(Dobbs) A Schoolyard Bully In An Old Man’s BodyThere are days when existential issues of war and peace all rest on what kind of a mood the man is in.
NOTE: A lightning-strike blackout prevents the transmission of photos. Hopefully this will be a case where a thousand words will be worrh a picture. ************************************************** Upgrade to paid Does Donald Trump even realize that people despise him? Not just people like his newest villains, the “communists” (aka, in a sane world, “Democrats”). Not just illegal immigrants who he maliciously wants to send to countries with which they have no ties. Nor transgender citizens, whose existence he is trying to all but erase. No, although they all surely must despise him, it’s not them. It’s just normal, everyday American citizens. Not activists, just decent people who inhabit our cherished land. Tens of millions of them, who are horrified by the damage he is doing to our nation at home and abroad. And appalled by his treatment of anyone who doesn’t bend a knee to his desires. And, political leaders around the world, who are horrified by his myopic approach to power. They sit with him, they flatter him, they game him. But they don’t admire him. They despise him. Some have made it pretty clear. Others have only hinted. But what they all have in common is, they resent being insulted and scolded by a schoolyard bully in an old man’s body. The only thing anyone takes seriously is the power he wields. If they step out of line, he punishes them and holds their nations hostage to his impulses. He’ll do his best to destroy their economies and if he can, their leaders’ tenure in their jobs.. The scariest part is, his whims are driven by his temperament. And that’s all they are, whims, as fitful and fickle as the wind. There are days when existential issues of war and peace all rest on what kind of a mood the man is in. If he’s tired, or angry, or otherwise out of sorts, woebegone is the nation that gets in his way. In other words, the fate of American policy, and allies’ survival, might be affected by his 3:30am homecoming the other night from Mount Rushmore, or his midnight speech on the 4th of July on the National Mall. Just think, the security of the free world might hang on how tired Trump is. Most of us if we could talk to the president would tell him, “You just don’t upbraid friendly nations because you’re not feeling good. You just don’t do that. You don’t do it with common people, let alone with the leaders of allies.” But because in his narcissistic mind he’s bigger and better than the rest of us and the rest of them, it would go through one ear, wind its way through his laughable dyed locks, and out the other. Now, with the start of the NATO summit in Turkey, he’s at it again. He is so insolent, he told NATO’s secretary general that he was only going because the host is his fellow strongman President Erdogan. A streak of authoritarianism bonds them together. The other leaders? He couldn’t care less. Because they didn’t join the ill-conceived and still unsettled war he started with Iran, they aren’t sufficiently “loyal.” When the secretary general asked him what he wanted from his NATO allies, his answer was, “I just want them to be loyal.” As if their primary purpose presiding over their own countries is not to be loyal to their citizens but rather to be loyal to Donald Trump. So, he resumes his online screeds. In one on the eve of the summit, he regurgitated his tiresome complaint, “The United States spends more money on NATO than any other country, by far, to protect them, without getting any benefit from so doing.” It’s tiresome partly because, thanks to his prodding since he first became president, they’re now spending lot more than they did. And even more because of how naive he is about America’s benefits. Anyone with half a brain understands that a free and secure Europe strengthens a free and secure America. And, that if you give an opening to Vladimir Putin to try to scoop up more of the old Soviet Union the way he is trying to scoop up Ukraine, he’ll probably take it. If parts of Europe collapse, parts of our buffer collapse. Cold War, here we come again. But Trump’s half-a-brain doesn’t get that. As The Washington Post’s White House correspondent and NATO correspondent reported, “Deep into his second term, the president by now is now well acquainted with the theatrics of NATO gatherings, reveling, according to his associates, in the drama of threatening fellow leaders and watching them scramble to keep him happy.” How embarrassing. For us. Not for him. The man doesn’t know what embarrassment is. He’ll probably strut around in Turkey as if he’s the peacemaker he pretends he is. That will work, if no one notices that he has not fixed the mess with Iran, which yesterday only got worse again, and that he has totally abandoned any efforts to fix the mess in Ukraine. That was pushed to the back burner when he started bombing Iran. His favored negotiators, his son-in-law and his business buddy, have been tied up there. He couldn’t be bothered to put new ones on the mission to end the war in Ukraine. Four years, five years, what’s the difference? He doesn’t seem to realize that when allies play nice, they’re just sucking up, and given the price of offending him, I understand why they do. He can destroy a nation’s economy and devastate its security. He can, and if he is ill-disposed, he will. NATO’s secretary general came to the White House last month to lay out plans for the summit, complete with poster boards in the president’s beloved garish gold font. I mean, really, is that what you have to do to hold this president’s attention? That’s why we should cheer for leaders like Canada’s Mark Carney, France’s Emmanuel Macron, and Germany’s Friedrich Merz. When they’ve decided that enough was enough, about the needless war or anything else, they have spoken their minds. The latest is Italy’s Giorgia Meloni. She wouldn’t let the U.S. use Italian bases to launch airstrikes against Iran. So after the G7 summit last month in France, he put out word that she had “begged” him for a joint photo. Then he wrote, “She is doing poorly in Italy with her level of popularity, possibly because she turned down the United States of America, a Country that truly loves and protects Italy, when it came to denying Iran from obtaining or developing a Nuclear Weapon.” Although once called the “Trump whisperer,” she let out a shout at the president, but not a nice one. She said in a video message, “I don’t know why the President of the United States behaves this way toward his own allies. After all, this isn’t the first time this has happened.” The coda was, “There’s one thing he must remember: Italy and I do not beg.” Could he just let sleeping dogs lie, especially when he knew he’d be at her side again at the Turkey summit? For the schoolyard bully, not a chance. Right before flying to Ankara, he posted on his website a photo of her looking up at him, as if longingly, with the words “Restraining order needed” across the top. There just aren’t enough adjectives anymore. Juvenile? Counter-productive? Nasty? In Trump’s first appearance yesterday at the summit, he didn’t make nice. “As you probably noticed,” he said, “Europe’s a very different place than it was 20 years. They better be careful with immigration and energy, if they’re not careful with those two things you’re not going to have a Europe anymore.” No, that’s not why there wouldn’t be a Europe anymore. It would be because Trump gets testy and decides to stop American funding to NATO, blow up the summit, and destroy whatever relationships he has left. We shall see. But no wonder they despise him. The pathetic irony is, the leader of the free world might throw the free world to the dogs. And the dogs work for Putin. |