The question of what Mr. Trump believed strikes me as beside the point. Based on long observation, he doesn’t “believe”; he’s not by nature a believer. His longtime method of operation is to deploy concepts and approaches strategically to see what works. Put another way, he makes something up, sticks with it if it flies, drops it if it doesn’t, and goes on to “believe” something else.
I have been arguing exactly this for the last 8 years. Any time someone tries to explain Trump’s motive, or his objective or rationale or ethos, it doesn’t work. Not ever. In some sense, he’s a pragmatist, as Mark Edmundson has effectively argued, except that even that is too much credit. His motive (if it can even be called that) is performative, self-serving etceteras — to no end.
Noonan gets this: Trump doesn’t “believe” anything, just makes it up as he goes along. The only thing wrong with her description is that she unwittingly let that word “strategically” slip in. In my view, Trump is so completely and astonishingly unguided that it’s nearly impossible to describe him accurately without including some form of rational, meaningful thought.
Frankly, this is perfectly understandable. Of course Trump’s defenders will make excuses and find “reasons.” But even those who hate the man can’t seem to refrain from accidentally giving him credit. And I get it. Humans aren’t supposed to be this thoughtless. And the American plan was to make sure we got the best and brightest and truest elected. Our version of democracy, according to Hamilton’s Federalist No. 10, was supposed to
refine and enlarge the public views by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.
Obviously, this is an ideal that has not been met. No system is free from corruption or decay. And no society can maintain any high standard when nearly an entire population of millions have been trained to look away. Trump should not be a surprise; he’s the answer. He’s the answer to everything we have subtly or not-so-subtly asked of ourselves for a very long time.
But I’m getting away from my point.
Of course, I don’t really know why Trump does what he does and neither does anyone else. All we can do is go off what we see. And we can see a lot.
So, at the risk of being just as wrong as everyone else, I’ll take a stab at it.
When I read Noonan’s description, I recalled my biology degree days. Specifically, the function of flagellum, which I think provides a great example for comparison. Again, barring any perfect knowledge, I would say that Trump’s motive, along with many of his enabler-followers, is about the equivalent of, and certainly no higher than, a thing known as chemotaxis in bacteria, or what has been called a “biased random walk.”
Here’s how Wikipedia describes it:
The overall movement of a bacterium is the result of alternating tumble and swim phases, called run-and-tumble motion. As a result, the trajectory of a bacterium swimming in a uniform environment will form a random walk with relatively straight swims interrupted by random tumbles that reorient the bacterium. Bacteria such as E. coli are unable to choose the direction in which they swim, and are unable to swim in a straight line for more than a few seconds due to rotational diffusion; in other words, bacteria “forget” the direction in which they are going. By repeatedly evaluating their course, and adjusting if they are moving in the wrong direction, bacteria can direct their random walk motion toward favorable locations.
When a bacterium’s flagellum rotates in one direction (counter-clockwise), it moves forward. When a bacterium senses less “favorable” conditions, its flagellum rotates the other way (clockwise), causing the little organism to “tumble” in circles. The bacterium then spins around like a bottle until it reverses its flagellum back the other way, randomly “picking” a new direction to go.
Noonan’s description fits this almost perfectly. The only correction I make is that, while there is in some sense a reason why bacteria does what it does, it is not a “strategy” but the explicit lack of one. It is biased, but it is not strategic.
In Edmundson’s article referenced above, he says, “If Trump ever used words to render reality, I never heard it.” Neither have I. And that’s what we have to go off. I have never once sensed that Trump’s brain ran on anything more strategic or meaningful than chemotaxis. He might even be the spinning flagellum itself. That is the best and most accurate analogy I can possibly think of.
But now I can’t help feeling a little guilty, thinking that maybe all I’ve done is give bacteria a bad rap and still given Trump too much credit. I can see some little E. coli bacterium (probably the beneficial kind we all take for granted) looking up at me with a grimace and asking, “What am I, an asshole?”