tonyhall Is Trump astute enough to perform such as a ironic function by stimulating a procedure that is the opposite of what it pretends to be?
That is certainly a key question. My best guess is that Shahid Bolsen thinks that it is Trump’s handlers or backers who are that astute, not Trump himself. Trump could well just be a crisis actor and not hardly understand what he is doing. But, come to think of it, this is a recurring question somehow, when it comes to U.S. presidents. There are a whole series of them who have been so intellectually limited – at least to all outward appearances, Ronald Reagan comes to mind – that one really wonders the same things.
Nonetheless, the idea is that Trump administration is, with malice aforethought, engineering a sort of “controlled demolition” of America’s standing in the world – whether Trump himself understands what he is doing or not! To tell the truth, this is the first time I really considered that idea seriously. Once one does start looking at it this way, it seems, at the very least, like an idea worth exploring!