Termite In Chief

Why does Donald Trump stir such polarized feelings in this nation? I cannot speak for those who are still favorable towards the man, but I will share my own feelings and thoughts as to why I view him as an extremely poor president and an even worse human being. I am deliberately not commenting on issues of policy, though I do violently disagree with his political perspective and policies.

One of the key traits I value in a leader is intellectual curiosity. With it, you are always aware of how much you don’t know, and you seek out those who have greater knowledge. That may be in a book, or through links with people who have expertise. Without it, you are prone to believe that you know everything, that you have all of the answers, that what you feel in your gut is exactly correct because you are feeling it. It breeds hubris. In Donald Trump, I see someone who is proud of his lack of intellectual curiosity. He is convinced that he alone can solve things. And he sees zero need for consulting others, either through reading, or through taking advice from experts. This is perhaps his greatest fault, since it has led to many of his most problematic decisions and policy paths. It is the fault that can trigger an existential crisis, since he is so prone to taking abrupt action based upon an impulse.

In order to serve as a leader of people, you must be capable of empathy. You must have the ability to envision the feelings of someone else, in order to evaluate a need for a policy or to envision the effects of your policies on others. Time and again, Donald Trump has shown his incapability to feel empathy for others. What’s more, he has insulated himself by surrounding himself with others who also do not connect with their subjects. No clearer example of this was apparent than during the recent partial government shutdown, when Trump’s henchmen spokesmen could not realize why the loss of a paycheck could cause such immediate financial concern among Federal government employees.

Through the decades, we have seen a tremendous change in how marital fidelity is viewed. There was a time when Ronald Reagan was seen as being damaged goods since he had been “DIVORCED”.      Obviously, that attitude did not exist during the 2016 election. But to learn that the successful candidate had multiple affairs, or one-night stands, even during the time when his third wife had just given birth, and the man boasted to a media acquaintance about the privileges and sexual liberties that celebrity status gave men like him, this revealed Donald Trump to be a person of low moral character. To me, that was yet another strike against him. It is true that we have had other Presidents who had problems with marital fidelity. The difference was, in this case, we were learning about the issue before he had even been elected.

Honesty is another trait that is valued in leaders. Yes, I am certainly aware that our leaders over the years have had significant difficulties in telling the truth, and in hiding damaging information through dissembling. But never have I seen anyone who would cause damage to suppliers by denying that services were provided, forcing them to seek redress in court hundreds and thousands of times. I have never seen anyone who flatly denies he said words that were broadcast the day before. I have never seen anyone try to say that what he meant to say was the opposite of what he said, and it was our fault for listening to the lying media when it broadcast his words. I have never seen anyone cling to his own interpretation of facts, even going so far as to create a class of alternative facts, when our own eyes and ears reveal the lies. It is now beyond credulity to see each new falsehood being bandied about as if we, the public, are incapable of distinguishing truth from lie. Yet still he persists, time and again. And it’s wrong, and it’s dangerous.

When you combine these traits, and others I find equally disgusting, into a single individual and then promote this individual to the single job with the most responsibility and power in the world, you have a combustible mixture. You have the ingredients for causing significant damage to structures and organizations that are responsible for maintaining order. Remember, it is the states of the US that has been free from foreign military conflict for so long. Only the military conflict on the territories of Alaska and Hawaii touched our territorial integrity. But with the advent of the Trump administration, all previous multi-lateral agreements are viewed as a surrender to the international world order, and thus are to be abandoned as not being in our favor. Well, it no longer takes the marching of foreign boots to constitute war between states. With the likelihood that the next war between nations will be a cyber war, what Donald Trump is doing by renouncing existing agreements is inviting other nations to attack our infrastructure from within, through its computer code.

To think that he is taking these steps to satisfy his own vanity and sense of worth is beyond belief. It is even worse to think that many in his base of supporters can see no wrong being done by this overgrown termite, who has been busy his entire term at undermining the support beams of the nation.