“DJT has mis­calu­ated "bigly" imo. He's given Putin a sig­nif­i­cant geopo­lit­i­cal con­ces­sion for a small eco­nomic ben­e­fit, high risk.”
  Siz­ing some­one up is a lost art wait­ing for a come­back. He has­n't mis­cal­cu­lated at all, be­cause that would imply plan­ning ahead and strate­gic think that is not present. He re­acts like a plant to­wards sun­light. How­ever, the sun­light is a paired sup­ply of dom­i­nance and val­i­da­tion, gen­er­ally through sex­ual con­quest and dis­plays of wealth.
  He *admires* Putin and is fre­quently and plainly dis­mis­sive and dis­re­spect­ful to the US Con­sti­tu­tion. Val­ues and ethics are for suck­ers, as he fre­quently and in­nap­pro­pri­ately notes (in­clud­ing mil­i­tary mem­bers that sac­ri­ficed for their coun­try https://​www.​theatlantic.​com/​politics/​archive/​2020/​09/​trump-​americans-​who-​died-​at-​war-​are-​losers-​and-​suckers/​615997/​)
  He did pre­cisely what one would pre­dict he would do. He did a dom­i­nance dis­play over some­one that de­pended on him (Ukraine) and was def­er­en­tial to an en­tity that sup­plied val­i­da­tion (Rus­sia) and in a way that en­riched him­self.
  It's like de­scrib­ing a moth fly­ing into a bug zap­per as "miscalculating" when it re­ally had no agency in the mat­ter——it was just a basic mat­ter of in­stinct. If a grown human adult grabbed the bug zap­per be­cause the moth flew into it and they trusted the moth's in­stincts, *that* would be a mis­cal­cu­la­tion.
  The only mis­cal­cu­la­tion was the Re­pub­li­can, tech lead­er­ship, and US busi­ness com­mu­nity tying their wag­ons to him and his ad­min­is­tra­tion. And some in the tech lead­er­ship——ir­ra­tionally and in­sanely——want to de­stroy US global power to cre­ate their own cryp­tocur­rency based techno-libertarian so­ci­ety and are aid­ing this im­plau­si­ble and im­pos­si­ble out­come with the wealth, AI, and so­cial media in­fra­struc­ture that they con­trol.
  It is de­press­ing to watch China as­cend as the US self-immolates.