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Opinion | It Isn’t Just Trump. America’s Whole Reputation Is Shot.
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
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This is a well written piece full of astute observations. I have a problem with one point, though:
It's not the difference between "hard" and "soft" that matters here, it's the difference between "simple" and "complex". Trump, in every conceivable way, is a simple man, and his followers find that one of his most attractive traits. He, like them, neither understands nor accepts complexity and that informs his world-view and actions.
These are not mutually exclusive preferences, they can easily coexist in a single person. I think you're both correct, basically.
We could even examine if simplicity vs complexity have any coding as "hard" or "soft", if we wished. Say, a piece of equipment breaks, do I bust out technical sheets, troubleshoot what went wrong and replace a broken component, or do I whack the whole thing with a wrench? I would argue that the simpler option of intentionally failing to understand and whacking it with a wrench codes as "harder" than the alternative, due to stubbornness and unwillingness to learn/change being a component of our cultural understanding of "hard" in America.