President Trump has loosed some missiles at a military asset of Assad’s Syrian regime in “a proportional response” to the gassing of civilians. What are we to make of this episode?

The first thing to say is that humans do not generally think outside the boxes to which they have become accustomed. They try to fit new information into pre-existing pigeon-holes. So a lot of the commentary on the Trump action was to the effect that the mercurial, unpredictable Trump was being tamed and matured by his first foreign policy crisis.

In this scenario, the big boys were presumed to be back in charge so we could all breathe a sigh of relief. Rogue elephants like Steve Bannon, mercifully demoted from the National Security Council were sidelined and Trump was beginning to “act presidential.” Security was securely back in the hands of the generals — McMaster at NSC, Mattis at the Pentagon and Kelly at Homeland Security. The president was paying attention to the intelligence community and the mainstream media instead of tweeting snark about them.

In short, the entrenched, conventional Washington power structure has reasserted itself and assumed command over the Trump administration thanks to a crisis. Inexperienced oddballs, outsiders and zealots have been marginalized. You could tune into any talking head show to hear the usual suspects — grey eminences like Tm Brokaw, David Ignatius and John McCain — making just this case, that war is too important to trust to real estate moguls and that normalcy was returning to rein in Trump’s anarchic impulses.

But is this true, or merely the purveyors of the conventional wisdom toiling to fit a square peg into the round holes they have spent their lives believing in? As a result of Trump’s quick response to Assad’s atrocities, they supposed the tweeting, credulous, ill-informed ADHD president was suddenly transformed into a rational, measured commander-in-chief capable of assessing evidence and of strategic thought.

Is this really likely? Or is this just a form of wishful thinking? What if Trump’s strike against Assad actually represents him conforming to a completely different pattern? Not a return to international norms, but a reality TV star indulging in his latest whim?

We know Trump gets all his information from the boob tube or alt-right internet sites, especially Fox News and Breitbart. He saw babies dying before his eyes and found it ugly, so he did a 180 degree turn: “my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much.” The next step was to demand that some lackeys figure out what he could do about the “bad dude” of Damascus. Understanding what they were dealing with, the military-intelligence complex gave Trump three doors to choose from, like on “The Price Is Right,” and he picked the one with Tomahawk missiles.

Does this mean, as the wise men are claiming, that henceforth Trump will begin acting presidential, start conforming to constitutional norms, work though regular governmental channels, rely on intelligence and quit regarding news he doesn’t like as fake? Will he now organize a coalition of forces to protect innocent Syrians, overthrow the Assad regime, confront Putin over his complicity, establish safe havens for Syrian refugees or provide sanctuary for them here? In short, will a long tern, thought out policy follow the fireworks?

As Jake Barnes said, of another dream that was never going to come true, “isn’t it pretty to think so?” But don’t count on it. The pattern I see is a Trump who sticks to his usual M.O. So soon he is attracted by the next bright, shiny story on TV which provokes a tweet storm or a bit of action, or maybe even causes his “attitude to change very much.” But inevitably it is soon forgotten because concentrating on hard problems is hard. And he is more interested in his poll numbers, and who’s dissing him on fake news channels and money and golf.