Seeking Knowledge And The Ability To Understand And Benefit From It... "The Failure of The System" (Part 2)

Hello all... This is part two of my three part essay into the insanity that is the Donald Trump presidency. I tried to split it up into relevant sections to reflect the actual facts behind it. Take a look and judge for yourself... :)

No one is inherently wrong just because they disagree with you…
Start with the most basic facts and look at this from the most basic level - to get on the same page, both sides have to at least agree on and get that out of the way first. When someone has an opinion on something, that person is not at fault for not agreeing with someone else who holds an opposite opinion. The idea itself, that someone has an opinion on something is itself predicated on the notion that they disagree with the other person who holds a different opinion.

Hmmmm...

Anyone who actually wants to become president, first and foremost needs to be able to submit to the punishment just of running for the office - and that’s admittedly a rare person. The problem with this is; that specific set of qualities inherently selects the things that you don’t actually want in a president - at least I wouldn’t think you would want them. Simply stated, the act of running for the office of President of the United States requires a level of narcissism, combined with arrogance, and the sense that no matter what, it just has to be you who win’s.

In the normal intellectual space most of us reside, you’re constantly aware of ways you are not the best person doing whatever thing it is you’re doing. You will typically make every effort to display humility and defer to experts – if for nothing else, simply because they tend to know more than you do. That sense of the limits of any one person’s expertise tends to creep into most politicians, even if only on the most basic level.

What I’m worried about now (and Donald Trump is not the only example – just the most extreme one) is the way we’re becoming unmoored from any traditional truth testing in American politics. The fact that we now have a president with his very own feedback mechanism is most certainly unique, and has the potential for severe consequences. Trump appears to get a disproportionate percentage of his information from sources like Infowars, Breitbart, and Fox News, combined with various other places similar in content – and truth value.

However disturbing that fact is, it has been confirmed (sometimes by the president himself) many times over - occasionally in real time. There are a handful of examples where the president has heard something from one of his favorite news sources, and “tweeted” the same information (or some version of it), directly following the broadcast, without any kind of verification what so ever. Even though he has access to every resource available within the US Government - when Trump is confronted with actual facts to refute any of his claims or more accurately stated "his lies", rather than to draw upon those resources to either bolster up his claims or confirm their accuracy, he will just continually deny the validity of the evidence (basically double down), and has repeatedly resorted to calling everything “fake news” and dismissing it outright.

It never appears that he pays a price for the obvious inaccuracies, blatant lies, and his obvious lack of knowledge in any given subject – again everyone should refer to the long list of politicians who have lost their careers for doing things that in retrospect appear benign compared to Trump’s indiscretions. Now granted his popularity rating is the lowest of any president ever at this stage of their presidency, so he is obviously paying some price, but the question is - how can the thirty percent of voters who still support him continue to do so knowing the things he says are patently false, and the things he does are obviously self serving and contrary to the “Make America Great Again” message that prompted people to vote for Trump in the first place.

When you read a transcript of what actually comes out of his mouth, it is truly amazing. The poverty of the words in terms of information is stunning. The fact that we have a president that speaks like this is unimaginable just in relation to any middle school student – and the fact someone this inept could actually become the President of the United States makes it that much more unbelievable. I could have never foreseen in my lifetime this would happen, and I genuinely fear for the future of my kids.

The founders of our country were brilliant in their insight - and their ability to foresee potential problems within the system was amazing and will likely never be repeated again. The entire enterprise is however predicated on the assumption that whoever acquires the presidency, would by default do the things that would be good for the country and ultimately good for the world. I don’t believe they could have even imagined the “checks and balances” so meticulously thought out and implemented, would fail so miserably, and let someone like Donald J Trump become the president.

There should be a flag planted here to show us how far we have gone away from what used to be considered normal - and to measure against what the future might bring.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to seeing you in the comments…

MDG…