Donald Trump's Razzle-Dazzle |
Ordered chaos is the way the president wins.
I have to admit that I don’t remember much from my youth. I know that I had loving and wonderful parents who did everything for me, and that I grew up in a beautiful suburb of Chicago. One memory that does stick has me going to see the Harlem Globetrotters when they performed at Northwestern’s basketball arena in nearby Evanston. Meadowlark Lemon and his crew were amazing in routing the refs and the Washington Generals. Their method was “razzle-dazzle,” and they made their opponents confused and their fans thrilled. The expression “razzle-dazzle” already appeared in the 1890 Oxford Dictionary and was understood to mean “overwhelming or deceiving” someone. Donald Trump is the modern king of razzle-dazzle.
If you were to ask someone what the state of affairs is right now with Iran, he would be hard-pressed to give you a clear answer. On the one hand, the war is not over, and officially, there is a ceasefire. On the other hand, the president often says that the two sides are close to an agreement and that the war could be over soon. There is a ceasefire, but the U.S. bombed Iran for the latter’s attempts to attack two U.S. destroyers in the Straits of Hormuz. On a daily basis, the president and his secretaries of state and war say contradictory things. The Secretary of State said that Operation Epic Fury was over. Now, did he do so for the benefit of Congress so as to avoid a need for congressional authorization for war? Or did he say it for the Iranians so that they would think that major fighting is over? When Donald Trump says that they are close to an agreement that would remove enriched uranium from Iran, with whom is he in agreement? The ostensible political side? The possibly dead Mullah Jr.? The IRGC honchos? Or the guy who sells falafel in downtown Iran?
By making contradictory statements on a daily or nearly hourly basis, Donald Trump is confusing our enemy and making their path........