to understand the necessity of building this alliance, the generations of intelligence and good will that went into constructing it, and Trump smashed it like a 6 year old stomping the sandcastle his older sisters lovingly built. And to what end, to what purpose? To make the world substantially less safe and less stable? To spit in the eyes of our allies and the democracies they have carefully constructed and instead to embrace individual dictators - most particularly, Putin? Trump has a deep longing for a return to an aristocratic and despotic age, rule by fiat and personality rather than law. Trump has always shown disdain for the structures built by the unwashed masses with their messy democracies and constraints of courts, rules, alliances and the like. In short, Trump despises restraint. He sees himself as a great man whose destiny is to be unbound by restraint. It is the most obvious and essential component to his personality. Restraint also just so happens to be the thing that keeps humanity from destroying itself in this nuclear age as well as in the face of global warming.
But just because it was entirely predictable doesn't mean it was easy to watch. I got nauseous thinking of all the bloodshed that led us to understand the necessity of building this alliance, the generations of intelligence and good will that went into constructing it, and Trump smashed it like a 6 year old stomping the sandcastle his older sisters lovingly built. And to what end, to what purpose? To make the world substantially less safe and less stable? To spit in the eyes of our allies and the democracies they have carefully constructed and instead to embrace individual dictators - most particularly, Putin? Trump has a deep longing for a return to an aristocratic and despotic age, rule by fiat and personality rather than law. Trump has always shown disdain for the structures built by the unwashed masses with their messy democracies and constraints of courts, rules, alliances and the like. In short, Trump despises restraint. He sees himself as a great man whose destiny is to be unbound by restraint. It is the most obvious and essential component to his personality. Restraint also just so happens to be the thing that keeps humanity from destroying itself in this nuclear age as well as in the face of global warming.
I think what nauseates me most is how thoroughly so many who ought to know better embrace this idiocy or tolerate it grudgingly simply because they reflexively hate the reality that America has developed a more tolerant and less rigid culture. I have been told numerous times that God will somehow shepherd us through our own idiocy and protect us so that we need not worry about blithely tearing down what has been painstakingly built. John Calvin had a word for this type of magical thinking that posed as an imposter for genuine faith - superstition. We live in an era awash with religious superstition - with malice masked as righteousness and superstition masked as faith. If history teaches us anything about a generation like this it is this: buckle up for safety, this won't end well.
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