New York Times' columnist Roger Cohen might have just written the best column on trump to date. He argues that Trump succeeds when everyone thinks he is failing. He knows that Trump is a violence-prone militarist. He knows that all of the bad things about Trump are true. And he predicts disaster. Heed.

Roger Cohen pins Trump

The column appeared in early May. It got buried. It is the best one, the most accurate statement of exactly what sort of a pickle we are in.

It is like a doctor walking in when you think things are ok and saying no, this is critical. Cohen says Trump's is a "valueless foreign policy". He is beguiled by strongmen -- dictators. His doctrines are two in number: militarism and mercantilism. He is "unconstrained" by any thought of America standing for liberty, justice or human rights. He rejects alliances we have espoused since the end of World War 2.

Exact opposite

Trump's sworn enemy and the best key to understanding him is Barack Obama: think opposite Obama and you have Trump. The problem is that opposite Obama is exactly what the paragraph above states. Trump's militarism is shown by his desire to cut all government funding and pay 50 billion plus to the military.

His mercantilism is caving to all one percent interests including his own. Liberty and justice are absent from his dance card. Indeed any notion that values that matter are universal does not even dawn on the man.

Nonviolence

Obama is a bit like Hamlet. He knows more than he can do. The future eludes his grasp. Sitting there beyond the reach of today's nation states is the prospect of a nonviolent future.

It is the result of coming close enough to the ultimate disaster that we need to take action. That action would be a mutual and gradual reduction of all military budgets of all nations.

That is merely the prelude to a wave of nonviolent thinking that would impact culture and education in particular. We need to see nonviolence not as the province of a tiny group of committed saints, but as an attainable move by all fallible souls faced with a choice between continuity and annihilation.

Redesign of the world

A redesign is a premise of cybercommunities, a growing series of considerations of the world beyond the one percent, beyond polarization, beyond Trumpism. It is a vision of a world of choice and diversity, but also of tolerance and democracy. It has no need for dictators. It inclines to local, constitutional democracies. It goes beyond Obama in many respects. We will say he helped pave the way.