Of late I’ve been spending more time in the public library than my usual pickup-and-dropoff because of temporary internet connectivity problems at home, since fixed, and it seems that while they lasted I could not spend more than five minutes at a workstation without some total stranger demanding to know what I think of Donald Trump. Because I was not in one of the world’s last quiet places to have a contentious political argument, I usually said that I am not fond of him and moved on. But sometimes the conversation went on, and I kept my answers short.

“He’s a businessman!”

“Yes. That’s undeniably true.”

“He knows how to run things!”

“Into the ground, yes.”

“Look how successful he is!”

“Only as successful as he would have been if he’d taken his inheritance and invested it in low-risk stocks; no more than that.”

“He knows how to manage people!”

“He knows how to go bankrupt running casinos.”

“You’ve got to admit he’s got a head on his shoulders!”

“Yes. Otherwise he’d have no place to tie his tie.”

The speakers got angrier and angrier, refusing to take the hint that I was really not into having a conversation at this point. Why wouldn’t I concede defeat? The fact that I was not actually having an argument doesn’t actually occur to them; they just went on, none of their own arguments deeper than bumper stickers.

And then, I got this one: “Politicians messed it all up! We need to try something else! ANYTHING ELSE!”

At which point, if I had the confidence that any of these people would sit still for a substantial response, I would have said the following:

“I don’t necessarily buy the premise that ‘politicians messed it all up;’ actually, politicians controlled by businessman messed it all up, and that’s a different thing, a key reason why electing a businessman for being a businessman is a dangerous mistake.

Frankly, by many of the metrics you refuse to look at, the current President undid a lot of the damage done by the last administration run by a guy who used his business experience as a plus. Prior to him, the guy who said that the business of America was business was Herbert Hoover, and he was not a glowing recommendation either.

But simply addressing the statement we need to try something else, anything else:

Whether you realize it or not, what you’re talking about, right now, is panic.

Panic is an evolutionary response. Nature gives animals instinct, and the capacity to learn, and in many cases an impressive degree of cunning, with which they address specific survival challenges using strategies thought out at the moment. A rabbit makes any number of expert split-second decisions evading a leopard; a lion makes any number of expert split-second decisions creeping up on a gazelle. Sometimes they will encounter something outside their experience and they will use their own powers of investigation, extrapolation, reasoning and ultimately decision-making in determining what to do next. It’s not rocket science, but it is life or death to them, and it’s more sophisticated than we give them credit for. Panic comes in when they find themselves trapped in some life-threatening situation, without a clue how to respond. At that point, none of their prior strategies are effective and doing something, anything, is better than doing nothing. So they thrash and they fight and they run, and they might survive.

It is not, however, a guarantee of survival. Panic might offer escape. It might drive an animal in a fire deeper into the fire. It might drive another off the edge of a cliff, or into an obstruction. The theory behind panic is that it’s a final-extremity response, a roll of the dice, a final gamble on random behavior. A relatively small number of animals who panic will survive to breed, and therefore possess an evolutionary advantage over animals that simply freeze up. But that does not mean that panic will always produce the most advantageous response. The premise that we might as well pick Donald Trump, because nothing else has worked – an outright lie to start with – is an ode to panic, the dart in a random direction because you don’t know what else to do. But panic is not the best way to choose great leaders. Panic results in countries picking demagogues and tyrants. Panic results in countries picking lunatics. Panic might result in this country picking a guy whose one undeniable skill is the marketing of his own name, and who otherwise appeals to ignorance and bigotry and anger and nothing else: a pre-ordained disaster, to use a word he favors instead of rational argument.

We could pick somebody other than a politician. We could pick any number of people with actual expertise in fields other than government. We could pick a scientist, for instance. We could pick an educator. We could pick an economist. I’d nominate great achievers in any of those fields over Donald Trump. But even so, the problem is that government happens to be a very specific process, a very difficult process, and while a businessman can say, ‘Do this or you’re fired,’ a politician has to get his ideas through a gauntlet of other human beings who would and will oppose him to their very last breath. As President, Donald Trump would find out among other things that he cannot get rid of the opposition just by calling them morons. He would also discover that he cannot buy his way out of every problem. He would discover, and you would discover, that in that position he would have no choice other than being a politician.

Saying that politicians just muck it up is a little like saying that doctors just muck it up because every terminal patient in the history of hospitals depended on them and ultimately lost everything. Saying that this is proof we need to try some other random thing is a little like saying that firemen sometimes fail to save buildings, and that we therefore need to dispatch pharmacists to the next five-alarmer. It’s inane. And also inane is advancing the argument, ‘We need to try SOMETHING different!’ as your key argument for your candidate.

That’s desperate, sir. That’s desperate and that’s empty and if that’s the best you have, you have nothing. The biggest danger is that you might win, and that if you do, the nation and the world will pay the price for your panic response. And it won’t be a price any of us can afford.”

That’s what I would have said, if I was being confronted by people capable of processing actual argument; but instead I just grimaced and bent to my work.

Tags: Assholes, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Life Wisdom, Politics | Category Commentary, Life Wisdom, Politics, Uncategorized