The sorcerer's apprentice

Ever since he got elected in 2016, Trump has always boasted that he knew more than the generals, the economists, the financial gurus and the best scientists. Just before that time, Trump earned his US fame through his “Apprentice” TV reality series and as I was thinking about all this, and I made the logical connection with the Sorcerer's Apprentice’s story and its unintended consequences, especially today in view of the tariffs fiasco. 

In fact, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a tale about pretentious people getting over their heads when they don’t know what they’re doing, and it’s precisely the way Trump has acted with his cruel immigration policies, his obsession on tariffs, his beliefs that he knows international politic and science better than anyone, and in the process has created havoc both the US and the entire world. 

In Goethe’s poem, the sorcerer's apprentice is training under the supervision of a Sorcerer. One day the Sorcerer (the adult in the room) has to leave momentarily and now alone and impatient to test the power he thought he learned from his boss, the apprentice uses the little magic he knows to make his broom clean up for him, but since he doesn’t know about to control it, the broom soon gets out of hand causing huge problems that he is incapable to fix until the Sorcerer returns. 

The story tells us that it takes competence, knowledge and practice to do things well, and it’s a very bad idea to undertake big things without having the proper qualifications. One should always respect learning and experience, and should never meddle in something that you one doesn’t understand. In Goethe story, the sorcerer, very benevolently didn’t punish his apprentice because he knew that this was one lesson he had learned well!