Inept

20 September 2017

Cogito Ergo Non Serviam

Trump's UN Speech Addresses His Domestic Base, Exposes His Ignorance

President Donald Trump addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations yesterday. His speech was ill-organized, repetitive, and self-contradictory. It was a perfect example of the hodge-podge of emotional rantings that make up Mr. Trump's oratorical style. Back home, his cult of personality ate it up. The people in the room over whose heads he spoke to his base were less than enthusiastic. It was a troubling show of ignorance and bluster.

Not surprisingly, the North Korean delegates walked out before Mr. Trump even began, leaving behind a low-level bureaucrat to take notes. "Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime," Mr. Trump said. "The United States is ready, willing and able, but hopefully this will not be necessary. That's what the United Nations is all about; that's what the United Nations is for. Let's see how they do." He promised to "totally destroy North Korea" if necessary. He sounded like a 15-year-old trying to screw up enough courage to throw a punch in the high school cafeteria.

He rounded on Iran, correctly labeling it "a corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of a democracy." However, at the UNGA opening, one does not point out such things. One member of the Iranian delegation was paying wrapped attention -- to his cell phone. It appears that the official response to Mr. Trump's speech from the floor would be to ignore it. Mr. Trump can handle good attention or bad attention, but no attention really gets under his skin.

He called the Maduro regime in Venezuela a "corrupt regime," in a massive case of a pot calling a kettle black. He added that Mr. Maduro, and Mr. Chavez before him, "destroyed a prosperous nation by ideology that has produced poverty and misery everywhere it has been tried." He claimed the ideology in question was socialism, but in truth, it is populism. Mr. Trump is about to try the same approach in America, but he and his team don't seem to understand their vision for America is a smaller, more frightened one.

While attacking the smaller dictatorships in the room, he actually heaped praise on China and Russia, two of the more powerful dictatorships in the world. Mr. Trump has a habit of punching-down, of taking on those weaker than he is. He doesn't have the character needed to be anything more than a bully, unable to pick on someone his own size. Instead, he thanked them both for their support in the UN Security Council for backing more sanctions against North Korea.

If there was anything in the speech approximating intellectual content, it was the section in which Mr. Trump argued in favor of every nation pursuing its own self-interests. "As president of the United States, I will always put America first, just like you, as the leaders of your countries, will always, and should always, put your countries first," he said. As a businessman of some experience (but little actual success), Mr. Trump is appealing to Adam Smith's definition of a market. But in order to work, a market needs a state to enforce the laws and contracts made. There is no such thing in the anarchic society of global politics. One gets the Nash equilibrium instead of the Pareto optimum.

Every country for itself is how the Korean Peninsula got to be in such a mess. Ask the Tibetans how every country for itself has worked out given China's self-interested actions there. The history of conflict is the history of every nation pursuing its own self-interests regardless of the cost.

In the global village, America has traditionally played the role of village policeman, for better or for worse. Yesterday, Mr. Trump put on display his ignorance of the world, and his staff failed to make it look any better. Mr. Trump has added a new role, village idiot.

© Copyright 2017 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.



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