Why Do So Many Really Smart People Work for a Dumbass Like Trump?
Please Don't Feed the Whores, Part I:
Trump's fifth press secretary Kayleigh McEnany is a graduate of Georgetown University (B.A.), studied at Oxford, UK, and has a law degree from Harvard. She transferred to Harvard from Miami Law where she was in the top one percent of her class.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo graduated first in his class at West Point and later picked up a J.D. from Harvard Law.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper made the Dean's List at West Point, got a master's at Harvard and his Ph.D. from George Washington University.
National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien got his B.A. from U.C. Los Angeles and J.D. from Berkeley. He represented the U.S. at the United Nations and administered rule of law programs under Obama.
Former DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is a Georgetown grad and got her law degree from the University of Virginia.
There's enough brain power among these Trump officials to energize a small galaxy. Why then do these smart graduates of elite universities loyally serve the stupidest, most ignorant, and arguably insane, president ever to occupy the White House?
It's a question that's been gnawing at me since Trump took office. I mean I can fully understand why a dim academic fraud and Dr. Evil clone like Sebastian Gorka, pseudo-"economists" Richard Navarro and Larry Kudlow, and ardent falangists like William Barr and Matthew Whittaker gleefully cast themselves in the Springtime for Hitler sequel. Their lack of a conscience is more than made up for in an excess of megalomania combined with algolagnic obsessions. And the more political excrement their master hurls at them like a crazed baboon, the more scintillation they get. They are to intellectualism what Stormy Daniels is to great cinema.
Yes, history is replete with smart, hyper-ambitious men and women who whore themselves to power. Haldeman and Ehrlichman, Speer and Goering, Kirov and Molotov, Wolsey and Cromwell. Many don't end well, winding up imprisoned or executed. It's hard to say what precisely drives Trump's minions to unblinkingly repeat his brazen lies, insist up is down and down is up, enthusiastically defend the indefensible, such as caging children. One who fessed up, Michael Cohen, shed some light on how Trump manipulates underlings: "It would be no different than if I said: 'That’s the nicest-looking tie I’ve ever seen. Isn’t it?' What are you going to do? Are you going to fight with him? The answer is no. So you say, 'Yeah, it’s the nicest-looking tie I’ve ever seen.' That’s how he speaks."
Albert Speer was well educated and cultured, having grown up in an upper middle class household. So, why did he loyally serve an evil, thug-led regime? E. Jack Neuman, who produced a documentary on Speer, concluded: ''He knew exactly what he was doing, and he wasn't duped or anything else. He was a sinner by omission and commission, and he went wading right in. His problem wasn't blindness. It was blind ambition.''
That description partially captures Trump's highly intelligent lapdogs - but add: fear. They, like the GOP Senate castrati, shiver in Trump's presence, scared to death of being humiliated by tweet.
So, you have Axis Sally McEnany mouthing such ludicrous inanities as, "This president will always put America first. He will always protect American citizens. We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here. We will not see terrorism come here. And isn’t that refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President Obama?"
And Lord Haw Haw Pompeo spouting, "Whether it's freedom for the people of Hong Kong, human rights for the Royingya, all across the world, Donald Trump has understood that it's important to be a true beacon for freedom and liberty and human rights around the globe."
What makes these highly educated Trumpistas even more perplexing is that there really is no coherent Trump Doctrine for them to embrace. MAGA is merely a hodge-podge of regurgitated right-populist grievances. Trump's leadership is an amalgam of Juan Peron, Augusto Pinochet and Papa Doc Duvalier. There's no real ideology, no logical principles, no choate vision. The philosophical body of Trumpism comprises nothing more than grunts, sneers, lies and brain farts.
Lastly, what must be going through the rich minds of these people as they contemplate their lives post-Trump? Oh, sure, there will always be a home for them in the constellation of Koch-funded reactionary "think tanks," corporate boards and the bilge-recycler that calls itself "Fox News." Or, alternatively, a penitentiary with tennis courts. But they will be seen as pariahs and mere hacks in the polite society, if you will, of serious thinkers and analysts. Their reputations among the American people will always be stained. Future textbooks will not treat kindly their rancid performance as dancing bears for a gas bag of a president, one who brought us plague, depression and civil strife.
But, then again, it is said that we all have our price. Perhaps I am being too high-minded. Who's to say that any of us wouldn't make the same faustian bargains that McEnany, Esper, Pompeo, et al. have made? As P. J. O'Rourke noted, "Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are us."