He added: “And I know a lot about hacking. And hacking is a
very hard thing to prove. So it could be somebody else. And I also know
things that other people don’t know, and so they cannot be sure of the
situation.”
This is categorically false, and extremely super-duper stupid. Donald
Trump does not, in any universe currently accessible to the rest of
humanity, know "a lot" about hacking. Donald Trump knows zero about
hacking. Donald Trump famously does not use a computer. Donald Trump
knows that hacking is a very hard thing to prove—sometimes true—but
would be completely unable to name any one of the top dozen ways experts
can indeed identify the originators of individual hacking attempts. You
may have also noticed over the years that the NSA appears to have their
thumb on major elements of both individual networks and the internet
backbone itself—the legality of those programs being a hotly debated
topic—and, if you keep up on these things, probably are aware of the
resources the various agencies can bring to bear to crack even many
types of so-called "secure" communications, if the need arises.
Donald Trump does not know any of these things. Donald Trump could
not himself successfully log into a gmail account without the help of a
staff member. Donald Trump
believes he knows "a lot" about hacking, and while actual knowledge in the field is unnecessary for office a sitting president must
at the very least
have the cognitive faculties to know what he does not know, and Donald
Trump does not. Donald Trump has a mental condition that causes him to
believe he knows more about any topic you can name than any expert you
can produce,
if he is deeply invested in what the answer is
supposed to be, and Donald Freaking Trump is unfit for governance so
long as that mental condition exists.
Mr. Trump, who does not use email, also advised people to
avoid computers when dealing with delicate material. “It’s very
important, if you have something really important, write it out and have
it delivered by courier, the old-fashioned way, because I’ll tell you
what, no computer is safe,” Mr. Trump said.
Osama Bin Laden is dead today because agents intercepted one of his
"courier" shipments. While Scrooge McDuck here is probably quite certain
his own courier shipments are safe, I hope to high hell that three
weeks from now does not begin with an executive order to all the
nation's government officials to from now on deliver all sensitive
information to each other by bicycle messenger or a fleet of sturdy
owls.
“I don’t care what they say, no computer is safe,” he added.
“I have a boy who’s 10 years old; he can do anything with a computer.
You want something to really go without detection, write it out and have
it sent by courier.”
And here we get to the heart of it, the part that I probably should
have put right up front because there are a lot of apathetic people in
America today whose commitment to functional governance can't stomach a
trip through a dozen short paragraphs before getting to the point. Here
we get to the part that ought to make any even half-patriotic soul
blanche, or perhaps dry heave.
Donald Trump, who does not himself use a computer or any technology
more advanced than his greasy little phone, is basing his own executive
veto over the nation's assembled government experts in matters of
"hacking" and "national goddamn security":
On the computer expertise of his ten year old son.
On Barron.
Being able to use a computer.
Which therefore makes Barron's opinions on hacking, the implication
clearly goes, the equal of the entire collected expertise of every major
government intelligence agency put together, all the hackers and spooks
and supercomputers and hidden routers and security analysts and
[everything else combined], and on that hill Donald Trump will hoist his
flag, hitch up his pants, summon whichever reporters have staked out
his Florida club and declare
yes, but Barron.
This is where we're at. The soon to be president is more invested in
taking national security advice from his elementary school child than in
all the arrayed security voices of the nation ...
... combined.
So, we realize that is insane, right? That this is not a case of mere
disagreement, but evidence of an actual mental malfunction? That this
very rich but very stupid man is, in fact, incapable of critical
decision making because he
cannot even himself discern what constitutes evidence?
The comments on Saturday were a departure from a statement
that Mr. Trump issued through transition officials last week, in which
he said that it was time for people to “move on” from the hacking issue
but that he would be briefed on the matter by intelligence officials
early in the new year.
It's not a departure. It's the pattern we have been seeing since the
first days of his campaign. He says a thing. A day or two passes, he
says a completely contrary thing. A day or two passes again, he may say
either of the first two things
or pop up with a third. It is
not based on new evidence. It is seemingly not even based on a
willingness to lie; a congenital liar of otherwise non-impaired
faculties would
at the goddamn least be able to lie consistently from one day to the next.
This man can't, and he can't because, the evidence consistently
suggests, he lacks the cognitive awareness to even know whether he's
being dishonest. He doesn't believe the collected intelligence agencies
of the United States haven't tracked down the election hackers merely
because he doesn't
want that to be true, he has constructed a
version of not-reality in which all those experts combined are wrong,
wrong, wrong because he has a son, Barron, and Barron has a computer of
his own and is therefore an expert of equal expertise and so Barron
Freaking Trump.
Will be directly responsible.
For determining.
Our national security policies, at least when it comes to "the cyber", for the entire.
Damn.
Nation.
So here's the question, and it's a question for all of the people out
there who have made either governance or the tracking of governance
into careers of their own, the elected politicians, the government
functionaries, the party hacks, the omnipresent pundits and
think-tankers, the political journalists, the non-political journalists,
and so forth:
Are we just not going to talk about this? Are we really going to
sally forth, on this January 1st, 2017, continuing to simply ignore the
rather plain reality that the man who is about to be sitting in the Oval
Office is manifestly unfit for the task of governance? As in, he
literally, cognitively
cannot do it—that it is going to be akin
to asking a Magic 8-Ball or a particularly ill-trained chicken to set
national policies, and make the decisions of war or peace, and meet with
foreign leaders, and give presidential proclamations?
Yes, he won the election. Yes, it's a real stinker that he did, and
if any one of twenty different things didn't happen he wouldn't have—but
he did. And now he's going to be president, in just three weeks. And
there cannot possibly be, in either party or in any realm of journalism
not currently occupied by foot-chewers themselves, any question that
this man is not prepared or even cognitively capable of doing that job.
So what happens now? We're just going with that, right?
We're not going to bring it up? Too rude? Too unsettling? Too “partisan?” Too
not-normal?
Is this going to be like the Iraq War, where a few years from now
everybody is dabbing their brows with handkerchiefs and talking about
how golly, if only anyone among us could have foreseen the gigantic
clusterfuck awaiting us even though in the rude circles of the internet
and in massive protests on the street,
everybody who was not personally invited to the White House Correspondents Dinner goddamn foresaw it right from the beginning?
All right, fine. If that's how it's going to be, that's how it's
going to be. But let's punch our own ticket right now, get on the train,
and at least fetch ourselves a comfortable seat before the inevitable
rush: This man is unambiguously unfit for office. He is incapable of
performing those duties. It is, among anyone with the slightest bit of
faith in their fellow man
or anyone with the slightest bit of awareness as to which of those fellow man are not entirely worth that faith, obvious.
Until striding behind a podium eighteen months ago there is no way
Donald Trump, narcissistic blowhard, insatiable liar, likely
sociopath and man distrusted even by his own company lawyers would have
been judged competent enough for the lowest of government security
clearances—now he'll be getting the nuclear football itself. A merely
incompetent outcome, as opposed to a corrupt or a manifestly deranged or
catastrophically dangerous one, is the best case we can possibly hope
for.
And we're all apparently deeply devoted to not talking about it because it would be … uncouth?
