What time is it? What day is it? Are we tariffing Canada and Mexico, or not?
I’m not the only one confused. Think of all those stock market mavens, who don’t know whether to buy or sell.
Trump, the great yo-yo, imposes tariffs on our neighbors, then delays them, then announces they’re coming, and then puts them off for a month or so. Are cars going to be tariffed, or exempt? What’s today’s date?
All this would be comical except there’s a truly dark side to this yes-maybe-no scenario. One would say that Trump has learned this behavior from a tyrant’s handbook, but we all know that Trump doesn’t read anything (and probably never has).
But somehow he has sussed out one major weapon in a tyrant’s armory. He has learned that tyrants must keep the populace and, more importantly, his courtiers off balance. Whereas in a non-tyrannical state there are laws, rules, and regulations that guide the actions of the state, in a tyranny only the whim of the tyrant is law. And if the tyrant is canny, he will exercise his whim at random to wrongfoot the general population, but, more importantly, to keep his courtiers (his ass kissers, in other words) from presuming that, being close to power, they might someday take power. The danger for those courtiers is that being on the right side of the tyrant’s whim today, might lead to the gulag (or worse) when the tyrant changes his mind, his whim, his policy tomorrow.
The artful (or lucky) courtiers who bob when the tyrant bobs and weaves when the tyrant weaves can keep it up for only so long. There are no guidelines to follow, no rehearsed dance steps to trace, and no way to predict tomorrow.
The next time you are summoned to the palace it could be to receive a medal—or a bullet.
