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Torillian on 25 April 2020
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EricHiggin said:
Torillian said:

Been thinking a bit about the latest Trump defense: basically that he's just asking questions so it's no be deal. The issue I have with that is that Trump has set up his administration in such a way that he can't be told he's asking a stupid question. If someone is in a biology class and they ask the teacher "why can't we use things like bleach to cure disease since it gets rid of viruses on surfaces?" then the teacher can explain why that wouldn't work and the faulty reasoning behind the suggestion. Instead in this case you have the president asking his administration and his administration just going "yeah we'll look into that sir". I wouldn't mind the question if the response was "oh no that won't work because bleach doesn't discriminate between human and virus in how it kills things so that would be too harmful to the host". That would be alright because you ask a dumb question and you get an immediate answer for why it won't work. Instead you have a stupid question that's left hanging, and that gives the idea legitimacy to those who don't know better which is what leads to dangerous situations and misunderstandings.

An immediate concrete answer would have been best. It would also be nice if the world was nothing but immediate concrete answers to all questions for everyone. Maybe everyone should write down or record every question that comes to mind and hope when they eventually ask it that's it's widely agreed upon to be the right way at the right time. That's not how the world works though in reality, unfortunately.

This isn't about an ideal world where there are always experts around that can give concrete answers to dumb questions. The people that have the concrete answers were there, they just didn't want to annoy the baby-in-chief. And when the dumb question is being broadcast to the entire country that's not good. From what I've read Trump is now saying he was being sarcastic (or at least the administration is) and based on how he ran out before questions during yesterday's press briefing it doesn't seem like he wants to clear up any misunderstandings. So again this all fits with the model I have:

1. Trump is dumb and he gets easily annoyed when told he said something dumb.

2. Trump has been vindictive in the past with his firings so those around him don't want to speak up even when he says something mind numbingly stupid. 



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