Seeing Around Corners

I know there are a lot of people—including many who formerly supported President Trump, and others who are simply getting a little wobbly—who find his posture toward Greenland, NATO, Ukraine, and Iran distasteful at best and insane at worst. I’m not talking about the left, of course. They planted their flag in the “insane” camp the day he rode down the Golden Escalator in 2015.

Before you write him off completely, though, consider something.

Throughout history there have always been two kinds of people. Those who let events happen to them, and those who attempt to shape events before those events shape them. Nobody controls everything. The enemy always gets a vote, markets have minds of their own, and unintended consequences never take a vacation.

But some people understand that while they cannot dictate outcomes, they can often change the direction in which those outcomes are headed.

Those people also tend to see farther down the road than everyone else because the worlds they inhabit move faster than ours. That often leads those who can’t see past the end of their own noses to conclude that anyone who can must either be crazy or evil.

They are neither.

They simply recognize patterns.

Once patterns establish themselves, they become surprisingly predictable. You may never know exactly where the road ends or precisely when you’ll arrive, but you can often tell whether you’re headed toward prosperity or disaster. The people who recognize those patterns are usually willing to disrupt the comfortable present to improve the future. That almost never produces a smooth ride. Every battle plan collides with reality. Every course correction carries risk. Success or failure is only obvious in the rearview mirror.

Most people hate that kind of uncertainty.

The masses crave consistency, predictability, and a neatly labeled roadmap, even if that warm and fuzzy roadmap eventually leads straight to Hell. They assume today’s conditions are permanent because they’re today’s conditions. They forget that history is little more than one long series of people insisting things would never change… right before they did.

History is full of men and women who ran afoul of the guardians of the status quo. Kings, governments, churches, mobs, and entire societies have persecuted people who simply saw several moves ahead of everyone else.

Elon Musk is one of those people.

That’s why the Status Quo’ers hate him.

He doesn’t merely want to go to Mars. He understands that if you want to reach Mars, you have to set your sights beyond Mars. When the science, engineering, manufacturing processes, or machines he needs don’t exist, he builds them. His career has largely consisted of creating technologies that supposedly couldn’t be created, redesigning industries everyone assumed were mature, and repeatedly attempting things experts declared impossible.

Yet, sometimes his rockets explode.

But undeterred, he just studies why, changes the design, and launches another one.

I think Donald Trump approaches geopolitics the same way.

Yes, tariffs impose real domestic costs. They also forced countries that had grown comfortable with decades of one-sided trade relationships back to the negotiating table and in the process, changing the trade landscape for the next century.

Yes, he put enormous strain on NATO. Recognizing politesse had failed, Trump took a cattle prod to a smugly comfortable alliance of chronic under-spenders, forcing them into taking their own defense obligations more seriously.

Yes, striking Iran carried enormous risk. So did negotiating. So did doing nothing. Every option carried risk. The question was never whether there would be danger, the question was which danger would prove greater over time. If you genuinely believe the Iranian regime seeks nuclear capability while openly embracing an apocalyptic ideology, accepting short-term risk to reduce a potentially catastrophic long-term one becomes easier to justify.

Risk is simply part of life.

Walking out your front door every morning carries risk. Driving to work carries risk. So does investing, marriage, raising children carries risk. Life is inherently risky. We don’t eliminate risk; we weigh it against the likely alternatives and choose the path that appears least dangerous over the long run. Sometimes we’re right, sometimes not.

So, maybe I’m wrong. I know it is a shocking admission, but I’ve been wrong before. If you are interested in how many times and what I have been wrong about, call my wife. She keeps a daily updated spreadsheet.

Trump may indeed be everything his critics say he is. Then again, judging by the quality of many of those critics, the very people who have spent years defending failed policies because they were familiar, comfortable, and politically fashionable, I am reluctant to outsource my judgment to them.

The world I live in today bears little resemblance to the one I entered when I cast my first presidential vote for Ronald Wilson Reagan nearly half a century ago. It is different in magnificent ways and horrifying ones. We communicate differently, conduct business differently, fight wars differently, and even think differently.

That’s what time does.

Most people simply adapt without noticing. A precious few occasionally catch a glimpse of the larger current carrying everyone downstream.

I don’t pretend to know where Donald Trump ultimately belongs in history. None of us can know that while we’re living through it.

Time will render that verdict.

If history teaches anything, it is that the loudest defenders of the comfortable status quo are remarkably poor at recognizing transformational leadership while it is happening. For that reason alone, I think history has a better-than-even chance of being kinder to Donald Trump than many of his contemporaries ever will be.

Just something to consider.