trump's quixotic insistence on negotiating with terrorists, who are clearly not negotiating in good faith and clearly have no intention of adhering to any agreement, is what happens when you treat government like a business and place business people in positions of power in government. a lot of people will try to analyze what's wrong with what's happening. the root cause of the problem is capitalism, and placing business people in positions of power in a democratic governing structure. there are profound contradictions between how the business world operates, which is authoritarian and hierarchical, and how a democracy operates. capitalism and democracy don't plug and play very well, and are ultimately not compatible with each other. the business world will subvert and evade democracy at every possible step.

for trump, everything is transactional. everything is a negotiation. everything is business. iran is not an enemy, but a business partner. he has no capacity to comprehend the situation in any other terms. he seeks a hostile takeover, not a clash of civilizations. this is an unworkable approach and a foolish strategy, and is going to leave the americans with billions in debt and nothing to show for it, while the iranians merely try to take advantage of their stupidity, but trump is unable to construct a better strategy because he doesn't have the life experiences, the education, the ideological inclination or the aptitude to do so. if smarter people don't prevail, iran is going to emerge from this mess as a bigger problem than they were when this started, generating the need for a long and serious war to dismantle them. you can't negotiate with terrorists. 

the correct way for americans to learn from the bizarre catastrophe of donald trump is to erect a 100 foot barricade between government and business, but i'm not holding my breath or expect it to happen. the rest of the world can learn from america's mistakes in giving executive power to capital better than america will.