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Ah yes, the enlightened one. Please grace us with your superior wisdom and reasoning, that we may not err in our ways.
I genuinely don't believe that Trump is stupid, and I'll even extend that to say that I don't believe that Vance is stupid. I would say that even cabinet members like RFK Jr. and Linda McMahon aren't strictly stupid, but rather wildly out-of-touch to the point that anything they say is completely unrelatable and easily interpreted as "stupid".
My whole point is that my concern isn't stupidity, and that "stupid" is a useless epithet that doesn't further the conversation at all. You would seem to be in passionate agreement.
Graciously, I'll ask if you're extending the concept of "stupidity" to "incompetence" - because our disagreement would simply be that you're straw-manning my entire argument: "How juvenile it is to think that powerful people are stupid." I personally think those are two separate concepts, where "incompetence" has the additional dimension of context, but "stupid" is wide-ranging. I'll even argue that Trump is not universally incompetent - and has shown great competence in certain facets both in Trump I and Trump II and during his 10-year electoral campaign. Your examples of a diplomatic visit with NK and a drawdown of some activities in the Middle East are great (although I struggle to see what fruits they've bared in the past 8 years).
I appreciate your counter-example of Stephen Miran. Navarro does not inspire confidence that Trump has a good eye for economic advisors (as signs pretty much indicate Navarro lost his mind somewhere around 2015), but I'll give Miran the benefit of the doubt that he has not yet lost his mind. He seems to be hand-picked to support the conclusions that Trump has already reached, so I'm already skeptical, but again, that is not in-and-of-itself proof of his incompetence. All of that is bailey anyway, where the motte is that actually Trump's economic policy is highly calculated and we're aiming for is maintaining our very high average standard of living (at least, for certain classes of people) while also convincing the rest of the world to drop USD as a reserve currency as it presents an existential risk that no one but Trump is bold enough to face head-on. I don't disagree that the world holding USD as a reserve currency is an existential risk, but my main question is: why does it have to be 5D chess? Does the success of the strategy rely on none of the world (including his own constituents) being privy to exactly why certain economic policies are being executed? Is that the secret sauce? It has to be 5D chess or we won't be able to both maintain our standard of living while also convincing the world that they shouldn't hold USD? This is my issue broadly with many Trump strategies - I'm told I just don't get it and it's all part of a bigger plan. Well, it would be great if we were told that plan. To put it simply, when someone says "trust me bro", I instantly do not trust them, bro.
Back to the topic of the OP, the thrust of my point is that I've observed a certain type of arrogance over my lifetime that has been tightly paired with the rejection of expertise, and that I'm seeing the same pattern daily coming out of the executive. That's my signal through the noise. I tie that arrogance (and apathy) back to something that I thought everyone here might be able to relate to, the "pit in your stomach" when you realize you've fucked up because you're out-of-depth. I also tied it to the worst amphetamine-fueled mistake that an authoritarian made during WW2. Your critisicm is basically that my interpretation of the situation is juvenile?
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