Jersey Girl wrote:Chap wrote:
So what's going on? Is it that
(a) Trump no longer has anyone close to him who dares to tell him the truth about how risky things are getting?
or
(b) Trump does have such people, but he is too dumb and reckless to pay them any heed?
...
His relationships appear to be nothing more than transactional. ...
I think your response is on the button.
Cushioned by a huge inheritance, which (in real terms) he appears to have done little to increase above what an index-tracker fund would have yielded, Trump has never had to face the real threats that this world can pose, threats that make us face up to the existence of those things called hard facts and make plans on that basis.
He has lived his life in an environment insulated by wads of money, which has protected him to the extent that he has never really had to develop the skills of facing up to unpleasant and unavoidable reality and working out what to do. To take one example, a life-lesson common to many men of his age and class has passed him by: thanks to those awful bone spurs created by paying a classy physician, he never had the wonderfully focussing and clarifying experience of having his sergeant yell at him 'Lieutenant, we've taken six casualties already, and the VC are fair set to surround us. So what are your orders?'. And then everybody looks at you, and you know their lives and yours depend on what you do and say next ... and the incoming fire is hard, real, and lethal, and can't be imagined away ...
That kind of problem can't be solved by declaring bankruptcy, or getting the
National Enquirer to buy the story and bury it. And tweeting whatever makes you feel good won't hack it either.
But that's what the very stable genius in the White House is like.
