Mark Helprin: Trump's Provocation Principle

The administration is too addicted to shock, awe and intimidation to see the harm it is doing to itself.

In regard to its initiatives across all categories, the administration puts at risk its genuine accomplishments. Its delight in shock and awe feeds upon itself in complete disregard of history and without projecting forward in view of the relative powers it seeks to marshal against those of the world, the laws of economics, and the very weight of reality, all of which it seems to imagine it is somehow able to intimidate. The price will be steep.

Tough but fair.

It's pathological.

Why gratuitously make things harder than they need to be? What's with recreationally pissing off Canada? Threatening Denmark? Although I didn't imagine this lunacy in particular, it's of the general kind I feared. He just can't stand to be challenged. This is the dark side of his admirable immunity to the rhetorical slings and arrows of the left--call him a racist, call him a rapist, call him a fascist, use the courts to steal his money and give it to an obviously crazy woman who slandered him, try to put him in jail...he don't care. He's just going to keep punching back. He's antifragile, as my buddy McCarthy says.

   And look at how great the guy is with regular people. They love him--the non-TDS-addled, anyway. He's got a long history of genuine, warm interactions with real, actual folk. You can look it up...

   But.

   When challenged by people he considers near-peer or genuine threats, he gets crazy nasty. Look at how he talks to candidates who challenge him--Republicans worst of all. And now Canada...

   To some extent, Trump's just a guy. Or, rather: just a bro. He's giving his roommate shit, and when said roomie can't handle it, it's blood in the water. But this is bad manners in polite society. Hence the pearl-clutching...

   The pearl-clutchers do end up looking a bit ridiculous. But from the perspective of established norms, accepted by all nations and pretty much all businesses and professional organizations, and by academia...Trump's acting like a lunatic...

...or a bully. I guess I never really recognize that latter point--maybe because I'm not bullyable myself. I see such macho bravado as either ridiculous or some weird kind of foppery. Or a provocation to respond in kind. Anyway, I tend to dismiss all the blue squealing about bullying...but I guess that's what it is--bullying.

   Don't get me wrong--Canada is dropping the ball by not playing the game. It should just give shit back. Troll him. Make fun of him. (a) Then you win. (b) Side-effect: he'll respect you more.

   Anybody who thinks that there is any nonzero chance whatsoever of us attacking Canada is nuts. Canada must realize this...yes?

   But: remember that what we're being told about Canada's reaction is mostly the kind of propagandistic blue-team spin we always get from the media. But this time, it's filtered through two different levels/kinds of blue-team media. Everything I hear from blue-team media is blue-team anti-Trump hysteria. Even when I think they are likely to be right about something, I can't be sure. Could just be Gell-Mann amnesia...

   Booing the national anthem at hockey games is, I'll bet, a much better gauge of Canadian public opinion... But in this case, it seems to agree with the picture painted by the media.

  Anyway, some of the parties Trump tears into absolutely deserve it. Others don't. But every time he goes over the top, as with the tariffs and bombing Canada, there's a cost to be paid. And his belligerent, arrogant, annoying attitude means that the cost will generally be higher than it needed to be.