Many curmudgeonly older people long for the past. They want the world to be simpler -- as it was when they were growing up. Most of them, however, don't have the power to impose their living-in-the-past will upon the world. So they have to be content with grumbling about modern life and being an embarrassment to their children and grandchildren.

Donald Trump, however, does possess the means to bend the world to fit his warped view of nostalgia. So when he flails around complaining about modern aspects of life, he now has a White House full of sycophants who strive to make his sepia-toned memories of the past into current reality. Some of these are merely inane and ridiculous, but most of them (if not all) have at least some maliciousness or harmful aspect to them. Trump ranting and raving about (for instance) paper straws versus the old plastic straws, or low-flow toilets versus the old water-waster models at first seems pathetic, until you realize that there are good reasons people are trying to improve these products. When Trump tries to issue diktats to the Smithsonian and the National Park Service mandating that they only present a gauzy, 1950s-style jingoistic and sanitized version of history to the public, at first it just seems ridiculous -- until you think about the reality of the history he's trying to hide and obfuscate. Even what seem like silly examples of Trump's nostalgia always turn out to have some sort of dangerous edge to them.

But Trump's longing for the past reaches peak dangerousness when it comes to him ordering the military to make insanely-expensive changes to America's military weaponry -- just because Trump is nostalgic for World War II.

We've had two major examples of this happen in the past few days, but they aren't the only times Trump has meddled in the subject. It was just reported that Trump is ordering the U.S. Navy to make two significant changes to the design of aircraft carriers, neither one of which has any logic or justification other than: "Trump wants to travel backwards in time." Obviously, that is not exactly a good reason to redesign the most important warship in the American fleet -- but Trump doesn't care. And nobody seems powerful enough to stand up and tell him: "No -- you cannot do that, it makes no sense whatsoever."

The first of these changes was to dictate that new aircraft carriers revert to an older style of launchers. Carriers have catapults on them to fling aircraft into the sky (which allows for a much shorter runway to be used for takeoffs). Apparently, 10 years ago some random sailor told Trump that he liked the older style of catapult -- one that used steam power to launch the aircraft. Ever since then, Trump's been a true believer, mentioning this subject as often as he can. Last week, he finally signed an order telling the Navy to scrap the much-newer, more-modern electromagnetic catapult system that is already in use in the most recent carriers built and instead revert to the older system instead.

Here's how the Wall Street Journal reported on the change:

In February, the Navy touted the success of the [USS Gerald R.] Ford's new electromagnetic catapults and advanced arresting gear, saying they allowed the carrier to launch and recover aircraft at a higher rate than its predecessor Nimitz-class ships. Earlier this year it completed a historic 11-month deployment that included operations against Venezuela and supporting the war in Iran.

The USS George H.W. Bush, which entered the Navy's fleet in 2009, was the last aircraft carrier built with steam catapults. Replacing the electromagnetic catapults with steam will be a complex endeavor that will likely cost billions of dollars, according to Bryan Clark, a naval expert with the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank.

Internally, the Ford class is much different from the Nimitz. Sections that housed the infrastructure for steam have been reworked or simply don't exist. Steam on the older Nimitz ships powers not only the aircraft catapults but also heating and evaporators that produce freshwater and galley equipment, such as kettles. Piping runs throughout the ship, which creates numerous points of failure.

"Electric is more reliable," Clark said. "If I can turn these components to be electric instead of steam, it eliminates all the steam related mechanical parts."

The maintenance on the electrical systems is cheaper, he added. There are 500 fewer sailors on the Ford, in part because fewer technicians are needed to work on the ship's existing steam equipment.

Clark said early data from the Navy shows that the Ford costs about $100 million less a year to operate compared with a Nimitz-class ship.

CNN added a few details to the story, including a comment from Chris Cavas, "a veteran journalist and the host of a podcast on naval issues who said he's been on launches that have used EMALS [the new electromagnetic system] and steam catapult[s]," who pointed out: "They haven't had to make new steam catapults since the [U.S.S.] George H. W. Bush. That's a long time ago and all that infrastructure is gone." Again: the Bush entered service in 2009.

