Countdown to calamity

 

There is a disturbance in the force. Today’s column will appear in mid-afternoon, after I’ve fully parsed the Leader’s purported pearls of wisdom.

But David Brooks, the center-right columnist, doesn’t need to hear Trump utter a single word. He already has the guy’s number:

“We’ve never had a major national leader as professionally unprepared, intellectually ill informed, morally compromised and temperamentally unfit as the man taking the oath…If the figure at the center can’t give consistent, clear and informed direction, the whole system goes haywire, with vicious infighting and creeping anarchy.”

But Brooks says we need not fear that Trump is a neo-fascist authoritarian. No, no. “The real fear in the Trump era should be that everything will become disorganized, chaotic, degenerate, clownish and incompetent.”

That’s all? I feel better already.