‘You’re a bunch of dopes and babies’: Inside Trump’s stunning tirade against generals (Washington Post)
It’s hard to say what is most horrifying about this account of an early meeting when several of Trump’s former top advisors tried to keep him from going off the rails. The headline, highlighting Trump’s utter disrespect for basically the whole leadership of our nation’s military, is sad enough, but there are several things that should be more profoundly disturbing. First, there is Trump’s utter rejection of the premise that, as General Mattis phrased it, “the post-war international rules-based order is the greatest gift of the greatest generation.” This is not news. Trump has shown open contempt for NATO, and has managed to create real doubt about America’s commitment to allies so longstandingly staunch and solid that such doubt would have been completely unimaginable prior to 2017. What is shocking is that more Americans aren’t up in arms about this. The general peace, security, and prosperity that we have enjoyed for much of our lives is directly due to post-war institutions and alliances hard won through much blood and treasure by the greatest generation. Our grandparents are surely turning in their graves to see the damage done to their “greatest gift”. How anyone can approve of this wanton and callous erosion of institutions that have served us so well for three-quarters of a century and call themselves “conservative” is boggling. Conservatives are people who value proven institutions and who are suspicious of change. Trump foreign “policy” (if his erratic and unpredictable actions can even be dignified by that term) are not “conservative” in any normal meaning of the word, they are radical.
Second, this is an alarming example of Trump’s conviction that his gut instincts are always right, even in areas like foreign policy where he has no experience or understanding, and that none of the people who do have experience and expertise are to be trusted. He has been quoted as saying “it’s very easy, actually, to work with me. You know why it’s easy? Because I make all the decisions. They don’t have to work.” That may be one way to run a family business, but it’s no way to run a public enterprise of any scale, let alone a country. The Constitution itself provides for a cabinet of secretaries, and in the 20th century we have institutionalized a National Security Council, because no president could govern effectively without taking advice and counsel from those with expertise in specific areas. And it is an established best practice that the best leaders will create an environment where subordinates feel free to voice divergent opinions and question decisions, rather than “leading” in a completely top-down autocratic style. Trump obviously missed that day of school at Wharton. Needless to say, the erosion of trust in experience and expertise can hardly be said to be a conservative value either.
The third but possibly most alarming thing from this article was the quote from Bannon, whose attitude was presumably shared by Trump. In pushing back on why Mattis and Tillerson thought our longstanding alliances were so great, Bannon says, “All you guys talk about all these great things, they’re all our partners, I want you to name me now one country and one company that’s going to have his back.” I went cold when I read that: “his back.” Not “our back”, not “America’s back”, but “his back,” as if loyalty is owed by our allies to Trump personally. This administration seems to understand no distinction between the office of President and the man who temporarily holds the office, nor between the interests of Donald Trump and the interests of the American people, as if they were one and the same. That is how dictators talk. It is completely unfitting for a President of the United States.
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