as you can read in his just up Washington Post column, We will all pay a price for Trump’s nihilism.
Consider the strong opening in the first two paragraphs:
The Trump administration’s approach to governance is that of a bratty toddler confronting a neat stack of blocks: Knock it down and scatter the pieces. It may take years to rebuild what President Trump and his minions are destroying.
This is not the systematic move toward small government that conservatives have long sought. It’s a lurch toward bad government, inadequate government, incompetent government. In some cases, it’s driven by spite; in others, by sheer cluelessness. Ultimately, we will all pay a price for Trump’s nihilism.
Robinson goes through examples, starting with an extended recounting/analysis of what has been happening at the Consumer Financial Protection Board. I will let you read that part.
He then follows with the gutting of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which Trump has slashed from 135 staffers under Obama to only 45, and includes this biting paragraph:
Perhaps this sort of thing was to be expected from Trump, who has described “global warming” as a Chinese hoax. The thing is, however, refusing to believe in science doesn’t make you immune from its effects. Anyone with doubts about the law of gravity should think twice before jumping out of a second-story window.
After going on to describe how Trump’s ant-science bias is boosting China, Robinson also touches on Scott Pruitt at the EPA, concluding that part by noting
The result has been to make the world’s most powerful nation mute and irrelevant in the global conversation about climate change.
Then it is time for Rex Tillerson and the gutting of the Department of State, with the loss of experience that is ongoing and devastating. Robinson ends his examination of Tillerson’s mismanagement of the Department by noting
With every career ambassador and senior officer who is elbowed out the door, a lifetime’s worth of contacts and expertise depart as well. The administration will sorely miss that wisdom in a crisis.
Robinson has one paragraph left. There are other examples he could cite, but columns have their limits.
In the one short final paragraph Robinson ties it all together:
Future presidents will have to restore what Trump and his team are casually destroying. Ignorance and petulance, rather than reason, now reign.
Ignorance
Petulance
Nihilism
and note the final word, one associated more with monarchs than with small-d democratic presidents.
I think Robinson got this one pretty much right.