Chapter Two, Section I: Opening Provocation — What If the Buffoon Is Also the Traitor?
- john raymond
- Jul 4
- 2 min read
People argue endlessly over what, precisely, Donald Trump is. Is he mentally unfit? A malignant narcissist? A fascist? A grifter? A troll? A genius? A buffoon? They miss the point.
These frames aren't wrong, but they obscure the only strategic question that matters:
What if the buffoon is also the traitor?
This section is not meant to answer that question outright. It is meant to reframe how we even approach it.
Because too many of the answers we currently give to Trump’s behavior rely on psychological, moral, or performative explanations. We say he’s unstable, corrupt, or unserious. And in doing so, we trap ourselves in debates over diagnostics, not impact. But in asymmetric warfare, it is not a leader’s internal logic that matters most. It is what they do. It is who benefits.
And this is where Trump’s pattern becomes clear: He consistently benefits Putin. And Putin, almost as consistently, benefits him.
It is not necessary to prove that Trump swore a secret oath to Russia. It is not necessary to prove that he has read Dugin or passed intelligence briefings. What must be proven—and what this chapter intends to show—is far simpler:
Trump’s selfishness and transactional instincts made him a perfect vector for foreign strategic manipulation.
From the Kremlin’s point of view, Trump’s psychological flaws were not bugs; they were features. Every act of chaos, grievance, and sabotage served to destabilize America and disrupt its alliances. And all of them were predictable.
That is why this chapter will not treat Trump as an anomaly. It will treat him as a Byzantine general who betrayed the army, not out of ideology, but out of self-interest.
In doing so, he shattered the chain of trust that any distributed democratic system relies on.
This is not a story of Manchurian Candidates. It is a story of corrupted incentives. A story in which a man as transparently performative and vile as Donald Trump can still be the single most effective strategic asset America’s enemies ever deployed.
To understand this, the reader must learn to:
Think like a general in an asymmetric system.
Understand the Byzantine Generals Problem.
See how loyalty and betrayal operate along a continuum of selfishness.
Replace moral outrage with strategic clarity.
So we pose the question again: What if the buffoon is also the traitor?
Read the full chapter. The answer is there. But the first step is abandoning the comforting fantasy that betrayal must look like a villain in a uniform. Sometimes it wears a red hat and hosts rallies.
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