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Anne Applebaum is one of my favorite columnists — she combines an international viewpoint with a ▶Wayne Jarvis-level disdain for nonsense. She’s smart, though possibly *too *smart, as shown by her recent struggle to grasp the machinations of the dog food-stuffed condom that we call Donald Trump’s “brain”.
I say this because of one passage in an otherwise excellent article about Trump’s recent moves supporting Russia over Ukraine. Applebaum notes several things that Trump has done to favor Russia, some of them related to Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries. The simplest explanation is that Trump wants cheap gas for election day, or that he at least wants voters to blame high prices on something other than the war in Iran. But Applebaum dismisses that reasoning on the grounds that it doesn’t make sense:
The president has implied that the point of his new policy is to lower fuel prices for Americans. Perhaps he wants to convince voters that the cause of high prices is Ukraine and not his own war of choice in Iran. But this is not a sufficient explanation or justification for these dramatic actions. The amount of fuel that Russia could export is too small, the impact on pricing too slight, the narrative too late to shape electoral outcomes.
I strongly disagree that this is “not a sufficient explanation or justification” for Trump’s actions. It might not be sufficient for someone whose brain is not a big ball of Band-Aids and hair wadded together, but we’re talking about Trump here*. *And since we’re stuck with Trump for two more years, I think it’s important that we understand how he operates. Which I think means internalizing a theory that I will crudely — but defensibly1 — dub “Occam’s retard”.
Occam's razor is the principle that when presented with a phenomenon that has multiple explanations, the simplest explanation is the most likely one. Occam’s retard is the principle that when presented with a Trump action that has multiple explanations, the dumbest explanation is the most likely one. I think we innately resist this way of thinking, because it’s scary to consider that huge decisions are being made based on the mix of rage, horniness, and acid reflux that drives Trump’s impulses.
But the evidence for the theory keeps mounting. Trump’s tariff policy is driven by the belief that running a trade deficit means you’re “losing”. His crusade against mail-in voting is driven by lies. We’re fighting a war against Iran because Trump thought that killing the Ayatollah was like catching the golden snitch in quidditch. Any of these policies would change if Trump knew anything about anything at all, but he doesn’t, so they don’t, and history stumbles forward.
Plus, someone may have shown Trump this chart:
Applebaum is right to highlight Trump’s financial ties to Russia. Our two lead negotiators in Ukraine may soon acquire a financial stake in a Russian oil company — that’s a conflict of interest visible from space. And that is only one minor subplot in the vast Trump Corruption Universe, which now has more characters and spin-offs than Star Wars. Applebaum may well be correct that the six-to-ten Teapot Dome-level scandals that Trump has going in Russia are influencing his actions.
But we can’t discount the simple “me make low gas prices happen” just because it makes no fucking sense. It makes no sense to us, people who can look at realities of scale and time and deduce cause and effect. But Trump is Occam’s retard — his actions respond to *his *processes. And yes, that’s scary, but in order to better understand the world, we need to accept it as true.
As I wrote a while back: I have reintroduced the word “retard” to my lexicon because it has a literal and a non-literal use, exactly like the words “moron”, “idiot”. I use the non-literal meaning.
