David Gelernter of Yale is very wrong about Trump

David Gelernter - a computer science professor at Yale University - blogs "The Real Reason They Hate Trump" at the Wall Street Journal [1]. He decries Trump's vulgarity and so on, but says leftists hate Trump because he's a caricature of the average American.

Leaving that angle aside, parts of this are patently absurd:

But the leftists I know do hate Mr. Trump’s vulgarity, his unwillingness to walk away from a fight, his bluntness, his certainty that America is exceptional, his mistrust of intellectuals, his love of simple ideas that work, and his refusal to believe that men and women are interchangeable. Worst of all, he has no ideology except getting the job done. His goals are to do the task before him, not be pushed around, and otherwise to enjoy life. In short, he is a typical American - except exaggerated, because he has no constraints to cramp his style except the ones he himself invents... Mr. Trump lacks constraints because he is filthy rich and always has been...

1. Trump is not his own man. Putin and others clearly either have something on him, and/or Trump wants something from them for himself and his company. He clearly struck a deal of some kind with the Koch family; they would have opposed him otherwise. He hired Marc Short, a Koch insider. He's stocked his administration with those from "the swamp", like Reince Priebus. He rails against the MSM but only because he wants to be accepted by them and they aren't fawning over him as he wants. Those are not the actions of a rebel.

2. Trump "fights" in one of the dimmest ways possible: by giving people cutesy names. That only works because his opponents are as degraded as he is and roll around in the mud with him. If he finally picks a "fight" with someone who's smart, they could reduce his appeal to his base.

3. The idea that Trump's "simple ideas" "work" has to be a bad joke. Someone familiar with algorithms and so on has to realize that Trump's lunkhead plans don't work. Just look at reality. His Muslim/travel bans were tied up in the courts for months; anyone should have seen that was coming and pushed realistic plans instead. What little of his "wall" that ever gets build will be easily neglected or torn down as soon as Trump's out of office. It's hard to imagine any previous president responding as poorly to Hurricane Maria as Trump did.

4. Likewise, "he has no ideology except getting the job done" has to be a joke. Trump's M.O. is actually to make a big deal about getting the job done in order to gain adulation and help his personal interests. Whether the job gets done or not doesn't matter to him, only that he ends up serving his own interests.

See the Donald Trump posts for much, much more.

ADDED: For more on Trump's gross incompetence regarding Puerto Rico - including something you can do about it - see this.

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