Adam Gopnik totally gets Trump-- awesome piece [View all]

[Fast Walker 52]

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-persistence-of-trump-derangement-syndrome

Similarly, the current revival of a repeal-and-replace plan for Obamacare is clearly empty of all value, in its promoter’s mind, save that of publicity. It was painfully, absurdly apparent, in the last go-around, that Trump had no idea what Obamacare actually consists of or how it works, or what the Republican replacement bill did or how it worked, or, indeed, how medical insurance works in the first place and what exactly is involved in providing it. (The very rich are different from you and me; they have other people filling out forms for them.) The claim, made in the campaign, that he would supply universal insurance at a low cost, even to those with preëxisting conditions, didn’t even rise to the level of wishful thinking. Wishful thinking involves thought. Instead, it was, as with the Duke and Dauphin in “Huckleberry Finn,” a way of mouthing words that might placate a crowd or assert his own magical powers. It was simply an episode in a game show in which someone (always Trump) had to win and someone else (anyone who won’t submit to him) had to lose. Even to call this zero-sum thinking is to flatter it as thought. It never gets far enough beyond zero to be part of a sum, as opposed to mere flat-lined limbic-system reflexes.

The whole piece is great.