Robert E Kelly Profile picture
Aug 16, 2019 15 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Just when you think Trump can’t get any worse or bizarre, he does. His idiocy and incompetence is just mind-boggling, as is why anyone would vote for someone this colossally stupid. Jesus christ, people, wake up. This isn’t the Onion; this is American democracy imploding
I've always been wary of calling the Trump dumb or stupid. It feels like a cheap shot, coarse and insulting, stooping to Trump's level. But there is just no way around that with this remark. Trump has said lots of terrible, inappropriate, and illiberal stuff. But I think this /2
may be the dumbest, clearly revealing his astonishing lack of knowledge and critical thinking skills, as well as how disconnected he is from the hugely important office he holds. This is the sort of thing someone with basic social science classes would pick up in high school /3
or early college, and certainly as a worldly businessman, much less POTUS. Yet he's been POTUS for 2.5 years and entertained this idea seriously enough to ask about it more than once. Staggering. We now know what Tillerson meant when he called Trump a moron. Wow. END
ADDENDUM:

For those asking why this is inane: bc in 2019 the U States is not some 19th century, ‘Scramble for Africa’ imperialist buying and selling people over their heads. To our national disgrace, the Greenland Foreign Ministry had to educate our president on this obvious /5
point: . But you say Truman wanted to do this too. Yeah, back when colonialism was common and our domestic politics exclusionary & hierarchic. Since then we’ve had decolonization, the UN, the c rights movement, feminism, better inclusion for traditional /6
outgroups like the disabled or homosexuals, & a lot of human rights treaties & norms to capture all this. So we don’t just high-handedly ignore small, weak populations like the Greenlanders. That T has missed all this, that he seems not to have learned anything f/ democracy's /7
growth & maturation in the last 50 years is one of the creepiest things about him. That’s why he says stuff like this, calls E Warren ‘Pocahontas’ in front of N Americans, ignores P Rico, wanted to steal Iraq’s oil, admires Putin’s land-grab in Crimea, etc. The small & weak /8
are to be bullied, not defended - which is what you thought when you were a 13 y/o boy on the school parking lot, but then grew out of as you read, learned, traveled, built relationships, realized that TV isn't real,etc. That Trump lacks all this is why he’s Tillerson’s moron.END
ADDENDUM 2

Commenters keep suggesting that bc there may be a US strategic logic to deeper involvement in Greenland, this is not such a dumb idea. But that’s not the issue; Trump’s method is. A normal person, much less POTUS, would know in 2019 that the US does not buy people./10
That is why this suggestion reveals Trump’s stupidity so obviously. A normal adult in a democracy would have absorbed that buying people is wrong from the last 70 years & from a basic history and social science education of that time period. This is why his staff treated the /11
idea as absurd, and it got so much press. Trump himself lived through decolonization! Yet he suggested it multiple times anyway. That’s astonishing cluelessness, astonishing disengagement from the world around you, & the best evidence yet that Trump doesn’t read. A lot of us /12
have foolish ideas, but we read and listen to people smarter than us, and we grow out of them. In this case, a basic presidential knowledge of modern politics and history would have taught Trump that we approach Greenland and Denmark with our concerns, propose a tighter /13
relationship or deepening of the alliance, expanding Thule AB perhaps, encourage FDI in critical sectors there, and so on. The State Department – not buying people like some 19th century commercial imperialist – is the obvious tool. But Trump doesn’t read or listen to his /14
briefers and watches way too much TV. So you get ridiculous, laugh out loud - you laughed when you first heard it, right? - ideas like this. END

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More from @Robert_E_Kelly

Mar 10
BBC Dad content

Today is the 7th anniversary of the BBC Dad blooper.

So here it is again, with some recent family pictures in the thread below.

