Richard Hogan: Donald Trump is trying to outwit all of us and we are all stumbling along blindly
Richard Hogan: "Every day is a constant chaotic feed of what the president did now. And we are all perfectly stumbling along blindly, rummaging through the latest madness." Picture: Moya Nolan.
Niccolò Machiavelli was the master of subterfuge and obfuscation. A sleight-of-hand trickster whose name became synonymous with political manoeuvring and expediency.
He was a morally bankrupt prince who once uttered into the universe that sometimes it can be, “a very wise thing to simulate madness”.
Perhaps a young playwright, in a damp corner of some room in Stratford-upon-Avon, read those words about 80 years after they were spoken and thought, ‘yes indeed! Maybe one of my characters could feign madness to win a game of move and countermove with his diabolical stepfather king. Queue the arrival of the brilliant young prince Hamlet to the stage.
Let’s jump forward a few years and bring forth a less brilliant prince in the name of President Richard Nixon, who developed the madman theory for foreign policy.
Nixon arrived at this strategy after analysing Dwight D Eisenhower’s handling of the Korean War.
Nixon thought that he could unnerve the Russians or anyone else, for that matter, if he seemed irrational and unpredictable.
He believed that his enemies would be less likely to provoke his wrath if they thought he wasn’t so concerned about nuclear catastrophe. After all, what rational thinking man would want the end of the world?
So, this mock madness has long been a strategy of princes and presidents to outwit their political opponents.
It is very hard to make sense of Donald Trump’s presidency through the lens of sanity. It just doesn’t make sense. But once you start to view it through this prism of madness, all becomes perfectly visible. The only difference is that Trump is not really trying to unhinge Putin; their bromance is going well.
Trump, unlike Machiavelli, Hamlet, or Nixon, is trying to outwit all of us. We are all the mark. It is the great ruse perpetrated on humanity.
Every day is a constant chaotic feed of what the president did now. And we are all perfectly stumbling along blindly, rummaging through the latest madness, trying to make sense of the latest incoherent babbling, desperately applying logic and rationality to insanity.
We all need to wake up and take a leaf out of Senator Gavin Newsom’s book, who has been mercilessly trolling Trump over the last few months. It has been refreshing to witness a Democrat parody the madness, so the world can see what is happening right in front of their eyes.
Newsom’s posts on Twitter mimic Trump's vulgar and imbecilic style; “FOX HATES THAT I AM AMERICA’S FAVOURITE GOVERNOR (‘RATINGS KING’) SAVING AMERICA – WHILE TRUMP CAN’T EVEN CONQUER THE ‘BIG’ STAIRS ON AIR FORCE ONE ANY MORE!!!...FOX IS LOSING IT BECAUSE WHEN I TYPE, AMERICA NOW WINS!!! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.”
The all-caps rants are simply mirroring the madness that we have all come to accept as normal behaviour from Trump.
But even Trump took it to another level last week at Charlie Kirk’s memorial. Which, by the way, seemed like Margaret Atwood wrote the script for, it was like something from Gilead.
Watch out, wife of Vance, just saying. Even in the middle of an event celebrating a young man who was brutally slaughtered, Trump could not resist the opportunity of such a large audience.
The ratings were far too high to let this moment pass without sowing more madness. He declared, into the evening, that he had discovered the cure for autism. More to follow.
The next day, Doctor Oz and Robert F Kennedy Jnr, (I was hoping Dog the Bounty Hunter would make an appearance, but alas not to be), and Trump announced that Tylenol, well, actually Trump struggled to pronounce the active ingredient, acetaminophen.
“Acet, ah let’s see how we say that, actamenofin, is that okay?”. Ah, no! Even with his advisors whispering the pronunciation, he couldn’t quite get it. Bless.
Hard to take this discovery seriously when the guy delivering the message can’t read. Like Moses coming down from the mountain, ‘thou shall not co… covid…cavet…covit…covet thy neighbour’s wife’. But if you really listen to what Trump and his merry team of reality TV stars are trying to say, they are blaming mothers for autism.
Autism is a neurotype; it is not acquired in childhood. Research is clear on this issue. The paper that created this controversy about vaccines and medicine having a role in autism has long been discredited.
Autism prevalence has risen due to increased awareness of autism, broader diagnostic criteria for autism, improved screening tools and standardised screening processes. These factors have led to earlier detection and more diagnoses.
It hasn’t risen because mothers are taking Tylenol willy nilly and should think about their child before treating a foetus threatening fever. To suggest mothers have been the root cause of autism is the most misogynistic thing I have ever heard.
I have worked with so many families with an autistic child. I was thinking about all those wonderful mothers and families when I heard the latest incoherent madness spewing out of his tiny orange mouth. It was disgusting.
I only hope Kenvue, the manufacturer of Tylenol, have the courage and conviction to sue Trump and his panel of ‘TV experts’. All this chaos, and yet no Epstein files. Go figure.
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