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I actively try to never comment on President Trump for a couple of reasons. First, he reminds me of the toddler that feeds off of acting out and getting the attention that comes with it. Many times, the best strategy is to just ignore them. Second, in addition to the 1/n
offensive material, he adds nothing to any understanding of the issues much less even many of his own administrations policies. We all know his own administration ignores him or engages in different policies. He is an intellectual Kardashian black hole of chaos. 2/n
Third, even a lot of smart people and institutions have become obsessed with him to a degree that they have lost any sense of the broader issues they supposedly understand and focus on. If you are focused on China, international economics, and foreign policy this is an 3/n
amazing time to rethink the world, stratagies, frameworks, and economic interactions. Rather than take this as an intellectual buffet and challenge to rise to the occasion, the intellectual debate is little more than slightly elevated rage Tweeting back at the President. 4/n
There are specific DC think tanks whose entire body of work in the past couple of years is little more than rage blogs responding to the President. This has enormously harmed the entire dialogue about what should be done. To this day the entire D/NYC debate is little more 5/n
than saying "we should work with allies" or some similarly fortune cookie quality foreign policy cliche. This position is less about proposing strategies and policies to confront the challenge before us and less about critiquing Trump. Ask people about what they would do with 6/n
allies or what they would do if many didn't want to join them, they go blank because it isn't a coherent strategies but rather setting oneself in opposition to Trump. It is not that think Trump is any great statesman but rather, we need to focus on the situation we find 7/n
ourselves in and the costs and risks we are willing to incur to challenge China given the threat they pose to human rights, democracy, and free markets. The problem is that the valid criticisms of Trump yield to such profound rage that it clouds peoples judgement to confront 8/n
the breadth and the depth of the challenge posed by China. This is why I do not believe that most people recognize the depth and breadth of the challenge posed by China. We need to stop framing this as a Trump issue but consider the depth and seriousness of what we face. Done.
