He likes watching it
The Post did a big story on the chaotic, frenzied, giggling-terrified atmosphere in Trump’s White House. Who will go next? Who will be marched out by security without a jacket?? Who will be fired on Twitter next?! What Fox News “personality” will get the next key national security gig?!?
Trump has decided to fire McMaster, but he’s dawdling over it partly to spare McMaster embarrassment (right because it’s not at all embarrassing to be fired-but-not-quite-yet) and partly because he wants to find a replacement first. Good luck with that! Who wouldn’t want to work for a guy who takes pleasure in abruptly firing people via Twitter? Besides everyone?
The turbulence is part of a broader potential shake-up under consideration by Trump that is likely to include senior officials at the White House, where staffers are gripped by fear and uncertainty as they await the next move from an impulsive president who enjoys stoking conflict.
Or, to put it less tactfully, from an impulsive president who revels in sadistic public bullying.
That’s what we’re all living with: a head of state who is the worst kind of mean stupid chickenshit high school bully – a guy who loves having money and power because they enable him to grind people’s faces whenever he feels like it. He “enjoys stoking conflict” because he enjoys watching other people’s misery. That’s who he is. He’s no more complicated or interesting than that – he’s a mean narcissistic child who has never moved on from being a mean narcissistic child.
And on Thursday, Trump signaled that more personnel moves were likely. “There will always be change,” the president told reporters. “And I think you want to see change. I want to also see different ideas.”
That’s just the cover story. “Change” is a code-word for tormenting his employees.
Trump enjoys watching his subordinates compete for his approval. Many of the rumors are fueled by Trump himself because he complains to aides and friends about other staffers, or muses about who might make good replacements.
“I like conflict. I like having two people with different points of view,” Trump said last week, rapping his fists toward one another to simulate a clash. “I like watching it, I like seeing it, and I think it’s the best way to go.”
True, true, false. He loves watching it, he loves seeing it, and he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about whether it’s the best way to go or not. It’s just more scoops of ice cream to him.
Some people reify change, as if change itself were of enormous value. Change is not valuable unless the change is moving something that doesn’t work to something that works better. Stability is a more important feature in government, unless it is a government in chaos and run by incompetents. Oh, wait, did I just describe the Trump administration? Fair enough – but his changes go toward more chaos, more incompetence, not less. And that is why he likes change, because it gives him control over people who might otherwise develop the stability necessary to learn their job and perform it.
“… people who might otherwise develop the stability necessary to learn their job and perform it.”
God knows this will never happen with Trump himself. He seems to be completely oblivious that government is supposed to actually function and do stuff. It’s not there as a personal hobby or enternainment. To him it’s a passtime for when he’s not busy golfing.
Sorry to Godwin this thread, but this makes for a frighteningly interesting comparison:
When staff start briefing against the world leader they work for, the results are rarely flattering.
Take briefings of one particular head of state, whose personal aides commented he would appear “shortly before lunch”, spending the morning reviewing the media. When he is out of town, the same aide notes, it gets “even worse”, with whole days lost to late starts, afternoon excursions and evenings spent watching movies.
“I’ve sometimes secured decisions from him, even ones about important matters, without his ever asking to see the relevant files,” one former chief press secretary complained.
The remarks might sound familiar of a current world leader, but they’re historical – and the subject of them is Adolf Hitler, the architect of Nazi Germany and a man vilified as one history’s greatest monsters. “Lazy” and “chaotic” are not words which jump immediately to mind for most of us when we think about Hitler’s administration, but those who worked in it said those were two of the time’s defining traits.
“In the twelve years of his rule of Germany, Hitler produced the biggest confusion in government that has ever existed in a civilised state,” his chief press officer Otto Dietrich said in later testimony. (From http://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/brexit-deconstructed-and-the-threat-of-evil-1-5395765 )
To an extent, I suspect Trump is also engaging in an old, old con game: “Let’s you and him fight.” By goading his subordinates into backstabbing one another, he hopes to keep them from undercutting him. Of course, if he were to appoint quality individuals with integrity and competence in the first place, that wouldn’t be so much of a concern, but Trump can’t stand having anyone smarter and more honorable than he around–which sets a very, very low bar for his potential hires to limbo underneath.