I don't think there's a lot of analytic thought behind any of this. It's seems more reflex response. They're locked in a feedback loop, a tangled form of denial. They know they need help. But they can't get past their arrogance and ideological fixations to ask for it. They know they need to 'go to the UN.' But they go there and hit them with the same trash talk that worked so well last year.

They are, in a word, adrift. And unfortunately 'they' is 'we'.