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oh ... no
I had a realization today about the POTUS. It's kind of awful -- maybe not the worst kind of awful, more like MASSIVE FACEPALM awful, but it explains so much. And it means the last week's trash fire of executive orders is not going to stop. It's just going to keep going on until he manages to horrify enough people to get impeached, basically.
I had this hit me while I was reading about the H-1b visa program, which is widely used in the tech industry to gain skilled employees for computers, engineering, etc. Apparently the next executive order coming along is rumored to be an order either eliminating or severely restricting this. I literally could not figure out a single reason why an executive order would target it. The refugee ban was cruel, inhumane, and bigoted, but it plays specifically to certain elements in his core base. This one, though ... it's not going to ~stop terrorists~. What the f*** is it for? To punish California? To retaliate against tech companies who have started criticizing him? Because enough of his base hates foreigners that they just want "less foreigners" and don't even care if they're from countries like Norway and Ireland?
Those things may be true (and how scary and depressing is it that it's now entirely plausible we now have a president who will pass executive actions targeted specifically at punishing individual businesses for criticizing him, BECAUSE WE TOTALLY DO). However, apparently there has been talk of overhauling the H-1b program for years. Some industries don't like it because (they say) it encourages companies to reduce costs by bringing in overseas workers who can be paid less while they fire and replace American workers with higher salaries. Some advocates want stronger protections for Americans. Don't get me wrong, it's still isolationist/protectionist, but it's a version of it that's nothing new; labor unions ask for stuff like that ALL THE TIME.
And if it were implemented in a sensible way (via legislation that was thoroughly discussed and carefully drafted, with protections for existing workers under the old visa program) it could end up being able to keep the best of both -- bringing in new talent without causing people to lose their jobs.
However, based on the last week, if something like this does come along, I THINK WE ALL KNOW THAT'S NOT WHAT'S GONNA HAPPEN.
And the sheer cognitive disconnect between "overhaul immigration rules" (not an unreasonable thing for a country to do) vs "issue an executive order banning certain kinds of visas" (???) made me have this thought:
I think he thinks being President is like being CEO of a company. You give people orders and they do them. If your company has a problem, e.g. the profits in one area are low? You come up with a solution, give them orders, and they're supposed to obey those orders or get fired.
(I should note: this is being a shitty CEO. But we already knew that's the kind he is.)
BUT THAT'S NOT HOW A FUCKING DEMOCRACY WORKS.
If your problem is that the US immigration system needs overhaul, which it very well might, the democratic solution is to draft some bills, and debate those bills, and send those bills back to committee, and compromise on those bills, and eventually end up with a new law that incorporates some kind of consensus arrangement between all the people who worked on it. It takes years and everyone has ample warning of what's coming because most of those drafts have to be posted publicly, the media talks about it, and so forth.
The You-Know-Who solution is to pass an executive order commanding it. Because he thinks that's what a president does. And because he's HIM, it's going to be a poorly thought-out, vaguely worded bill that was scribbled up in the dead of the night without ever talking to any of the people who run any of the agencies that would be affected by it.
That's the kind of boss he was! I think we can all see why his businesses kept failing!
The executive order is supposed to be an emergency action to allow the president to bypass the usual lawmaking system IN EMERGENCIES, because sometimes there are situations where you can't wait for something to work its way through a committee. Presidents have increasingly abused it over the years to get away with congressionally unpopular actions. But if I'm right, executive orders are going to be how he addresses every problem anyone puts in front of him, no matter what it is. Immigration? Crime? High deficit? Failing industry that he wants to keep around? Successful industry that he wants to get rid of? Want to drill more oil? EXECUTIVE ORDER.
It's also quite possibly one reason why he's putting unqualified people, even people actively opposed to an agency's goals, in charge of any agency he doesn't like. Because THAT'S WHAT YOU DO when you are a (shitty) boss and you want to get rid of one branch of your company but don't want to admit that's what you're doing. You put someone in charge that you want to get away from the profitable areas of your company, or someone who's known for a slash-and-burn management style, or whatever. Then you're in a win-win situation, because if against all odds that division actually succeeds, then it's turning a profit again, and if (more likely) it implodes under crappy management, then you can point to it as a total trash fire (which you created) and if you THEN eliminate it and fire all those people, it's not going to create the hard feelings that it would if you got rid of a part of the company that's only sort of unprofitable and/or that you don't want to keep around because you don't agree with their mission statement anymore.
