Reading Steve Benen on Maddowblog this morning sparked a repeated thought in my head. First, the passage:
The Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin had an item yesterday, which didn’t directly reference the president’s comments, in which she noted, “You almost get the idea that the entire GOP economic philosophy is dependent on a never-ending stream of tax cuts for the rich.”
The thought was NOT that I should subscribe to WaPo in order to read the material first hand, although I probably should. The thought was related to one of my repeating themes on this blog: the problem of sector methods crossing into, and unexpectedly hindering the accomplishment of the goals of other sectors.
But this is not quite the same. For whatever reason, Jennifer’s remark focused my mind on goals rather than methods, and it suddenly occurred to me that Trump, and probably most of the GOP, has confused the goals of government with the goals of the private sector. Tax cut, tax cut, tax cut – given the current fascination with the accumulation of wealth, of which President Trump is an exemplar, taxes are viewed with loathing by the GOP. No big insight there. But if we then stipulate that the accumulation of wealth is such an important goal for members of the GOP, it doesn’t take much to suggest all they see is that when it comes to government – how it hinders their accumulation of wealth.
Now I’m back to that old tension between amateur rulers and professional rulers. I’m quite certain that Trump, nor most of politicians of either stripe, have engaged in a formal study of the purposes and methods of government. Of course, they may point proudly at informal study, but there’s be an almost inevitable slant to such studies, as they are not guided by experienced, disinterested experts. This leads to rule by amateurs who have clashing understandings of the important points of government – and may even engage in corrupt practices without realizing it. This would certainly explain Donald Trump, Jr.’s many blunders over the recent months.
The other side of the coin are professional rulers, which not only clash with American traditions of governance, but are only a short step from their own form of permanent corruption. It’s a conundrum.
