I don’t care much for politicians and their works. Political government is a stupid and evil way of doing things. It makes us all less happy, less healthy, less prosperous, and less safe than we’d be if we abandoned it for voluntary means of living together.

Nonetheless, I occasionally try to “give credit where credit is due” when a politician departs, for even a moment, from evil and stupidity. At other times I seek the most charitable explanations I can find for that politician’s actions. This is one of those latter times, and the question at hand, as you might expect is:

What is it with Donald Trump?

First, a note: I occasionally receive hate mail and comments opining that I suffer from “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and have never levied the same criticisms, for the same types of actions, against other presidents.

That’s not true, and you don’t have to take my word for it. I’ve been writing political commentary since the 1980s, and you can easily find almost all of that commentary from the early 1990s on  with a quick search engine query. I’ve been, on balance, at least as critical of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush,  Barack Obama, and Joe Biden as I’ve ever been of Trump.

I’ve even said some nice things about Trump for, among other things, talking with the North Koreans, feinting toward US withdrawal from Syria, negotiating the US surrender in Afghanistan, advocating for an end to taxing tips, etc. He hasn’t always followed through, but he’s sometimes come up with good ideas.

There’s something those good ideas have in common, and it occurs to me that those things may be of a piece with my “most charitable explanation” for ideas that weren’t as good.

Some commentators look at Trump and the MAGA-dominated Republican Party and conclude that “the chaos is the point.” That is, the purpose of some of the weirder and wilder actions of Trump’s administration is to build an omnipotent totalitarian state by sowing fear, discord, and confusion — to keep their opponents on perpetual tenterhooks, disorganized and unable to effectively respond, as new authoritarian measures roll out.

But what if it’s not that?

In the mid-1990s, Clayton M. Christensen introduced the idea of “disruptive innovation” into the public lexicon. By the early 2000s, nearly every tech start-up touted itself as “disruptive,” in a good way although not usually in precisely the way Christensen seems to have intended.

Around that time, Mark Zuckerberg coined a motto for how Facebook approached building itself as a social media platform. “Move fast and break things.” In other words, if you have an idea that seems like it might produce really good results, pull the trigger and see what happens.

As goes biz buzz, so goes political thinking.  Quoth the late Scott Adams:

“What Trump does is he shakes the box. He just wants to see where the pieces land, because wherever they land is a different situation than the one he’s in.”

Since the 1930s, with their penchant for technocracy, American politicians and bureaucrats have generally been disruption-averse. They prefer to tweak the system, messing around at its edges with minor “improvements.”

Trump prefers “disruptive innovation.” While he’s unwilling to attack the central problem — political government itself — he’s big on “disruptive” experimentation, both in general (consider, for example, the DOGE episode) and when he’s in a situation that seems to call for distraction (“Epstein? Who’s that? Hey, look, Iran!”).

While I’m usually not ecstatic with the results,  “shaking the box” may be a better explanation than “he’s more stupid and evil than previous presidents.”

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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US president Donald Trump is preparing to sign an executive order funding research into the possible benefits of ibogaine, CBS News reports.

It will remain a “Schedule I” drug, forbidden by law for you or me to just go pick up at the local pharmacy, but apparently Trump believes it’s worth looking into for use in treating PTSD and traumatic injury among American veterans.

Good move, and good on Trump. It’s about time. Ibogaine’s been used abroad for decades to treat everything from substance abuse problems to depression.

And therein lies a story.  Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear …

In early 1972, US Senator Ed Muskie’s presidential campaign seemed to be going poorly.

Initially considered the front-runner for the Democratic Party’s nomination, he came out of the Iowa caucuses with a win but with US Senator George McGovern — the eventual nominee — hot on his heels.

In February, the Manchester Union-Leader published a letter (supposedly written by Muskie, but apparently faked by pro-Nixon saboteurs) disparaging French Canadians.

A day later, in another article, the paper effectively called his wife a racist alcoholic.

And the day after THAT, Muskie gave the paper’s editor what for, calling him a “gutless coward” in a speech  outside the Union-Leader‘s headquarters … and, according to the journalists covering the speech, breaking down and crying (he claimed it was just snowflakes melting on his face).

Muskie certainly wasn’t doing himself any favors. But if anything sealed his campaign’s fate, it was probably this, two months later:

“Word leaked out that some of Muskie’s top advisers called in a Brazilian doctor who was said to be treating the candidate with ‘some kind of strange drug.'”

The drug, as you might guess, was ibogaine. The writer was “gonzo journalist” Hunter S. Thompson.

Muskie denied using ibogaine, of course (who could have blamed him if he had?), and Thompson later admitted he’d made the whole thing up. Why? Well, he supported McGovern, but it seems his bigger concern was how boring he found the campaign.

As a libertarian, I favor completely legalizing the production, sale, purchase, and use of all drugs, whether for medical or recreational use.

But until we get there, every move in that direction is a  positive.

I look forward to the day when ibogaine is freely available to any politician who happens to find himself in the middle of  mental or cognitive collapse.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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The deadline for filing US federal income tax returns falls (usually) on April 15, a date that’s worked its way into the American vocabulary as “tax day.” That’s really not a very accurate term.

For one thing, most Americans pay all sorts of other taxes (sales taxes, excise taxes, property taxes, etc.) all the time. You can’t swing a cat without hitting a tax … and there’s probably a tax on swinging cats, which I recommend against doing for all kinds of reasons other than potential tax implications.

For another, most Americans pay federal income tax year-round through withholding from their paychecks (or quarterly “estimated” payments). April 15 is just the day when the government demands that you do their paperwork for them to make sure they took as much as they wanted to take from you last year.

And even when you’re not paying up front, you’re still getting taxed.

Last year the federal government took $5.2 trillion directly from US taxpayers, but spent $7 trillion. Congress borrowed that extra $1.8 trillion, promising their creditors that, sooner or later, they’ll get the money, plus interest, out of you or your descendants. It’s still tax, just with payment temporarily deferred.

Not all taxes fall on all Americans evenly, of course.

Because federal income taxes are “progressive,” the top 20% of American earners pay 66.1% of federal taxes, while the bottom 20% of earners pay 0.8%.

State and local sales taxes are, for the most part, income-neutral, but the poor end of the spectrum gets hit harder as a practical matter because they spend more of what they earn to get by, while the wealthier save or invest larger percentages of their own incomes.

Social Security taxes? They’re “regressive” because of lifespan — working class black males, who die younger, subsidize the retirements of middle class white women, who live longer.

Speaking of dying younger and living longer, that’s what taxation is really all about: Draining your length and quality of life to keep government going and make it ever more powerful.

It’s no more complicated than that, no matter how much garbage propaganda you’re fed to justify it.

Taxation isn’t about “helping the poor” or “defending the country” or any other supposedly good cause. It’s about taking money out of your pocket (which to some extent means taking food out of your mouth) and putting it into politicians’ hands. That’s all it’s ever been about.

So happy tax day, I guess.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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