So, on the one hand, this is terrifying, but on the other hand, I think this is VASTLY more likely than most of the even more terrifying conspiracy theories that have been flying around. I don't think he is staging an intentional coup (although that's kind of the effect). He is currently drunk on power, running the country the way he thinks a person runs a country by issuing an executive order to address every problem he sees, and firing and/or eliminating any person or department he thinks isn't pulling their weight.
The short-term effect is "dictatorship in the making". But it means there IS no long-term plan. There is no chessmaster at the helm. If this is what's going on -- and it fits all the evidence -- I really don't think he or anyone around him is smart enough to consolidate power in a way that will allow them to hold onto it. And you can't eliminate HUD or the EPA or the Department of Education by making them suck at their jobs -- I mean, maybe long-term you could (like over 20 years) but we're dealing with someone who barely thinks 5 minutes into the future; all you can accomplish on that kind of time scale is to create a snarl of bureaucratic horror and leave a huge mess for the next person to clean up.
So basically I think we're going to see the blizzard of executive orders continue not because the administration is trying to snow us under and exhaust us (they're nowhere near that smart), but because that's how he thinks a country is supposed to be run. And because he has no long-term plan and no idea he's doing anything he's not supposed to be doing, it's going to go on until he manages to piss off enough people (which is happening at an astonishing rate) that the Republicans abandon him en masse and he either gets booted or pulls a Nixon and flee under a cloud of scandal.
So far he's angering the public WAY faster than he's angering Congress, which makes it depressingly likely that it's going to take months to start hammering through their skulls that this is a mess that's going to destroy their party and possibly their country if they don't do something about it. But look how many people he's managed to alienate already. Nixon lasted 2 years post-Watergate. At this rate, Trump's presidency is probably only going to last months if he keeps it up. He's going to leave the country in an awful mess when he goes, and a lot of people are going to suffer (people are already suffering under the refugee/country-of-origin ban) but I'm actually feeling weirdly optimistic about not ending up with a Trump dynasty out of all of this. If we can only manage to get Congress to WAKE UP before he starts any wars.
I had this hit me while I was reading about the H-1b visa program, which is widely used in the tech industry to gain skilled employees for computers, engineering, etc. Apparently the next executive order coming along is rumored to be an order either eliminating or severely restricting this. I literally could not figure out a single reason why an executive order would target it. The refugee ban was cruel, inhumane, and bigoted, but it plays specifically to certain elements in his core base. This one, though ... it's not going to ~stop terrorists~. What the f*** is it for? To punish California? To retaliate against tech companies who have started criticizing him? Because enough of his base hates foreigners that they just want "less foreigners" and don't even care if they're from countries like Norway and Ireland?
Those things may be true (and how scary and depressing is it that it's now entirely plausible we now have a president who will pass executive actions targeted specifically at punishing individual businesses for criticizing him, BECAUSE WE TOTALLY DO). However, apparently there has been talk of overhauling the H-1b program for years. Some industries don't like it because (they say) it encourages companies to reduce costs by bringing in overseas workers who can be paid less while they fire and replace American workers with higher salaries. Some advocates want stronger protections for Americans. Don't get me wrong, it's still isolationist/protectionist, but it's a version of it that's nothing new; labor unions ask for stuff like that ALL THE TIME.
And if it were implemented in a sensible way (via legislation that was thoroughly discussed and carefully drafted, with protections for existing workers under the old visa program) it could end up being able to keep the best of both -- bringing in new talent without causing people to lose their jobs.
However, based on the last week, if something like this does come along, I THINK WE ALL KNOW THAT'S NOT WHAT'S GONNA HAPPEN.
And the sheer cognitive disconnect between "overhaul immigration rules" (not an unreasonable thing for a country to do) vs "issue an executive order banning certain kinds of visas" (???) made me have this thought:
I think he thinks being President is like being CEO of a company. You give people orders and they do them. If your company has a problem, e.g. the profits in one area are low? You come up with a solution, give them orders, and they're supposed to obey those orders or get fired.
(I should note: this is being a shitty CEO. But we already knew that's the kind he is.)
BUT THAT'S NOT HOW A FUCKING DEMOCRACY WORKS.
If your problem is that the US immigration system needs overhaul, which it very well might, the democratic solution is to draft some bills, and debate those bills, and send those bills back to committee, and compromise on those bills, and eventually end up with a new law that incorporates some kind of consensus arrangement between all the people who worked on it. It takes years and everyone has ample warning of what's coming because most of those drafts have to be posted publicly, the media talks about it, and so forth.
