CARROT AND STICK
Great presidents know that diplomacy requires knowledge, gracious overtures, and gentle reminders of repercussion. Think of it as the carrot and the stick. Unfortunately, our worst president in history, Donald (Dirty Don)Trump, is incapable of using power appropriately. He uses the carrot and the stick to show his power, but they magnify his cruelty and ignorance instead.
He is the laziest president in history. An example of that is the disastrous tariff unveiling. You would think that a prominent campaign promise would have been thoroughly researched and developed with top economists prior to inauguration or, at least, in the following weeks prior to the reveal. He could have used his time meeting with world leaders to negotiate tariffs. That would have been a CARROT. But, the laziest president in history was busy golfing and developing his many personal business deals instead.
He is the least intelligent or intellectually curious president in history. He has little understanding of how tariffs really work and no interest in learning. Instead, he and his equally incompetent appointees presented a Wikipedia list of the world’s countries and uninhabited islands with embarrassing tariff numbers derived from a crazy formula that left economists and mathematicians sputtering in disbelief. Countries were unexpectedly hit with a STICK - tariffs that mostly bore no resemblance to our economic relationships. It looked like a month-long student project that was done the night before the due date and would have received an F.
He is a severely malignant narcissist, primarily seeking self-fulfillment. His priority is to increase wealth and power with as little effort as possible. He uses the STICK to threaten other countries because it makes him feel more powerful than them. For example he has threatened to seize Canada, Panama, and Greenland. Even though it is unlikely that would ever happen, the audacity of the suggestion gives the appearance of power. (Fortunately, the three countries haven’t caved to his threats as organizations, businesses, law firms, and universities have done. But that is for another post.) On the other hand, he flatters Dictators like Putin, Orbán, and Bukele because he wants to be in their strongmen club, and they stroke his ego. Isn’t it telling that no tariffs were levied on Russia? Dirty Don wrongly claims Ukraine started the war and demands they give up the land Putin has seized. Just now, as I write this, Trump issued a statement that he doesn’t think Russia is an obstacle to peace. That is pure nonsense, considering that Russia has continued bombing Ukraine during a supposed ceasefire. Ukraine gets the STICK as retribution for not caving to extortion in Donald’s first term, and good buddy Putin gets a CARROT, as Donald still wants to build property in Russia.
The world has realized, better than some Americans, that the U.S has quickly become a nation led by an authoritarian regime. If the first three months are any indication (and they surely are) the next 45 will be exhausting, painful, and confusing. Not only lazy, intellectually challenged, and psychologically Impaired, Donald Trump is drunk with the nearly unlimited power granted him by a SCOTUS majority. It doesn’t appear that anyone in his incompetent, fascist administration will constrain his misuse of power, or even want to. With a silently complicit Republican Congress, it is up to the millions of us who believe in democracy to keep pointing out tyranny and raising hell. Democracy cannot fight for itself.