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With the 11 Reader app, you can turn anything into natural-sounding voice, like this one.

So download 11 Reader for free on your favorite app store today. Hello, and welcome to the David Fromm Show.

I'm David Frum, a staff writer at the Atlantic.

My guest this week will be my Atlantic colleague Tom Nichols, and we'll be discussing

civil military relations in the United

States as troops march in American cities and as the United States appears to be sliding

toward a unilateral unapproved by Congress war in the Caribbean. My book this week will not be a book

at all. It will be a play, Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco. Please stay to the end to hear a discussion of that play.

But first, some preliminary thoughts about the week just passed and the week ahead.

There's so many outrages in the Trump years. There's so many abuses that maybe it's petty to fix

on minor irritants. But there is a minor irritant that got caught in my craw. I just want to

ventilate a little bit about it. One of the more annoying and more pointless aspects of the Trump era is

what I call politicized stupidity. Politicized stupidity is a kind of aggressive not getting the point

by people who are otherwise perfectly well

equipped to getting the point. Genuine stupidity is a misfortune and is distributed by God,

but the politicized stupidity is chosen, and it's chosen for reasons. Let me give you an example

of what I mean. So President Trump has just demolished the east wing of the White House. He did this

without any form of consultation, as if the White House were his personal property. In order to

build a giant ballroom that there's no demonstration of need for, and that again, he's treating

as a point of personal property. He's choosing the design. There's no process of respect for

...