Trump’s Battleships . . .

You’ve probably heard Trump talk about his “golden” fleet of new “battleships.” He says they will be “the largest battleship[s] in the history of the world ever built” . . . [they] would be made in the United States with US steel . . . We’re going to restore America as a major shipbuilding power.”

Well, that’s interesting.

Firstly because Trump apparently does not even know what a battleship is. If he did, he’d know why none have been built since the 1940s. They are obsolete. The Prayer That Turns ... Mohler Jr., R. Albert Check Amazon for Pricing.

A battleship is basically a heavily armored artillery platform. It is defined by its big guns, which are indeed impressive. The largest battleships ever actually built – Japan’s Yamato and Musashi – had the largest (18 inch) main guns of any battleship ever built. Both were sunk from the air – just as the famous German battleship Bismarck was crippled from the air by cloth-covered biplanes sicced on her from an aircraft carrier. The latter became the capital ship of world power navies, because aircraft can hit targets much farther away than the (roughly) 25 mile maximum effective range of a battleship’s main guns. The last active battleships were the Iowa-class – all four of them now museum ships. If they put to sea again, they’d probably be sunk long before they got close enough to a target to hit anything with their main artillery. That is why, when they were briefly brought back into service in the ’80s by Reagan, they were extensively modernized with Tomahawk cruise missiles, Harpoon anti-ship missiles and Phalanx CIWS before being decommissioned again in the early 1990s due to high operational costs and changing naval warfare dynamics.

Trump probably knows – understands – none of this.

He uses words without understanding what they mean. An example of this is his recent threat to “decimate” the Iranians. It is not likely that “decimating” them would accomplish much as “decimation” was a method of instilling discipline in Roman legionnaires – by having every tenth man beaten to death by his fellow legionnaires. Trump – being a vulgarian – thinks “decimate” is a synonym for exterminate.

Similarly, it is likely he could not give you even a few basic details about what a battleship is – never mind the history of their type. I would bet the title to my Trans-Am that the president could not tell you what the significance of HMS Dreadnought was, what happened at Jutland or who Gunther Lutjens was. I’d sign over the title if he were able to speak intelligently about even one of these three.

No, for Trump a “battleship” is just a really yuge ship. The yuger the better. Well, the cost certainly will be. The estimated cost for one of Trump’s new battleships is $17 billion. They will be floating casinos, basically. Monuments to his ego – at our expense.

Almost every president of the past 100 years has suffered from War Priapism but Trump’s persona is both belligerent and ridiculous. An eighty-year-old man who got five deferments to escape from war when he was a young man is hungry to send today’s young men to war and waxes exuberant about building a fleet of yuge ships, like a toddler playing with boats in the bathtub. Rocks and Minerals of ... Rock Chasing Check Amazon for Pricing.

The more notorious Roman emperors did similar. Nero would have yuge artificial lakes built and staged naval battles for the amusement of himself and his entourage.

In his own mind, Trump may believe that spending $17 billion each on a fleet of impressive-looking but functionally useless “battleships” will make America Great because in Trump’s mind, grandiosity is the working definition of greatness. The yuger the better. We see this in his plans for the White House ballroom, the great arch he wants to have built and now his fleet of “battleships.” It brings to mind another historical figure who was also a great fan of – as he put – “splendor.” This was Herman Goering, the Reichsmarschall of the Greater German Reich. He built yuge things, too – notably his garish country house, Carinhall. He had a yuge model railroad set up, where he played for hours, like an overgrown child.

Interestingly, Goering was the one high Nazi who did not want the war that ended up going not necessarily to Germany’s advantage. He tried desperately to prevent it, acting through mediators and emissaries. Not because Goering was a moral man but because he was not a stupid man. He understood that if Germany went to war it would be a disaster not just for Germany but for himself, personally. Trump isn’t – apparently – smart enough to at least understand that much.

Never mind what a battleship is.

This article was originally published on Eric Peters Autos.

Nature’s Bounty ... Check Amazon for Pricing. Bronson Vitamin K2 D3 ... Check Amazon for Pricing. Natureu2019s Bounty Zi... Check Amazon for Pricing. OLLY Women’s Mul... Check Amazon for Pricing.