Remember that Time?

Remember that time in November of 2009 when Barack Obama bowed "too low" to Emperor Akihito of Japan? Some people of a certain political bent got even more bent than Obama's waist.  But let's be honest, at this point in history, Japan is very little threat to us, in fact they're practically a vassal state in old medieval terms.  The Emperor of Japan is a symbolic monarch, very much like the Queen of England, and so Barack had pretty much nothing to prove, except that he could be humble and polite.  Akihito is also much older than Obama, and in Asian culture that counts for a lot. In the most positive light, what Obama did was honor a man who deserved the respect of his office, he showed an understanding of the culture he was visiting and he demonstrated that the power of the presidency of the United States is rather a different animal than the power of Kings, Emperors and feudal lords.
At the time, I laughed at those who accused Obama of "treason," because that was a ridiculous charge, overheated in the extreme and fueled pretty obviously by the rage of people who could not stand the fact that he was President in the first place.  So, as hard as it may be, I'm going to take a deep breath and extend the same grace to Donald Trump.  What transpired yesterday in Helsinki was troubling on a lot of levels, because I have been watching the career of Trump's new buddy Vlad for a while now.  I have watched documentaries and read numerous accounts of how Putin deals with dissidents in Russia. The reality that he is, at his core, a relic of the Cold War KGB is clear.
Trump apparently finds something admirable about Vladimir Putin, maybe it is the ability to bend/break the truth to fit their purposes.  However, Trump bends/breaks the truth like a salesman and a charlatan; Putin bends/breaks the truth like a despot, and there is an important difference there, and we should not engage in moral equivalence there.  I'm going to put aside dark theories about collusion until someone like Robert Mueller puts some evidence out there that Trump actually directly worked with those Russian agents to do the things that were clearly done during the 2016 election.
I sort of agree with Rand Paul on this issue, the dissemination of propaganda by foreign governments against international rivals is not just a Russian hobby.  We are practically the masters of this sort of thing, and if Putin wasn't the master of actually rigging his own political system, we probably would have had a large hand in bringing down his regime.  That said, two wrongs don't make a right.  My personal feeling is that we should be educated enough and aware enough as a population to see propaganda for what it is.  The problem is that many people were all too ready to believe that Obama committed treason for being polite and showing honor and deference to a venerable old Japanese Emperor.  Also this morning there are many people who are willing to accuse Trump of treason for kissing up to Putin.  But let's take stock of what was actually really wrong with what Trump did and leave the overheated rhetoric behind for a minute, because if we're going to fight Trump with overheated rhetoric, we're going to lose, that's his pool and he is the master of peeing in it, so we should not even get in.
Wrong things about Helsinki:

1. Trump publicly demonstrated that Putin suckered him.  Even if he privately knows that Putin is lying to him he made no demonstration of that knowledge in the public contest.  Even if he is trying to be diplomatic and acknowledge that Russia isn't the only one with propaganda up their sleeve he appears to be a credulous fool.
2. In "believing" Putin, Trump throws a lot of this nation's important institutions under the bus.  The CIA, the FBI, his own advisers and the US Justice Department, have all told him, in most cases without implicating him personally, that there was interference by the Russian government in the election.  In the case of Mueller's investigation there were just a dozen actual indictments of Russian governmental agents. Indictments mean there is sufficient evidence to engage in legal prosecution.
3. On the heels of playing a wild bully with our European allies, Trump's attempt at being diplomatic with a truly bad actor like Putin presents a horrible optic about the United States direction in the international community.

The question on a lot of people's mind is why.  As Sherlock Holmes mysteries often demonstrate the simplest explanation is most likely the truth.  The simplest explanation in my mind is Trump's ego.  His ego simply cannot deal with the reality that the Russians wanted him to win the election because they thought it would weaken our global power.  They did not want Hillary to win, because contrary to what you might think about Democrats being pushover doves when it comes to foreign policy, Clinton promised to be every bit as hawkish as George W. Bush, if not more so.  Trump clearly desires the image of a strong man and a decisive leader and the idea that he did not win the election by his own merits is a persistent irritant to him.  The idea that Russia might have supported him because they knew he would be a bumbling fool that they could use to their own ends is something he is blindly devoted to debunking.  The evidence from our side is mounting against him. His own behavior is mounting against him.

So where to go?

Totally flip the script, which is something that Trump, reality TV star that he is, understands all too well.  Shuffle the deck, rearrange the set, throw in some chaos, no matter how bad it looks at first it will keep people interested.  The thing is that the consequences of these actions in his current position can have more dire consequences than simply tanking the ratings. As several Republican types have indicated this morning, Trump needs to do some serious repair work on the spin this story is taking.  He needs to explain his behavior, because he is not a King or an Emperor or even a dictator like Putin, he is a public servant and he needs to bow a little deeper to the people of this nation that he serves.