David Rothkopf, CEO and Editor Of Foreign Policy Magazine, has produced the best piece I have yet seen on the nightmarish, buffoonish Black Comedy we are watching acted out in front of our unbelieving and despairing eyes.
The piece is subtitled While we endlessly watch for the latest blunder or scandal, America is being pulled dangerously off course.
Mr. Rothkopf begins his essay sketching America’s and the Donald’s narcissism, a study so laborious as to require three rather wordy paragraphs in an otherwise short but disturbing read. The upshot of this introduction is that Drumpf is a “Transcendental Solipsist” for whom our attentions are mere worlds to be eaten.
Luckier are the denizens of the thriving megalopolis of Shenzhen, China, whom Rothkopf has been sojourning with, who are much too busy building their future to pay much attention to Trump - as we cannot help but watch his destruction of our present.
But despite their blessed remove from all things Trumpian, they have apprehensions also.
“But there is another dimension to the Trump phenomenon that has Chinese observers uneasy. As the same business leader said to me, “We don’t mind it when you leave more room for us to grow. But you do play an important role in keeping the world safe. The world needs the United States. And right now when we look at threats in our region or the unpreparedness of your leaders (a reference to the recent not very well-received trip of America’s phantom Secretary of State Rex Tillerson) we are getting more and more worried.”
Rothkopf laments the opportunities for loss as well as the loss of opportunities that America’s gigantic mistake has occasioned, and observes that the “adults” brought into the insatiable void’s orbit, whom some invested so much hope in, are bigly failing us while we are otherwise distracted.
“If you doubt that the impact of the shift to All Trump, All the Time News is making it hard to focus on much of what might otherwise be worthy of our attention consider this: Since taking office, the Trump administration has ramped up military operations in Yemen and Iraq; committed to deploying over 1,000 additional troops in Syria; stood by as civilian casualties have soared and watched as a strategically important province in Afghanistan fell to the Taliban — all without making so much as a ripple in the public consciousness of the United States. Trump was very nearly mute on North Korea (save for some ill-considered tweeting, of course).”
The author is both confident and hopeful that the soulless, needy vacuum that is Drumpf is not a perfect analogy for a black hole; black holes, after all, take eons to disappear, being in no way constrained by the laws of politics or biology.
But he cautions that in the meantime we must look beyond the event horizon.
“Trump will not inadvertently or otherwise damage the fundamentals of what makes America great. Indeed, recent events have restored hope that perhaps his story may one day be seen as proof that the American system works and that bad actors are ultimately brought down. But we need to tear our eyes away from the spectacle of this clusterfuck of a presidency and its daily dramas and periodically look up and out to our horizons, recognizing that the narcissism aside, there remains real greatness in America that needs tending, planning, and nurturing in the context of the real world — even if, at the moment, there is very little evidence of that greatness at the center of our government.”
Read the full article.
It is well worth your time.