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Photo Illustration by Naila Ruechel for The New York Times.Credit…Photo Illustration by Naila Ruechel for The New York Times
To the Editor:
Re “Trump’s Strength Is His Greatest Weakness,” by David Brooks (column, April 25):
Mr. Brooks is overthinking again. In his column, he praises President Trump’s energy, and implicitly compares him to the military grand strategists Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz.
A more apt comparison for Mr. Trump’s behavior in his first 100 days as president this term would be with players of violent video games, in which the challenge is simply to slaughter as many opponents as possible as quickly as possible.
It’s you against the enemy. No gray area. Shoot instantly and move on. Otherwise, you are destroyed, and the game is over.
Mr. Trump’s unprecedented onslaught against so many opponents does not result from something he possesses but from something he lacks: a conscience, which is superfluous to video game warfare.
From this perspective, Mr. Trump’s supposedly astounding “energy” is unremarkable. Many of us could have done the same — if we lacked a conscience, if we did not debate whether or not it was actually in the best interests of our nation to undermine the power of the judiciary, to encourage tyranny abroad or to endanger the health of the world economy.
Mr. Trump’s singular accomplishment is not “verve,” as Mr. Brooks puts it, but the utter absence of a moral compass.
