Occam's Razor

In case you haven’t noticed, our nation has been living in a Kafkaesque political nightmare. What a week it has been, a crazy week to somehow top all those other crazy weeks since Trump because POTUS. It’s like taking a bad tab of acid. But if you are like me then it’s not necessary because real life can hardly be a weirder bad trip.

I literally go to sleep every night with what I think is a comforting thought: “Well, as crazy as today was, certainly tomorrow can’t be worse.” And every day Trump proves me wrong. It’s like winning a game of improbable chance, like rolling snake eyes every time. But it’s impossible! This defies all common sense and the laws of probability! Surely there will be at least one day there when Trump comes off sounding reasonable, or doesn’t say or do something bizarre and totally off the wall!

The closest he came to this was his substitute for a State of the Union address and only because he read closely off a teleprompter. For almost a day press reports were positive. Then of course he reverted to form and hasn’t deviated since. Tonight he is off on a nine-day foreign adventure guaranteed to rankle both enemies and allies. It’s clear that Trump doesn’t want to go. He only wants to sleep at one of his properties, and there are none on this journey. He is avoiding foreign policy briefings and to the consternation of aides plans to mostly wing it. In Europe, leaders are preparing by keeping the agenda light, short and uncontroversial. It’s just as well because Trump’s ADD will mean after five minutes he will get bored, unless he is speaking of course. I am reminded of that scene from Airplane!

Air Stewardess: Would you like something to read?
Passenger: Do you have anything light?
Air Stewardess: How about this leaflet, ‘Famous Jewish Sports Legends?’

The best Americans can hope for from this trip is that Trump has a whole briefcase of these pamphlets that he can peruse when his attention wanders, which it will be most of the time. It’s not hard to predict though that he will spend nine days stepping on toes and generating more controversy, just like on Wednesday when we learned he is the most picked on president ever. This would be news to Abraham Lincoln who was called among other things (and this just by one New York lawyer) “a barbarian, Scythian, yahoo, or gorilla”.

I do feel sorry, but not for Trump. The people I feel sorriest for are his White House staff. Even though he picked them, or delegated the job to people (mostly Pence) to pick them, they are always to blame for all of his screw-ups even though they do their best to parrot the message of the moment. Then of course they discover that Trump has said something completely contradictory and undercut them moments later. And it’s their fault!

The only mystery here is why they haven’t all quit en masse. Perhaps they secretly enjoy being abused and berated constantly. That doesn’t seem to be the case. The leaks that Trump would have preferred that former FBI director Comey investigate instead of Russian-Trump connections are a result of staff becoming unglued due to constant stress and his abuse. For Trump’s staff, it’s therapeutic to talk to a Times or Post reporter “off the record” and it paints a portrait of total dysfunction inside the White House. Walking and chewing gum at the same time is apparently way too complicated. Just chewing gum is pretty challenging.

The crux of the matter is that Trump is woefully unqualified to be president, the exact criteria that excited voters. He’s always been about image, but it’s abundantly clear now that his image is just bluster, something his supporters chose to ignore during the campaign. Like Bush II, he’s “All hat and no cattle”. Surely we didn’t need another politician, voters said last November. We needed someone to shake things up. In that sense and in that sense alone Trump is winning: he and his minions are spreading dysfunction across the whole federal government. So if you voted for anarchy, surely you are happy, which is probably why there are vodka toasts hourly at the Kremlin.

There aren’t a whole lot of glimmers of light from all this, but there are a few. Our courts in general seem to be interpreting the law rather than rewriting it, much to Trump’s consternation. (When they do he calls them “fake judges”.) Wednesday brought welcome news that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (who himself seems to have played an unseemly part in FBI Director Comey’s firing) has appointed an independent counsel to look into Trump-Russia connections. The ink from the order was hardly dry before Trump of course claimed victimization and persecution, while assuring us there is nothing there. So why be ruffled?

Meanwhile though the Trump bull continues charging through the government’s china shop. It’s unclear how much will be left before he either ingloriously resigns or investigations lead to his impeachment and removal. I’m convinced that he won’t survive this. The only question is when he goes. Trump has a long history of business failures and cashing in his chips. To be true to form he probably will do the same with the presidency at some point, and likely sooner rather than later. When the hand becomes too poor, he folds and walks away complaining. Rest assured when he does he’ll say it wasn’t his fault. Hopefully this will happen before we become embroiled in another war or before a huge diplomatic crisis unfolds.

In that sense I am rooting for his failure, and sooner rather than later. At this point the most patriotic thing Trump can do is resign and hope that by resigning any criminal charges get dropped by prosecutors or pardoned by Mike Pence. The Trump brouhaha though will outlast Trump and will likely tar those on tap to succeed him, certainly Pence who let Mike Flynn into the administration but likely Speaker Ryan too, the next in line.

Are we really living a Kafkaesque political nightmare? At least after Trump goes, I’ll be willing to peak out from under the covers again. What comes next won’t be much fun, but it is likely to be more like entertainment than nightmare, which will mean throwing a bag of popcorn into the microwave instead and hope it settles my queasy stomach.