Even as I was noting last week that the winter solstice has a role in triggering optimism, there was plenty of empirical evidence to suggest it's true.
Climate scientists profess to believe that they can polish their presentation of the facts and persuade our future President that climate change is real. People who have health insurance for the first time in their lives (but who voted for Trump because "they didn't think he really meant it") hold out hope that he'll reverse course on repealing the ACA when he realizes how much they will lose. The intelligence community expects that the evidence it will present today to the President-in-waiting will leave him convinced that political cyberattacks were the work of Putin and his gang, and perhaps even that Russia is not our "friend." I'm sure we all hope that the man, once inaugurated, will do something to cure his Twitter diarrhea. And so on.
I fear though that all these cockeyed optimists will find their expectations far from the mark.
The real issue, I think, is whether Trump is temperamentally, psychologically, teachable. All the evidence suggests he is not. Was it the old Pogo cartoon in which one character's catchphrase used to be, "Don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up!"? No matter; Trump is a guy who comes to most issues with a preconceived opinion. Moreover, as he tells us himself, he knows things better than any expert - knows ISIS better than the generals, and knows cyber-espionage better than intelligence experts. And if his own predilections and prejudices weren't enough to render him resistant to conflicting opinions and facts, his surrounding himself with people just like himself should help insure that no errant doubts will arise.
Persuade him? Educate him? It will be a tough go. Of course there are those who believe when he is President (believe it or not from his public statements and fawning press coverage, he isn't yet!) he will become some other person. Failing that, however, this apprentice may have to be fired before he realizes that preconceptions aren't a sound basis for governing.
Persuade? Educate? Realize that preconceptions aren't a sound basis for governing? Can a tiger change its stripes? And who would fire him? A Republican-controlled Congress? I'm still in a state of disbelief and horror and don't expect that to change.
Posted by: PiedType | January 06, 2017 at 10:41 AM