Ezra Klein is both wise and oblivious

New York Times smart guy Ezra Klein (gift article) offers a political realist's assessment of the Trump shit show so far. He's mighty sanguine.

Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him. ...

... One likely outcome of this scheme is that a lot of talented people who work in nonpolitical jobs and could make more elsewhere take the lengthy vacation and leave government services in tatters. Twitter worked poorly after Musk’s takeover, with more frequent outages and bugs, but its outages are not a national scandal. When V.A. health care degrades, it is. To have sprung this attack on the civil service so loudly and publicly and brazenly is to be assured of the blame if anything goes wrong.

What Trump wants you to see in all this activity is command. What is really in all this activity is chaos. ... And so the opposition to Trump, which seemed so listless after the election, is beginning to rouse itself.

... The attempted spending freeze gave Democrats their voice back, as they zeroed in on the popular programs Trump had imperiled. Trump isn’t building support; he’s losing it. Trump isn’t fracturing his opposition; he’s uniting it. ...

He may believe he has the power he is claiming. That would be a mistake on his part — a self-deception that could doom his presidency. But the real threat is if he persuades the rest of us to believe he has power he does not have.

The first two weeks of Trump’s presidency have not shown his strength. He is trying to overwhelm you. He is trying to keep you off-balance. He is trying to persuade you of something that isn’t true. Don’t believe him.

Unfortunately, the victims of Trump's delusions of omnipotence can't be so relaxed about all this performative cruelty. Real people, our neighbors, are getting hurt so the toddler-in-chief and his assorted goons can get their jollies. Migrants, transpeople, loyal government workers. 

When I read articles like this assessing, and condemning, Trump's wrecking crew, I use my search function to see whether the writer has recognized the gratuitous pain being inflicted on transfolk, on those among us who are gender-nonconforming. I believe in standing with the least among us. And I find the search revealing. The writers who come up empty may be allies in the necessary big tent of opposition, but they are eliding the generous humanity which makes the driving moral force for a more compassionate and just America.

Klein may well be right that the structural constraints of an advanced democracy may limit Trump. Trump is high on his own supply. And though wily, he's kind of stupid as well as ignorant. We don't have to believe him. But we certainly can condemn the casual harm he inflicts on real people, on us all,  in service of his delusions.