1
These are from Marion's birthday party today, and James and I hiking this morning


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Another hiking picture, and some Christmas 2023 pictures


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Read 4 tweets
Feb 20
This thread makes a point political science emphasizes a lot - and which I tell my students constantly:

Competent democratic government is actually really boring. A lot of it is unappealing trade-offs, wonks diving deep into detail the public won’t track, maintenance instead

1
of flashy new initiatives politicians can put their name on, compromise between parties which leaves no one happy, incremental, unexciting improvements only visible over the medium-term, and so on.

This is not entertaining or engaging, & doesn’t make for exciting journalism.

2
But it is how you mostly want democracies governed. This is why you don’t elect showboats like Trump or Jesse Ventura, and you do elect competent administrators like George W. Bush or Biden.

Sometimes I think Fukuyama is right: wealthy democracies get so bored that they

3
Read 5 tweets
Jan 18
🧵No, there won't be a War with N Korea

Yes, NK's rhetoric seems more belligerent lately. Yes, this Kim seems to enjoy making scary threats more than his father did. Yes, the US is distracted by Ukraine & Gaza. But

1. N Korea is the Boy who Cried Wolf

1
reuters.com/world/asia-pac…
NK constantly talks like this. I made this point back in 2013👇when Kim told foreigners to leave SK bc war was imminent (jerk). Perhaps Kim means it this time. That is possible,of course. But it's impossible to reliably infer that f/ NK rhetoric anymore

2
thediplomat.com/2013/04/north-…
2. Talk is Cheap

National elites say outlandish stuff all the time. Look at Putin. Threats are a cheap signal. What matters instead are costly signals, which in the NK case would mean something like a seventh nuclear test, a missile test flight over SK, or border skirmishes.

3
Read 11 tweets
Oct 29, 2023
Latent capacity is not capability. Khrushchev said we will bury you, and Mao thought he could fight a nuclear war bc of China’s huge population.This is not how conflict works

Sacks says stuff like this all the time. I’ve no idea why he’s taken seriously as a geopolitical thinker
1. We are highly unlikely to fight all three at the same time. Sacks is ginning up an extreme scenario to scare people

2. The U.S. would not fight alone. We have a huge alliance network, and those states are wealthy and capable too

3. Our goals against all three are limited…
We are not going to invade Russia or China

4. Nuclear weapons limit the likelihood of great power escalation. That works in our favor as the status quo power

5. US has spent trillions on defense for decades. These states have not.That’s a huge logistical advantage you don’t see
Read 5 tweets
Oct 10, 2023
In fact, Biden’s dealt with these crises pretty well.

In Ukraine, he’s helped that fledging democracy fight off increasingly overt fascist imperialism. On Israel, he’s robustly supported Israeli security while discouraging Netanyahu’s legal coup, and has encouraged Israelis

1
and Palestinians toward the negotiated solution which is the only durable way out of the cycle of violence they’re locked in.

Yeah, it’s choppy and messy, but that’s how the sausage gets made and it could easily be a lot worse.

Were Trump were POTUS, Russia would be on the

2
Dnipro and NATO would be fracturing as Eastern Europe armed to the teeth while Western Europe dithered.

In Israel, the hard right government would feel unbound in the coming offensive, and the US and Iran would probably be in a shooting war by the end of the month.

So yeah,

3
Read 4 tweets
Sep 27, 2023
🧵So most of this on Ukraine is wrong:

1. Yes, Iraq was a terrible decision, but that was 20 years ago by a different administration with very different ideological beliefs (neoconservatism). Just bc that choice was awful, does not mean US engagement/assistance elsewhere is

1
now automatically an error. Indeed, Republicans used to reject exactly this logic, calling it the Vietnam Syndrome.

2. Yes, 1930s analogies are far too common in US foreign policy. However, Putin is pretty close to a fascist now, and he has engaged in serial imperialism.

2
3. Ukraine aid is easy to justify the war in terms of US interests. Putin is now very anti-American. He very much wants to overturn the democratic world's political structures, particularly in Europe, which is why he aligns with China, North Korea, and Syria. The US benefits

3
Read 14 tweets

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