Trump's 3-D Chess

I am rooting for Donald Trump.  In fact, I have been rooting for him since he got elected.  Don't mistake rooting for liking.  I don't.  I never have and the reasons are many.  I think Trump is a egomaniac, self-absorbed (redundant, I know but his level is cause for redundancy), immoral, an awful human, a liar, a phony, and almost any other negative adjective (just one side note, I also think the MSM is awful, immoral, lacks integrity, arrogant, etc...).  On top of that, I never viewed him as a conservative and I am not talking about some rigid litmus purity test.  I am just talking about the general ideological broad strokes.  Heck, I am not sure he could articulate a coherent ideology beyond boiler plate platitudes.  The one aspect I find amusing and attractive of Trump is how angry and irrational he makes the Left. But back to my point, I am rooting for Trump.  Not in the wearing a MAGA hat and needing to get my daily rationalization from Rush and Hannity type of rooting.  I am rooting for him to be what so many Trump supporters claim that he is...I just can't see it.  I would like to think he is playing 3-D chess and running circles around his opponents in the media and on the Left.  I would like to think his Twitter account is involved in the strategic long game.  But I don't.  And, I might add, I hope I am wrong.  

But rooting for Donald Trump feels like a losing endeavor, and more and more, I get the feeling that he will be actually losing in 2020.  The pandemic has put Donald Trump front and center in ways that most politicians dream of.  The chance to fight against an enemy in a bipartisan manner, to capitalize on the emotion of the moment, to get an opportunity to lead in a historically major event doesn't happen often, especially in an election year.  But Donald just can't get out of his own way and not say something that is either absurd, half-witted, or just plain stupid. Joe Biden, who is also known to say equally ridiculous things,  is often a side note, barley mentioned, rarely discussed Democratic challenger.  This should be a land slide victory.  A couple of months ago, I thought it would be just that.  Now, I think Joe has better odds.

Back to Trump and 3-D chess...The problem with the 3-D chess analogy are many.  The term 3-D chess implies that person is making maneuvers and calculations that are so complex and strategic that everyone else doesn't understand them.  But if you are the only one playing that game and never get back to playing the game everyone else is playing, are you really that smart?  Eventually, you are going to have to make actual moves on the actual chess board that are going to determine the outcome following the rules of the game.  Now, one could play chess in a highly unorthodox manner to either confuse their opponent or get their opponent to get an inflated sense of security and make poorly calculated moves.  This can be an effective strategy in the short term, but often can lead to defeat in the long term.  I recall a story of friend who lost a round in a poker tournament as a result of a novice playing in that round.  He remarked that she was "not playing correctly" and it threw him off in a way that cost him.  She abruptly lost the next round, because she didn't know what she was doing and the others began to understand that.  It's like trick plays in football, they work form time to time, but no team will be successful if their whole offense consisted entirely of triple-reverse-option passes.  If Trump is engaging in highly complex and strategic moves, he needs these moves to end up on the chess board, otherwise he is just playing a game by himself in another dimension that will result in the loss of the actual game being played by all. 

Sadly, the game Trump is playing, is an ex post facto interpretation of what comes out of his mouth or his Twitter account.  Often this interpretation is from his sycophants who must be tired of trying to spin all of Trump's comments into a narrative of Grand Master 3-D chess play, when no one knows what the hell that means or how to play...But I hope I am wrong and will keep rooting for Trump to finally show that he has a strategic plan and will result in something good for America.  Otherwise, we are going to be stuck with a semi-senile, hair sniffing, vacuous, coat-tail riding, president from the great state of Delaware who is really good at playing tiddlywinks.


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