Donald Trump dominates yet another news cycle. How often can one man suck the air supply from the room as illustrated by yesterday’s Trump/Comey media circus, masquerading as functional governance? We seem to have slipped into the political version of Groundhog Day.

Back when Trump was a reality star of sorts, it was kind of funny, in a late-night joke-telling kind of way. Now that he’s president, it’s become fucking scary.

What is it about America that empowers (and emboldens) stupid, doughy (and angry) white men like Trump? They continually feel the need to tell you how great they are, how rich they are, how smart they are, while downplaying the size (or lack, therewith) of their hands.

Dueling white men.

Trump isn’t a new thing for me. Remember, I had LePage first. He also reminds me of almost every business leader I used to have to rub elbows with back in my nonprofit days. There is an archetypal quality that fits men of this ilk in America. Often intellectual-lite and damn proud of it. They’re never lacking an opinion and an inside baseball solution to whatever they perceive the problem to be. They were exceedingly bold in reminding me how inefficient and insignificant my nonprofit was, in most cases, simply because we were somehow loosely affiliated with government, inevitably part of the problem for them. These men were binary thinkers, through and through.

Of course, they never faulted their own exploitative treatment of workers, or that by gaming the system, they were a major contributing factor in the societal race to the bottom.

When a former board member (who ended up with a prominent role in my being kicked to the curb in 2012) joined forces with a cabal of business types in Central Maine that became instrumental in electing Paul LePage as our governor. This guy—someone who once bragged to me that he didn’t read when I mentioned a best-selling business book I’d recently consumed—became LePage’s “brain.” Seven years later, it’s easy to see how well that worked out.

If you aren’t imbibing large quantities of Trump’s Kool-Aid, it should be fairly clear to you now that he is just plain stupid. Ascribing anything else more diabolical—or even that perhaps our current president is savvy—is an exercise in futility and not worth the time.

Checkers, chess, or tic tac toe?

Political writers are regularly asked to weigh-in on current leaders, offering comparisons to those from our past. Since Rick Perlstein has written extensively about Richard Nixon that’s a link he often makes, like in a recent article in The Baffler.

 Nixon is an interesting comparison point for Trump. Both were certainly paranoid and suffered from bouts of inferiority. But that’s probably where it ends.

Here’s Perlstein on Trump vs. Tricky Dick and checkers and chess (or not). Avert your beautiful, unspoiled minds, Trumpkins. It isn’t pretty.

Again and again, I’m asked to compare Nixon to Trump, and I’ve found myself recurring to a growing array of metaphors, none of which fully bring us to the core preposterousness of the comparison. First time as tragedy, second time as farce. Trump as Nixon turned up to eleven, a la Spinal Tap. Nixon played chess, Trump can only play checkers.

But even checkers gives him way, way too much credit. Maybe tic tac toe? 

Trump does do Twitter, a lot. That’s 140 characters (not words), folks.

Note:

To have the audacity to question a leader’s mental acuity and intellectual curiosity (arguably, Trump might be “sharp” in terms of acuity, but it’s clear in the latter category—much like LePage and his toadies—he has little or none) might offend some. I’m sure supporters of Mr. Trump are crying “foul” and have already bailed prior to my note. However, I’m just “calling ‘em as I see ‘em.” That’s what arbiters do.

It’s interesting how for eight years, conservatives bashed President Obama’s supposed lack of intelligence. Regardless of how you felt about him as a president (and I had my own issues with his policies), no one with any awareness of who he was as a thinker and a deeply reflective human being with intellectual depth could honestly question that.  Of course, it’s never about facts and honesty with that crowd.

Trump has serious issues relative to his own self-esteem. Marry that with his vacuity and the vanity, too, and top it with his authoritarian leanings, and you have a pretty nasty combination.

Since so much of the Trump administration’s smoke and mirrors plan has been focused on Russia, it’s interesting to know that many there don’t hold a high opinion about their fearless leader, Putin, and his intellectual heft, either. In a Russian man-on-the-street segment on this morning’s NPR Morning Edition with Mary Louise Kelly, she spoke with Anton Nosik, a popular blogger and who is sometimes referred to as the “father of the Russian Internet.” He considers Putin and the Russian government a “bunch of morons and idiots.”

Imagine that!