A Dangerous Man

I was once accused of thinking that I was smarter than everyone else. Or maybe it was better than everyone else. I'm neither, but I have to say that I usually keep my mouth shut until I have my facts straight. A lot of positions in the political world are a matter of opinion. Should our military be involved in a conflict? What is a proper marginal tax rate? Should the government be involved in health care or insurance? Reasonable people can disagree on any number of issues. But one thing is not a matter of opinion: we have a dangerous man occupying the office of president.

Trump is dangerous for three main reasons: his incompetence, his narcissism,  and his authoritarian tendencies. All three combine to make him dangerous to our democracy. 

He is incompetent. Somehow we in this country have latched on to the idea that a successful businessman can translate business acumen into political skill. The problem with that viewpoint is that they are entirely different skill sets. A business owner or CEO has one job: to maximize profits. This is not the job of a mayor or governor or president. Government agencies have missions that have nothing to do with the amount of revenue that they generate. But we have seen Trump equate the mission of our military to how much other countries pay us for the presence of our troops. International alliances are scrapped because of the price tag, the Post Office is currently being crippled because Trump doesn't understand its mission. Combine this with the fact that Trump really isn't a successful businessman. He leaves behind him a trail of failed endeavors, unpaid bills and bankruptcies. People believe he is a business genius because he played one on television. 

He is a narcissist. Everything is about him. He has sidelined anyone with any expertise in government who did not display unquestioning loyalty to him personally. International relations come down to how nice he perceives foreign leaders are to him. Governors who do not publicly praise him are retaliated against. He is convinced that career civil servants are out to get him, part of a "Deep State" conspiracy. His paranoia and distrust of "experts" results in an abysmal ignorance of the basics of economics and governance. He continues to misstate and misunderstand how tariffs work as well as how NATO financing works. 

He is an authoritarian at heart. Part of this goes back to being the head of a privately owned company. CEOs of family businesses are virtual dictators within the confines of their business. Their word is law. There's no board of directors and no investors. As President, you can't do whatever you want, although he has repeatedly said that he can. He has expanded the use of executive orders to get his way, and promised to use them more. He has declared a national emergency in order to fulfill an ill-considered campaign promise that was never more than an applause line. He has unilaterally withdrawn from international agreements. He has ignored the wishes of state and local governments and sent in federal agents dressed up as military to pose as a tough guy. He has suggested that the election be delayed. He regularly attempts to undermine the integrity of our elections, the courts, the free press and Congress. He was impeached, but a spineless Republican majority in the Senate refused to convict and remove him. 

All of this, incompetence, narcissism and authoritarianism, have combined to give us 150,000 deaths and an economy that has shrunk by a third in less than half a year. The country is teetering on the brink of a depression, with millions out of work and he does nothing, while bragging about nonexistent accomplishments and whining about how unfairly he is treated. 

He has to go.