They also had a further quote from Clark: "Nobody builds them anymore. There's no steam catapult manufacturers in the... US anymore so they'd have to restart that production line, which would cost tens of millions of dollars to get going and that'll be, it'll take years to start that up again and build the first catapult."

But the pithiest comment came from Senator Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain, who posted on social media:

I've launched off the front of aircraft carriers hundreds of times, have a Master's degree in aeronautical engineering, and am a test pilot and even I wouldn't suggest to the Navy how to engineer specific systems on its ships. Donald Trump should stick to what he knows best -- ballrooms, bankruptcy, and bullshit.

This wasn't even the most outrageous redesign of American aircraft carriers coming from Trump in the past week. The Washington Post broke this news over the weekend:

The U.S. Navy is considering a major redesign of its new aircraft carriers to better match President Donald Trump's preferred aesthetic for the warships, according to seven current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The service is evaluating the feasibility of moving the multistory tower that acts as the carrier's command center farther forward, toward the middle of the ship, to resemble older vessels, the officials said. The review, which has not been previously reported, is in response to Trump's concerns about the "look" of the new Ford-class ships, where the tower is near the rear, these people said.

. . .

Moving that command center, known as the "island," would be the second major design change prompted by the president, who on Thursday issued a national security memorandum directing the Navy to develop a plan to revert to older steam-powered catapults on future carriers. The systems help launch jets off the ships' flight decks.

Trump's preference, current and former officials said, is for the new aircraft carriers to look more like those that were in service during World War II.

The Navy also examined the issue during his first term as president, said a former senior U.S. official. A study found that moving the island could cost billions of dollars in redesign costs and significantly delay the program, this person said.

"It came back that the cost and time to do so would just be extraordinary," the former official said.

. . .

Relocating the island would be "a major redesign," said Bryan Clark, a former Navy officer who studies the service at the Hudson Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington. Such an alteration to the carrier's layout, he said, would affect the ship's buoyancy and weight and come at a significant cost.

"You could change it," he added, "but it's very disruptive."

. . .

Relocating the island to the back of the newer vessels was done for efficiency and safety, three U.S. current and former officials familiar with the program told The Washington Post. It not only creates more parking space for aircraft close to the carriers' catapults, allowing crews to reduce the amount of time it takes to launch jets, but it also improves landing safety by reducing the chance for turbulence when planes come back to land, the officials said.

This is all, in a word, insane. It just is. Donald Trump likes how WWII carriers look more than how the modern ones do, so he is ordering the Navy to make them look cooler (in his opinion). There is no other reason. There is no justification.

This isn't even Trump's first foray into warship design. Earlier, he announced that the Navy would be building some new "Trump Class" battleships -- at a cost of $275 billion over 30 years. Why? Because Trump was apparently a big fan of a 1950s propagandistic television show called "Victory At Sea," which presented documentary Navy footage from World War II. Trump was born in 1946, so he would have been a small and impressionable boy when the show first aired (1952-53), or perhaps he saw them later, in syndication (the show continued airing re-runs until the mid-1960s). And even today he still loves the cool way the old battleships looked. So he told the Navy to build some more of them -- even though the Navy doesn't want them and doesn't need them (battleships are outmoded and essentially useless in today's carrier-based Navy).

Trump's nostalgia for World War II and the 1950s is not just pathetic, it is becoming insanely expensive and increasingly dangerous for the U.S. military. The changes Trump is ordering will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, they will mean significant delays in building new aircraft carriers, and when these carriers are built, they will have older designs that are more inefficient and make it harder for the carriers to launch planes as fast as is safely possible. And all of the money spent pleasing Trump is money that could have been spent on any number of other military needs, as well.

If only the sane generals and admirals over at the Pentagon hadn't all been purged... if only we had a Congress who lived up to their constitutional duty to be a check and balance on an unhinged and increasingly-delusional president. If only someone would stand up to Trump and just say: "No -- we're not going to do that, because it is a crazy idea."

The midterm elections can't get here fast enough.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant