Wednesday, December 12, 2018

DOES TRUMP HAVE ONLY THREE MOTIVES?

Is Paul Krugman right about this?







I'm not sure about this. One of Krugman's commenters is right, I think:



I don't think Trump wants the wall just because he regards it as a macho response to unauthorized immigration. I think he's a genuine racist who believes that non-Europeans live in shithole countries and need to be contained so they won't kill or otherwise harm us, violently or by means of the diseases they inevitably spread to us. On that level, I think Trump's hardline immigration policies are, in his mind, "things that Trump does because they're actually in the national interest."

There's also what he learned from mentors, starting with his father -- meanness generally, and specifically, I think, the notion that all counterparties screw you, so you should screw them first. (That's a big reason Trump loves tariffs and always wants to terminate and renegotiate deals made with other countries.)

And there's -- I'm straining for an "m" word here -- methodical predecessor erasure:



Although maybe that's about manhood -- how can Trump be the alpha among alphas if there have been other presidents and they've accomplished stuff?

Beyond that, I'm stumped. Is there anything that doesn't fall into these categories?

No comments:

Post a Comment