But also – and this is where it goes from infuriating to downight tear-my-hair-out maddening – willfully ignorant. He’s surrounded by flunkies who can and often do try to give him briefs on the things he’s about to talk about, countries he’s about to visit, etc. Every president has done so, because they don’t want to look like absolute batshit-crazy morons.
Unfortunately, being an absolute batshit-crazy moron has never once prevented him from getting what he wants, so why change?
Remember when we used to see the wild-eyed, loose-lipped leaders of other countries and laugh, “Oh silly (insert country here), you so crazy!”
In case anyone is wondering where the “Great” bit is from, it’s actually from the French.
You see, the top left bit of France is called Brittany, or in French, Bretagne, which is actually the same name they use for Britain (because Brittany and the UK are both full of people who spoke weird Celtic languages and fought the French, and both places have terrible weather).
So, from there it was a small jump to calling Brittany ‘Petit Bretagne’, and the UK ‘Grande Bretagne’, which us Brits translated to ‘Great Britain’, and kept.
So, if trump wants to “make America great”, he needs to find some other country to invade , and rename it to little-America, which by default would result in the mainland US being called ‘Great America’.
“British Isles” is extremely contentious phrase and use of it in some places will cause great offence to many.
As phase historically only used to put the Irish “in their place”, unless offence is intended, just call the islands by their names “Britain and Ireland”.
I remember the times when I would facepalm every time George W Bush opened his mouth. I remember how long ago I read many think pieces about W’s fraught and difficult relationship with the English language.
I think it’s part of an ingenious plan concocted by Blackadder to safeguard UK from war:
King: " We need to declare war on England"
Advisor 1: " Are you sure you mean England, Sire. Shouldn’t we declare war on the United Kingdom"
Advisor 2: “No, we need to declare war on the Crown”
King: "Never mind, let’s invade France.
As far as I can tell he’s only barely literate. Listening to him read prepared statements is painful. I don’t think this is stupidity at work. I think it’s ignorance. Sure, he’s stupid, but he’s ignorant too.
“Willful ignorance” implies someone who refuses to make any effort to inform themselves on a topic, but this almost rises to a level of ignorance that requires constant, vigilant effort to maintain. People HAVE explained the difference between England and the UK to him, he just refuses to let that information enter his consciousness.
It’s actually impressive in its own way, like watching some Zen master clear his mind of unwanted thoughts.
trump feels eventually everyone will think in terms the same as he does. In his mind, in time, everyone else will also have no idea the differences between England, Great Britain and the UK. Idiocracy, we are there.
He used to be a lot smarter and more eloquent than he is now (check out the vintage 80’s interview in the linked article). Reagan developed dementia near the end of his term in office (and everyone worked very hard to cover it up). But with Trump, the brain worms finished their work years ago, and now we have a demented narcissist with access to the nuclear launch codes.
My standard line on this topic is that calling someone ignorant “stupid” is like calling a car with an empty tank “slow”. It may well be, but you’ll never know till you fill it.
