Monday, March 6, 2017

Curiously Incurious

One of the things I just don't get about Trump is his total lack of curiosity.  I may be coming at this from a bad perspective since I am a deeply curious person.  I always want to get to the end of a mystery novel quickly, I always want to know more about stuff, I got a Phd precisely because professing gives me the chance to pursue my curiosity to wherever it leads me (so far, to many interesting places and to many interesting questions).

So, when we hear that Trump does not want the usual daily intelligence briefing, it blows my mind. In my year in the Pentagon, every morning, the daily intel packet (a few glossy pages on various developments around the world) was something that we all sought out and made sure we read, even as nearly all of it was irrelevant to the Balkans, my branch.

To refuse to get the latest scoop on what is happening around the world, to be deliberately less well-informed when one has the most exclusive access to the output of the many US intel agencies is just unfathomable to me.  This is one of the big perqs of being President--to be able to ask any question and get an answer, to be more well informed than anyone else in any room.  You would think an egomaniacal narcissist would want that.

So, I remain flummoxed.  Oh, and full of contempt.

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