"There Is No Virtue In Ignorance" -So Said Obama Referring to Trump

He said it on Sunday, May 15. At a commencement speech at Rutgers University, New Jersey. That is where I earned a Master's degree in 1954 in History and Political Science. A great preparation for later higher degrees in International Law and International Organization. More importantly, Rutgers taught me how to do research; how religion and politics intersect; and how to learn about American economic history, as you assist in teaching it. One of my real Alma Maters!!

So here is a possibility for a con man like Donald Trump to assume America's presidency. If he does, a Trump presidency may signal total lunacy in foreign policy. This would not collapse America. America, the home of continuous innovation, through education and selective immigration, is not collapsable. It reinvents itself. Like the generation of electricity constantly in a car by simply using it to motor it forward.

Though America is now an angry place, that anger brews on the bottom. The middle and the top keep on inventing. Thus keeping the anger without much effect on global competitiveness. Just read a book by Robert Gordon, professor of economics at Northwestern University. His book, titled "The Rise and Fall of American Growth," has been dubbed "the most important book on economics this year."

I am digressing from Trump's ignorance. Ignorance in many areas, especially in foreign policy, the subject of this blog posting. In order to return back to it following couple of paragraphs. On American inventiveness, Gordon describes the period from 1870 to 1970 as "the golden age." Why?

"It was a period when the foundation of the modern world was laid. Electricity, flush toilets, central heating, cars, planes, radio, vaccines, clean water, and antibiotics." All of which and more are innovations which transformed living and working conditions."

Yet that brilliant author empirically did not prove the "Fall of American Growth." He advanced no proof that is capable of being verified by observation or experience. Standing alone, a theory is no proof.

This is a turn in this conversation at which I pivot back to Trump as a totally ignorant voice, at most in foreign policy. Worse than ignorant. Dangerous. Why?

Forget for a moment about his lack of details. Or his flip flops!! Just examine his few policy positions, which he keeps on reinterpreting to his hypnotized large audiences.

With his mantra "Making America Great Again," he looks upon that greatness only from the prism of brutal power.

• Pledging a major buildup of the military;
• Swift destruction of the "Islamic State;"
• Rejection of trade deals;
• Arming Japan and South Korea with nuclear weapons;
• Disbanding, then putting together again, NATO;
• Calling on allies to pay for their own defense;
• Announcing his intention to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal;
• Forcing Mexico to pay for his planned construction of a wall on its border with the US;
• Calling for a take-over by force of Middle Eastern oil;
• Insulting China daily for "ripping off America," while praising Putin's policy of force;
• Advocating America's renunciation of its debts to other nations, and
• Looking upon 1.7 billion Muslims as potential terrorists. Thus banning their entry into America "until we figure out what the hell is going on."

Trump is a real estate mogul. A broker. With no experience whatsoever in foreign policy. Has never before run for any public office. Simply tapping into the veins of rage of blue collar Americans, and left behind Americans. Manipulating the vacuum created by the fissures in the Republican Party between conservatives, Evangelists, America's Firsters, isolationists, and nativists.

Tendencies now bubbling on the surface of the American vast landscape. Where each of the fifty states, especially under the administration of Obama, the first black American President, is prone to asserting state rights. Over federal rights. Texas of today is not the only state which threatens secession from the union. It's constitution provides for that possibility.

And a Congress hobbled by inaction for deep divisions between a Republican majority and a Democratic minority; a President who is obstructed in the halls of Congress from moving most legislation forward or even securing a hearing for his nominee for the Supreme Court. Plus a Supreme Court, missing its full count of 9 Justices, three conservative Justices, one "swing" Justice (Kennedy), and four liberal Justices.

Throughout all these fissures, thrive the likes of Trump. Fissures, including an electoral system where the vote of the average citizen has to go through a more politically privileged "candidate," whose ultimate vote decides who shall be president.

Let us see how the outside world regards those Trump's policy positions. Positions which he now flips politically by softening them as "suggestions." From the country with the most enduring special relationship with America, the UK. Its Prime Minister, David Cameron calls them "ignorant." That is the Prime Minister of a major U.S. ally whose House of Commons has debated preventing Trump from entering the U.K.

Mexico's president had much stronger words. The Russians watched with amusement. The Gulf Arabs scurried diplomatically for explanations.

However, the Chinese had the final laugh. One of their intellectuals, Jiayang Fan described: "The appeal of Trump in China." He said: "Mao's worldview has found curious potency in the mouth of the Republican candidate, who shares his knack for polemical excess and xenophobic paranoia."

