There is a certain level of Man-Child who play little boy games. They coast on bait and switch, hoping to create chaos. It often works when the Man-Child lives an isolated life and has people dependent on him, from employees to spouse to children. He may live in a small town or be isolated as a nepo-baby with a trust fund, but he makes the fatal mistake of thinking he is intellectually superior and that his environment isn’t what is helping him. He thinks he can take his man-baby games on the road and fool all of the people all of the time.

I have had to deal with this strand of irritant many times in the business setting. It never ends well for the man-child because I don’t need him or even want what he has. I can walk away and do before he has a chance to place me on a hamster wheel.

I was an observant kid. I would sit and watch the adults in a restaurant or mall, and watch the dynamics. You had functional adults do their thing, and then you had the toxic ones.

I always found it fascinating.

People in the circle kept falling for the same tricks. They would defend and justify themselves instead of not caring what someone else thought of them or worry about someone else’s self-serving opinion.

Or thinking that the man-child actually means what he says.

The point of the man-child is to get his own way, by hook or by crook.

So with ten days until the US Midterms, we are seeing Man-Child gambits in action.

He can’t admit flaw. He promising a drowning candidate he will repeal some tariffs…but not really. It is more important for him to create chaos so he deludes himself into thinking he is in charge than actually do the right thing and stop putting extra taxes on middle-class and working class people and calling it a “tariff.”

Pete Hoekstra isn’t offering to help: he just wants a headline to make the US sound benevolent, hoping people forget about the tariffs, threats, false accusations, and everything else. This “offer” is best to be ignore and not be taken seriously.

This is just chaos-making noise, nothing more, and it is best not to take it seriously.