Trump, damn his name is, of course, famous for lying about how wealthy he is so it’s likely that he’s nowhere near as wealthy as the possibly-mythical Croesus.
But he’s definitely dumber.
The story, from Herodotus so probably invented to make a point instead of even intending to be a factual account, goes that Croesus of Lydia was considering a preemptive strike against Persia.
Like you do, if you’re a bronze-age despot with a case of the nerves about how powerful the neighbors are getting.
He asks the Oracle if he should do that, and the Oracle responds with something along the lines of:
If Croesus makes war on the Persians, he will destroy a mighty empire.
And so he did, and that’s exactly what happened: he destroyed a great empire.
His.
The point here being that you should pay close attention to he actual words being used, because they may not mean what you think they mean.
So, Croesus was warned but he went ahead and foolishly attacked Persia anyway and got exactly what he was told he’d get.
This story has some surprisingly precise parallels to the current day.
Trump, damn his name is a modern day despot with aspirations of greater things, a following made-up mostly of bronze-age religious fanatics and a serious case of anxiety that folks might think other despots’ power bases might be bigger than his.
It’s not likely that he actually asked anyone who’d know before he launched his own attack on Persia, being quite certain in his own “very good brain”, but it was obvious that he was gearing up for it so many experts did weigh in publicly that this was a bad idea, for very specific reasons all of which have been proved correct so far.
Trump, damn his name was warned but he went ahead and foolishly attacked Persia anyway and is getting exactly what he was told he’d get.
Which is pretty much exactly what Croessus got.
The difference here, though, is that Croessus’ warning was tricksy and intentionally cryptic which is kinda the point of his story.
Trump, damn his name‘s warning was not that.
He was told in advance that he’d be screwing things up for pretty much everyone except China, and that Iran would certainly not be the pushover that Israel and Saudi Arabia were trying to convince him it would be.
And he did it anyway, ’cause he’s desperate to be seen as having “bigness”.
Croessus was tricked, but Trump, damn his name did this with every relevant expert in the world trying to warn him of how badly it would go.
He is, as history will record, the dumbest person by far to have held the Presidency.
And it is a crushing indictment of the United States’ constitutional order that he’s been able to take and use the Presidency this way with no formal opposition at all.
