reflecting on Trump 2 years later

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“I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones.”

Franz Kafka

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“People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought, which they avoid.”

Søren Kierkegaard

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Reflection time.

I believe we have forgotten how insane everything was on a daily basis when Trump was president. Daily he would ratchet up our blood pressure either through tweets, press conferences or speeches. He never missed an opportunity to say something outrageous, stupid, ignorant or just insane.

You need not be on twitter because his tweets became news items discussed everywhere as real policy to be discussed (which was insane in and of itself). But no matter how absurd there was an alternative universe trying to convince everyone who saw something that almost everyone thought “wow, that’s insane” – that it was actually sane. It was a crafty universe in that they would take an individual word and turn themselves into pretzels to extrapolate some sanity or maybe find through 6 degrees of separation some false equivalence to suggest “it was not insane.”

All that said. Every day the country’s, if not the world’s, blood pressure was increased attempting to deal with Trump being Trump.

This psycho-pathological liar, narcissistic, morally and financially corrupt person introduced a unique level of toxicity to the world.

And it revolved around twitter. Trump embodied teen mentality just on twitter instead of the high school hallways. He was an adult <at least in age> and yet he acted just like what we bitch & moan about our teens doing. In fact, I imagined many teens celebrated trump as new leader (‘cause he acted just like them). He could not stop retweeting nor stop from commenting on anything, tweeted before thinking and retweeted anything that came across his phone that looked interesting to retweet <regardless of whether he has actually checked that it is real or not>. Being dropped by twitter was the best thing that could have happened to the world. He abused freedom of speech, he abused words, he abused thinking, and he abused the mental health of the world in doing so.

Next.

People argued he would be a well-needed ‘breaker’ of the status quo. Well. This whole ‘brought in to break things’ sweeping statement is tiring. Chaos is not smart and only shows change with no plan. Countries are not ‘break and hope’ puzzles & how you break things matters in business and it matters in governing. Anyone can break something. Presidents need to make something. Trump made nothing and broke a lot of things. He abused the future health of the country in doing so.

Next.

People argued he would show us ‘the elites’ didn’t have all the answers. First. Experts have never claimed to have all the answers and, second, in general, the anti intellectual argument is insidious. It suggests no one should listen to smart people because they are ‘biased.’ You know what? Everyone is biased. But smart people actually know their bias and weigh it against truth and facts. Sometimes smart people are really smarter than other people and we should pay attention. Trump was an idiot, was purposefully ignorant, and abused the well being of the citizenry in doing so.

Next.

People argue “these people never gave him a chance.” This is a victim mentality. Any business leader, shit, any high school coach, knows you are not owed a chance; you earn a chance. I gave him dozens of chances to make America great. At almost every chance he chose to make America less great. At almost every chance he purposefully divided by showing preference to the tribes of people who showed loyalty to him. This is cheap, lazy, amateur leadership and abused the true potential of the country in doing so.

All that said.

Look at my blog and I was relentlessly critical of Trump in 2016 from a business leadership perspective. The reality is he really was never a business leader, only a successful personal brander. But. Read my day of and day after election posts and I wished him to do better than his campaign.

So let me reflect on whether he improved from his campaign.

Leaving transactional results debate aside (because anyone could pluck a number out of the mud):

• Failed the integrity test

• Failed the moral test

• Failed the honesty/truth telling test

• Failed the debt/deficit test

• Failed the unity/unifying test

• Failed the legal test

• Failed the corruption test

Look.

I won’t debate that Trump and his cult felt like they were winning; they did (and still do). But he was only able to do so by successfully creating a warped ‘us versus them’ narrative using some dubious “faux facts” of which leans into some alternative universe of resentment. But. Facts and truth should matter. Presidents should be accountable for their behavior and we should care about how someone plays the game, i.e., goes about the execution of the job they are accountable for.

I never wanted to impeach this incompetent, narcissist buffoon, I just wanted him to do his frickin’ job. No one is ever ‘pro-impeachment.’ It’s like saying someone is ‘pro-abortion.’ Or ‘pro-firing’ (as a business person). These are soul wrenching personal choices you always seek ways to avoid. And that is where we should truly reflect. On almost a daily basis Trump forced us, almost every person, to make some fairly soul wrenching choices on where we stood and where we wanted to make a stand. His cult following actually had it pretty easy here in that they simply stood behind his words, no matter how insane, and that was their ‘stand.’ The rest of us, well, worried. And it was a soul wrenching layered worry: our livelihoods, our friends, our fellow citizens, our potential fellow citizens, our country, our constitution, our democracy, our moral standing. I think many of us have forgotten about that.

They were an insane 4+ years.

So reflect a bit.

And remember that pressure often defines a person. The Presidency is 24/7 pressure. The less great complain, whine and suggest the hand they have been dealt was unfair. The great play the hand they have been dealt, without complaining, and play the game smartly, thoughtfully and know they get judged on how they played the hand, not whether they won. Reflect. Please. I think its important we do.