The Stupidification of American Policy [View all]
There are many ways a country can decline. It can become poorer and weaker or lose its alliances or its technological edge.
But there is another, more insidious form of decline: a country can become stupider.
That is what has happened to American policymaking under Donald Trump. The defining feature of the Trump era is not simply cruelty or corruption, though there has been plenty of both. It is the breathtaking intellectual collapse of how the United States approaches both foreign and domestic policy. Complex systems are reduced to slogans. Long chains of cause and effect are ignored. Decisions that require strategic planning are instead made through impulse and bravado.
Most of the time, that impulse and bravado emanate from Trump himself — a man who has bankrupted multiple businesses and marriages and who is the most intellectually lazy president in modern history.
https://saltypolitics.substack.com/p/the-stupidification-of-american-policy il
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