During the first Trump term, I would sometimes have to catch myself because even though I thought and think that Trump is uniquely despicable and dangerous, the fact remains that if you just want to look at the number of lives lost and global damage done, George W. Bush really outstripped him. Trump is maybe a worse person, but the damage that he did in his first term was much more contained. I think that in the second Trump term he’s changed that very quickly. Not just by taking America’s soft power and setting it on fire in all sorts of ways, but really making these abrupt decisions that are going to kill hundreds of thousands and maybe more than a million people and he’s doing it in this incredibly arbitrary, careless way. Trump is destroying the US economy one step at a time. It could be intentional. It could be diabolical. Nobody knows. He could simply be unhinged or following the dictates of a very sinister cabal. One thing is certain. He is accomplishing very little, he will NOT bring manufacturing back to America, which is stupid over priced (I am here now and inflation is raging at 20% or higher right now), he is causing alot of pain, he is losing support, destroying businesses, and consumer confidence, he does not have a coherent plan, and he is a destructive nimwit. He's engaging in nothing but massive destruction of the economy, the environment, the land, the seas, the air, the national lands, the wilderness areas, our alliance with close friends and long term allies, aligning himself with dictators and serial killing despots, and tearing down everything that's good about the world. That is just who Trump is. Globalization made the world great, the manufacturing ecosystems within globalization and low tariffs allowed the US economy to thrive for decades, and he's never going to bring back manufacturing to the US. End of story, just a slogan. The fact that so many people are buying into his nonsense and destruction, is what is truly sad. And that is not a party that I want to have anything to do with, on any level, at any time. I don’t think he has a coherent value structure as most of us understand it. I think we’re seeing a president who’s operating without anything any of us would recognize as a conscience. Truly. It is about showing what he can get away with. It’s about showing his enemies that what they support, he can tear down. It is all about displays of brute strength. He gets off on that, and in that sense, it seems not so much an autocracy but a flexocracy. Let me show you how I can flex my bicep as I use it to power my fist coming into your face. It’s not about any coherent values. It’s not about any North Star. It’s about showing that you can turn the boat 180 degrees around and that you can do whatever you want and you can bring the people who opposed you to their knees.
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