Is It Asking Too Much?

This piece ran in the newspapers in May, 2025.

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In recent weeks, there have been two nations that conducted elections, and the outcome in each made the same statement: “We [the people of Canada and Australia] are turning around because the more Liberal candidate looks more capable of dealing with the threat posed by Donald Trump.”

These are two of the earth’s most decent nations, and anyone who respects our Founder’s appeal to “the decent opinion of humankind” is obligated to ponder the significance of these dramatic developments.
• In Canada, the polls were indicating a disaster for the Liberal Party and the rise of a conservative politician with some Trumpy qualities. As soon as Trump began insulting and threatening Canada – for no apparent reason – the polls reversed themselves almost overnight.
• Similarly in Australia, an incumbent Labor Party Prime Minister looked like his political goose was cooked. But in the face of the various ways that Donald Trump has been changing what America represents, Australians too changed directions and chose the incumbent to protect the nation against its former friend.

I wonder what Trump supporters make of these developments. It seems to me the message is unmistakable. We’d be able to read that message, even if we didn’t know also that Trump has switched American support from the innocent Ukrainians who have suffered a terrible unprovoked attack from it’s stronger neighbor, to the fascist tyrant who brought war to a peaceful continent. The elections held by our former friends reveal that the opinion of the decent part of humankind is that Trump is turning the United States toward Evil.

Is It Asking Too Much?

Some who have analyzed the support that Trump has lately lost, in the wake of the folly of Trump’s tariff policy, have reported that these are people who voted for Trump because he promised that he’d bring prices down. These are people who voted as they did because of “the price of eggs.”

The price of eggs skyrocketed for a clearly identifiable reason: the world is seeing an epidemic of bird flu, which has decimated the flocks and thus supply of eggs. Such developments say nothing about the quality of the management of the economy by the President of the United States. Presidents as a rule don’t have much control over the nation’s economic health – Trump’s tariff policy being an extraordinary exception – but especially with something like bird flu.

Is it asking too much of the citizens of a democracy for them to know that much?

It is said that Trump won predominantly on the economy:

People had been through some economic stress in the wake of the pandemic, but the United States had recovered from that more fully and more successfully than any of the other advanced economies in the world. Voters decided that the economy that was called “the Envy of the World” had been mismanaged. A majority of voters apparently believed the country to be in a recession, but the economy was growing at a good clip, the unemployment rate was at historic lows, and the post-pandemic inflation was under control.

Is it asking too much for voters to know that these problems were worldwide, and that the Biden administration had actually achieved something not easily accomplished – a soft landing?

So they voted for Trump who promised to rescue them from this terrible mismanagement.

Democracy depends on its citizenry to do their civic duty well enough to keep the nation on track. I’ve always believed passionately in government “by the people.” But now I can see that democracy only works when the citizens have a decent understanding of what’s going on.

And one more thing: When Trump declared that he’d bring down prices “on Day 1,” how was it possible that people would believe him? How could anybody deliver on that? And why would you believe such a fantasy especially when the person making such a claim had been such a prodigious liar. By believe the unbelievable coming from the guy who claimed that “Mexico would pay for the wall.”

Is it asking too much to think that citizens would notice that a man who lies continually shouldn’t be believed when he promises the unbelievable?

The Changed Psychology of Trump II

Historians will long talk about the ferocity of Trump’s opening months in this Presidency. It seemed he was charging hard, and with earth-shaking impact, on every front. Why this way this time? There are political explanations – having an organized force behind him (Project 2025), having only people who will carry out his will without question – but my intuition as someone who has long worked on this kind of thing, I think a big part of the explanation is psychological.

What Trump went through from the election of 2020 onward changed him.
1) It seems he actually could not accept that he’d been defeated.
2) Then he was infuriated when, without being held to account for much of anything, Trump was compelled to sit in court while his wrong-doing was show to a jury that found against him.

Narcissists – and psychologists concur that Trump is deeply narcissistic – develop their inflated view of themselves in response to deep wounds to self-esteem suffered growing up. Trump’s fury and evident thirst for revenge have unleashed him in this ferocious form on the nation.