Kaiser Bozo

The current U.S. president has been compared to Kaiser Willhelm prior to World War I.

"Kaiser Wilhelm was aggressive, thoughtless, and extraordinarily maladroit. He earned a lengthy litany of criticisms. The Economist recently observed that he “grew up to be emotionally needy, bombastic, choleric, hyperactive and hypersensitive. His personality combined with the militaristic authoritarian culture of the Prussian court to create a monarch who was extraordinarily ill-suited to lead the most powerful country in Europe.”

Historian Thomas Nipperday called the Kaiser “superficial, hasty, restless, unable to relax, without any deeper level of serious, without any desire for hard work or drive to see things through to the end, with without any sense of sobriety, for balance and boundaries, or even for reality and real problems, uncontrollable and scarcely capable of learning from experience, desperate for applause and success.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-willy-trump-the-president-channels-kaiser_us_58b1aacee4b0e5fdf6197296

Authoritarianism seems to be the key psychological trait that drove us to our current situation.

"I’ve found a single statistically significant variable predicts whether a voter supports Trump—and it’s not race, income or education levels: It’s authoritarianism. That’s right, Trump’s electoral strength—and his staying power—have been buoyed, above all, by Americans with authoritarian inclinations. And because of the prevalence of authoritarians in the American electorate, among Democrats as well as Republicans, it’s very possible that Trump’s fan base will continue to grow.

Authoritarianism is not a new, untested concept in the American electorate. Since the rise of Nazi Germany, it has been one of the most widely studied ideas in social science. While its causes are still debated, the political behavior of authoritarians is not. Authoritarians obey. They rally to and follow strong leaders. And they respond aggressively to outsiders, especially when they feel threatened. From pledging to “make America great again” by building a wall on the border to promising to close mosques and ban Muslims from visiting the United States, Trump is playing directly to authoritarian inclinations."

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-2016-authoritarian-213533

"Anyone who turns to Christopher Clark’s book about the run-up to World War I, “The Sleepwalkers,” will recognize a Trump-like figure. The kaiser was a tweeter before his time, firing off letters, telegrams and orders without pausing to wonder about contradictions or policy or even common sense. (He demanded plans for invasions of Cuba, Puerto Rico and New York.)

“There can be no doubt about the bizarre tone and content of many of the kaiser’s personal communications in telegrams, letters, marginal comments, conversations, interviews and speeches on foreign and domestic themes,” Clark writes. “The kaiser spoke, wrote, telegraphed, scribbled and ranted more or less continuously.”

Clark then wonders whether “such utterances connected with the world of actual outcomes.” His answer is both frightening and reassuring. In the end, the kaiser was king but not dictator. He was considered a fool and widely ignored within his own government. Other governments had a harder time figuring him out. He often contradicted himself. He often seemed not to understand what he was saying, and he felt that he had no need to. “I am the foreign office,” he proclaimed. “I am the sole master of German policy.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/germany-used-to-have-a-leader-like-trump-its-not-who-you-think/2017/05/01/0dd9cce8-2e88-11e7-9534-00e4656c22aa_story.html?utm_term=.b3b7b4046cf3

"Donald Trump is the Kaiser Wilhelm of our time. Shallow, arrogant and belligerent would sum up both men. Wilhelm scorned democracy in the way Trump scorns political correctness as an impediment to clear thinking and immediate solutions. "I regard every Social Democrat as an enemy of the Empire and Fatherland," thundered the Kaiser. He was similarly dismissive of criticism: "I look on myself as an instrument of the Almighty and go on my way regardless of transient opinions and views."

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/trumps-belligerent-bluster-triggers-alarms-on-centenary-of-wwi-20151217-glpv8p.html

The 45th president of the U.S.A. has also been compared to a clown.

"Donald Trump, who inherited a real-estate empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars from his father, has had every opportunity to involve himself in the consequential questions of his time. He has been a very public figure for decades, with a great deal of time, money, celebrity, business connections, and other resources to put in the service of something that matters. Seventy years in, and his curriculum vitae is remarkably light on public issues for a man who would be president. One would think that a life spent in public might inspire at least a smidgen of concern about the wide world. He might have had any sort of life he chose, and Trump chose a clown’s life."