Not to be undone, an American humorist by the name of Aaron James has just published "The little book with Yuuuuge answers" (No H in "huge" -a la Trump's habitual exaggeration. With a title fitting Trump's common language: "Assholes -A Theory of Donald Trump." In the first word of that title, the head of Donald J. Trump replaced the letter "O."

Aside from Trump's ignorance in foreign policy, his lying about himself goes beyond being a narcissist. Ego centrism in the extreme. Witness his description of himself as "self made." 

A patently bogus claim. Pretending to be an Abraham Lincoln, the facts stare him in the face. The Donald had his business career launched by a $100 million from his father. Lincoln had to flee from his own slavery at the hands of his own father. That father rented out young Abraham to rural neighbors in Indiana. (See Sidney Blumental's book, A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln). From self-deliverance, Lincoln went on to deliverance of his nation from slavery through a brutal civil war.

Another bogus claim by Trump. On the matter of taxation, Trump unabashedly flaunted his crookedness as an American citizen. For the past 60 years, every aspirant to the presidency has released his tax returns to the public. Reason: transparency showing that a would-be president abides by the same rules as everyone else. But Trump refuses to divulge his tax returns. A Wall Street executive, Steven Rattner, has quoted Trump as saying: "I fight like hell to pay as little as possible." This bold admission stands out in contrast to Trump saying: "There is nothing to learn from (tax returns)!!"

Same bogus claim on the question of his respect for women and gender equality. In a seminal front page, continuing to a center-fold, the New York Times of Sunday, May 15, all but denuded Trump from one of his principal lies. His dealings with Miss USA contestants that "he has long fixated on and evaluated women's looks." Some other quotes and revelations gleaned from 50 interviews, conducted over 6 weeks:

• On his public treatment of women: "degrading;"
• "unwelcome romantic advances, unending commentary on the female form;"
• "unsettling workplace conduct;"
• "contradictory portrait of a wealthy, well-known and provocative man;"
• "Trump had the power, and the women did not;"
• "Mr. Trump frequently sought assurances -at times from strangers -that the women in his life were beautiful."
• About his own daughter, Ivanka, he asked: "Don't you think my daughter's hot? She's hot, right?" At that time, Ivanka was only 16. 

Nonetheless, Trump, as per The New York Times, "sees himself as a promoter of women." In an interview with the same newspaper, Trump "described himself as a champion of women, someone who took pride in hiring them."

A delusional who aspires to be America's President and Commander-in-Chief. On April 27 claiming: "America is going to be strong again; America is going to be great again. We're going to finally have a coherent foreign policy, based on American interests and the interests of our allies." Commented the New York Times in one word: "Discrepancies."

In his forthcoming confrontation with Hillary Clinton, he again uses the feminist card. But, as usual, in a lopsided way. He proclaims: "Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don't think she would get 5 percent of the vote."

For Trump, war is global, has no borders. Thus Trump has evoked a mountain of negative comments.

Summed up in the following remarks denying Trump a legitimate claim to becoming a safe Commander In Chief:

• "When one has a hammer, everything looks like a nail;"
• "And when one's experience is limited to real estate deals, everything looks like a lease negotiation."
• "For someone who claims he is ready to lead the free world, that is inexcusable."

All these derisive comments were not limited to mainstream American press. They were the gist of recent testimony before the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, headed by a Republican, Senator Corker of Tennessee. The same party which is threatened by a Trump take-a man who was a former Democrat!! 

Trump's derangement knows no end. A distemper magnified falsely into foreign policy. Seeking the headlines, he pays a televised visit to Henry Kissinger -the father of foreign interventionism. And holding an olive branch to North Korea by declaring that he could win them over by one phone call.

As he closes the gap in American polls with his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, I can imagine lots of foreign ministries closing the file on constructive discourse with Washington, D.C. Except for those who see in Trump's occupancy of the Oval Office an opportunity to ally themselves with his lunacy.

Nothing that Trump has said could outmatch his idiotic buffoonery in the tragic case of the disappearance of EgyptAir flight MS 804 over the Mediterranean. Upon its happening, he was the only voice to declare it "an act of Islamic terrorism." For him, it is a waste of time to await the results of expert investigation. It seems that no human event, including simultaneous and tragic death, is but an occasion for cheap political exploitation.

Judging by the moronic conduct of Trump, it is no surprise that the title of the best recently-published book on the America of the age of Trump is: "The Fractured Republic," by Yuval Levin.

An apt diagnosis of a period of bluster and saber rattling in an America where even Congress has only 16% of approval rating. "There is no virtue in ignorance." How apt!!