Trump makes surprise Christmas visit to troops in Iraq in first trip to combat zone

[Dill]

(12-28-2018, 05:09 PM)Beaker Wrote: He is an idiot. But I still dont assume to know his motives.

Strictly speaking, no one can absolutely "know" anyone's motives. We can only assume.  But it's not like all assumptions are equal, or equally grounded.

In some contexts there is little motive for assuming anything.  Why is the guy at the supermarket checkout working that job--to make money, because he loves the work, or to make the world a better place?  There are grounds for assuming some motives more likely than others, but little motive to expend the energy to think through the question, so long as his work is ok for me.

In other contexts, assumptions about motives are important because 1) we have to make them to earn a living, and 2) wrong assumptions have consequences for us. E.g., I have a rental unit and I do make assumptions about who is likely to make a good or bad tenant.  I am better at this than my wife; I tend to get the Asian graduate student who pays on time and doesn't break furniture because she is motivated to get a college degree and doesn't want trouble; my wife tends to get drug addict who is "nice" when interviewed but isn't motivated to work and keep up payments, and so falls behind two months in rent and disappears with the toaster we loaned her.  As time goes by, feedback from experience of previous tenants grounds new assumptions about new applicants. My assumptions have gotten more reliable over time.

Same for politicians. It's not about "really" knowing their motives. It's about empirical observation: looking at their words and behavior and making grounded assumptions about their character and behavior. Thus, unless one is flipping a coin or simply voting for party, everyone who votes for a candidate makes assumptions about motives, and that does not stop after election.  The majority of threads in this forum are about whether the current "tenant" of the White House is more like the graduate student who will eventually want a reference or the 18-year-old living away from home the first time who trashes the carpet.

It is certainly possible that Trump was suddenly inspired to visit Troops in the Middle East because he thought, "Darn it, those guys put their lives on the line for us. This goes far beyond just working for profit; I want to show them, as Chief Exec and Commander-in-Chief, that I and all Americans appreciate what they do. Damn the polls and critics."  But this train of thought would be difficult to reconcile with Trump's other judgments about the inadequacy of POWs, his disdain for professional military advice, apparent lack of awareness of the consequences of moving troops around the globe on a whim, constant reference to his popularity vis-a-vis Obama, and sneers about "presidential" bearing.