I've recently written about ways in which Donald Trump is poor. Not in money, to be sure, but in empathy, understanding, affirmation, and self-esteem. Today I want to talk about his poverty of intellect.
I'm not going to borrow from his own playbook and call him stupid. Like it or not, no one who can reach his level in business, then parlay his personality into a successful presidential campaign is stupid. At the very least he is smart enough to hire the right people to tell him what to say and do. The problem is, he doesn't like to listen to them and usually ends up firing them.
The nature of both intellect and intelligence has been heavily studied, and there are several theories and models of both. One area where most theories agree is that the ability to recognize and solve problems effectively is important to a mature intellect.
It is that area where Donald Trump's intellect appears to have been shortchanged.
Solving problems is a routine matter, something we all do hundreds of times a day. We may not call it problem-solving, but every time we make a decision to do one thing and not another, every time we face a challenge, however slight, we are identifying and solving a problem. The magnificent quantum computer we call our brain does it all for us unconsciously, and usually effortlessly.
The unpresident's brain may not work all that smoothly. Most of us aren't privy to decision making in the White House, but we have witnessed the effects of some problems with decisiveness there. In the three years the Trump administration has been in charge, it has seen an 85%¹ turnover in upper-level staff--an unenviable record in a place that should be a model of stability. Who knows what secrets those people are carrying away with them?
Every entry/exit through the administration's revolving door is a decision the Addlepate-in-Chief couldn't make, couldn't live with, or simply didn't like.
We see it more directly in his spoken language, particularly in press briefings and similar venues. His inability to complete sentences, his detours into unrelated subjects, his limited attention span, and his occasional outright incoherence raise serious concern about his fitness for any position potentially involving the use of weapons.
Testing and psychometric evaluation from Trump's youth could shed a great deal of useful light on these questions, but Trump has threatened to sue any school that releases his records.²
Getting to those records should be the goal of every investigative reporter in America. There's unquestionably a Pulitzer prize waiting. And I'll bet there's a "Deep Throat" out there with the information.
Everyone has a price.
--- Diogenes, 5/20/20
¹ https://www.brookings.edu/research/tracking-turnover-in-the-trump-administration/
² https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-trump-high-school-transcript-20190305-story.html
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