The truth about Trump?

If nothing else is plain, it should be plain by now that Trump and his supporters are reactionaries. The giveaway is the word again in the MAGA slogan. If the US needs to progress, a very commendable objective, it would be enough to say, 'Make America Great'. Not again; not go back.

But again shows that Trump's only conception of moving forward is to go back. That insight explains and is proved by the way he talks, by everything he talks about, and by everything he is trying to achieve, domestically and internationally: eliminating anything 'woke'; dismantling the caring State; making Canada the 51st State; grabbing Greenland; taking back the Panama Canal. Trump may also be a demagogue, a cynical populist, a conviction politician or fascist. He may even be tough. But first he’s an unreconstructed conservative.

So? A great many people are conservatives. What’s wrong with that?

A leader's efforts to turn the clock back should at least be suspect, in themselves, as a sound course for the United States and its people. The world in the 21^st Century bears little resemblance to the world of 1945, and none to that of 1901. Can the US in future be great all on its own, as in the days when Teddy Roosevelt thought it enough to talk softly and carry a big stick?

However opinion differs on that, what dooms a crusade to restore the past is things don't run backwards. Not in physics, nor in Time, nor in our and others’ lives. All of us are compelled to move forward because change is unstoppable and universal.

It's possible that an aging Donald Trump, longing for immortality like some ancient Pharaoh, has merely failed to keep up, that he isn't 'evil' or 'out to destroy democracy' at all. 

Could it be he is simply unwise, not schooled in science and history? Is it possible, even likely, he does not understand, let alone care, what democracy is, views it only as the business of getting your own way, like in the old days and ways of beating the system, the smart Boss always winning in the end in spite of them all?

Such thoughts also raise the question of President Trump's intelligence, whether he is ‘stupid', wanting in attention span and judgment, as some around him maintain: whether he is an instance of democracy's downside, an over-promoted celebrity, lionised by those who confuse fame and notoriety with leadership, and in truth no more than what he appears to be, and not up to the immense job his countrymen have appointed him to.

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