Imagination needs to be more imaginative

My daughter was in a minor traffic accident recently.  On a busy street, a car in the far right lane (she was in the far left) decided to make a u-turn, and did so.  The driver turned left across all lanes, heading for the traffic traveling in the opposite direction, which is where she decided she wanted to be.  She struck the car my daughter was driving on the right rear wheel and fender.

When the police arrived, my daughter explained the accident to the officer.  It took her four repetitions of the story before he finally understood it.  He kept trying to make it sensible, or logical, rather than the bizarre truth.  He kept trying to re-tell it in a way that made more sense than the truth. The other driver abruptly turned left across three lanes of oncoming traffic to get into the lanes moving in the opposite direction, and she did it with no signal and no warning and as if she was the only car on the road.  The officer kept trying to make her action seem more sensible, because his imagination and experience would not allow that a driver could be, quite simply, that stupid and reckless.

The application of that story to today's news should be rather obvious, because I admire Fred Kaplan, but really, what was your first clue?

One implication of this head-spinning tale is that Trump has not even remotely begun to make the transition from real-estate magnate to statesman.

"Implication" is the approved Objective Journalism-speak for "the undeniable truth revealed here."  It's not an implication (and who is making that implication?  And how is it arrived at?  And what is behind the implications of calling it an "implication"?), it's staring the world in the face and gibbering like a loon!  It's wearing a clown hat and smashing plates while singing a tuneless song, like a Month Python looney.  If there's an "implication" in Trump cancelling his trip to Denmark because he doesn't like the way the PM of Denmark refused him, then what is the "implication" of the President declaring he would suspend the Constitution by fiat (well, except for the 2nd Amendment; that's holy writ) and warning Germany and France and "Europe" he would return ISIS fighters to them whether they like it or not!

There is no "implication" in those statements.  There is only sheer lunacy, or the baldest ignorance displayed by a man who, quelle surprise, has yet to even remotely being to make the transition from New York boob to President of the United States.  The only change in Donald Trump in three years is that there has been no change, and yet still our imaginations and experience still can't quite seem to believe the evidence of our own eyes.  No one is reporting this accident to us; it's been happening before our eyes since he took his hand off that Bible.

But how do you ignore it this long, or finally find the ability to say "something just may be wrong here"?

But Trump is not like most presidents. He has no feel for, or interest in, diplomacy. This is another lesson of this absurd tale that reveals—or rather, confirms—Trump’s lack of talent at his current job.

No shit, Sherlock!  Again, what was your first clue?  His insults to NATO, his friendship with Putin and Kim, his demands NATO pay up or die, his threats to abandon NATO altogether, all while asking Putin if he could bring him another bottle of vodka?  Maybe it was his shredding of the TPP which might actually have reined in China's bad trade habits, and then making those practices worse by imposing tariffs on U.S. consumers, all the while declaring against all evidence and understanding that the tariffs paid represented money coming to the U.S. from China?  The world is, three years on, a tinderbox and Trump keeps striking matches and you think Trump might "lack...talent at his current job"?  Gee, d'ya think?

It was unimaginable before Trump that U.S.-Danish relations could get icy. But many things were unimaginable before Trump, and the intensification of America’s isolation in the world, to this degree, is one of them. 

Yes, but do you seriously think this is the worst he's done?  A lot of things that were unimaginable three years ago have already come to pass.  If you're just now catching up to the unimaginable, you need to reconsider the limits of your imagination.  Reality is outstripping it on all fronts.