A Not So Mad “Mad Dog”
When asked what was the biggest problem facing America, retired Marine Corps General James Mattis who now heads the Department of Defense didn’t say ISIS, Al Qaeda, Iran, or Iraq. Instead he said —
“The lack of political unity in America. The lack of a fundamental friendliness. It seems like an awful lot of people in America and around the world feel spiritually and personally alienated, whether it be from organized religion or from local community school districts or from their governments.”
(DISCLAIMER: This is an article I originally wrote after the appointment of Mattis. I thought it was worth repeating because of the present situation.)
The unusually thoughtful response (for a Trump administration official) came in an article by Dexter Filkins in The New Yorker. Like all New Yorker articles it is wwwaaaayyyy long, but it provides some interesting insights into his psyche and maybe some hope for rational decision-making in an otherwise irrational administration.
In the interest of balance, it should be noted that this is the same Secretary of Defense who, when asked in an interview on Face The Nation, what kept him up at night, replied: “Nothing. I keep other people awake at night.”
It’s that kind of comments as well as some tough actions, as noted in The New Yorker article, that earned him the nickname “Mad Dog.” A nickname he reportedly doesn’t like, but a nickname which, reportedly, also was a deciding factor in Trump’s decision to appoint him Secretary of Defense.
(A sidenote: It probably says something that the ‘keep other people awake’ comment got the most shares and likes on Breitbart and RT (Russian Television) news, although also on Buzzfeed News.) That’s according to research tracking service Kaleida.
In the context of other Trump administration appointees though, the Mattis appointment provides some hope as well as raising one question that many of us wonder about:- Why would anyone agree to work with this somewhat neurotic, borderline psychotic ‘fake president’?
In some cases it’s because they share the same set of philosophical neuroses and psychoses.
— Scott Pruitt who was named to head the Environmental Protection Agency even though he has sued the agency he now heads a dozen times and says carbon dioxide is not a primary contributing factor to climate change, despite his own agency saying that as well as NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration.
— Mick Mulvaney who heads the Office of Management and Budget even though he supported the “shutdown caucus” because he didn’t want to raise the national debt and has now proposed a federal budget that slashesu food stamps, Medicaid, Social Security disability while increasing military spending, all the while arguing that the budget will be balanced because of a projected 3% growth in Gross Domestic Product. Whether that will happen is debatable.
((Lastly let me add a footnote. Here is the latest update from The New York Times on Mr. Trump’s various appointments.
Here’s the shorthand summary. Trump has had three times the turnover in his first two years compared to Clinton’s first two years, four times the turnover compared to Obama, and nine times that of George W. Bush. And even those numbers don’t provide a total picture, considering the number of indictments and guilty pleas associated with key members of the Trump administration.))