The You-Know-Who solution is to pass an executive order commanding it. Because he thinks that's what a president does. And because he's HIM, it's going to be a poorly thought-out, vaguely worded bill that was scribbled up in the dead of the night without ever talking to any of the people who run any of the agencies that would be affected by it.
That's the kind of boss he was! I think we can all see why his businesses kept failing!
The executive order is supposed to be an emergency action to allow the president to bypass the usual lawmaking system IN EMERGENCIES, because sometimes there are situations where you can't wait for something to work its way through a committee. Presidents have increasingly abused it over the years to get away with congressionally unpopular actions. But if I'm right, executive orders are going to be how he addresses every problem anyone puts in front of him, no matter what it is. Immigration? Crime? High deficit? Failing industry that he wants to keep around? Successful industry that he wants to get rid of? Want to drill more oil? EXECUTIVE ORDER.
It's also quite possibly one reason why he's putting unqualified people, even people actively opposed to an agency's goals, in charge of any agency he doesn't like. Because THAT'S WHAT YOU DO when you are a (shitty) boss and you want to get rid of one branch of your company but don't want to admit that's what you're doing. You put someone in charge that you want to get away from the profitable areas of your company, or someone who's known for a slash-and-burn management style, or whatever. Then you're in a win-win situation, because if against all odds that division actually succeeds, then it's turning a profit again, and if (more likely) it implodes under crappy management, then you can point to it as a total trash fire (which you created) and if you THEN eliminate it and fire all those people, it's not going to create the hard feelings that it would if you got rid of a part of the company that's only sort of unprofitable and/or that you don't want to keep around because you don't agree with their mission statement anymore.
So, on the one hand, this is terrifying, but on the other hand, I think this is VASTLY more likely than most of the even more terrifying conspiracy theories that have been flying around. I don't think he is staging an intentional coup (although that's kind of the effect). He is currently drunk on power, running the country the way he thinks a person runs a country by issuing an executive order to address every problem he sees, and firing and/or eliminating any person or department he thinks isn't pulling their weight.
The short-term effect is "dictatorship in the making". But it means there IS no long-term plan. There is no chessmaster at the helm. If this is what's going on -- and it fits all the evidence -- I really don't think he or anyone around him is smart enough to consolidate power in a way that will allow them to hold onto it. And you can't eliminate HUD or the EPA or the Department of Education by making them suck at their jobs -- I mean, maybe long-term you could (like over 20 years) but we're dealing with someone who barely thinks 5 minutes into the future; all you can accomplish on that kind of time scale is to create a snarl of bureaucratic horror and leave a huge mess for the next person to clean up.
So basically I think we're going to see the blizzard of executive orders continue not because the administration is trying to snow us under and exhaust us (they're nowhere near that smart), but because that's how he thinks a country is supposed to be run. And because he has no long-term plan and no idea he's doing anything he's not supposed to be doing, it's going to go on until he manages to piss off enough people (which is happening at an astonishing rate) that the Republicans abandon him en masse and he either gets booted or pulls a Nixon and flee under a cloud of scandal.
So far he's angering the public WAY faster than he's angering Congress, which makes it depressingly likely that it's going to take months to start hammering through their skulls that this is a mess that's going to destroy their party and possibly their country if they don't do something about it. But look how many people he's managed to alienate already. Nixon lasted 2 years post-Watergate. At this rate, Trump's presidency is probably only going to last months if he keeps it up. He's going to leave the country in an awful mess when he goes, and a lot of people are going to suffer (people are already suffering under the refugee/country-of-origin ban) but I'm actually feeling weirdly optimistic about not ending up with a Trump dynasty out of all of this. If we can only manage to get Congress to WAKE UP before he starts any wars.
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Bannon is capable of doing a hell of a lot of damage, don't get me wrong, but Bannon doesn't know how a country actually works either: he's as much in a swamp of misapprehension and fantasy as Trump is, which is why he's behind these executive orders, and why he thinks that what he wants (declare war on "the Middle East", as if that made any sense even if you ARE xenophobic and racist as fuck, which it doesn't) is even remotely reality-based.
Pence might be a problem, but only if he dumps Bannon, makes a clear sacrifice of the various neo-Nazis or as-good-as, and then does a lot of work on his/the party's image and/or people get REALLY STUPID about not following up on this stuff. Which, given HOW angry people are and which groups are angry (including some with a very long history of being very good at collective action - civil rights groups and so on), may not happen. But what Pence is NOT likely to do is start outright war with China (which, if anyone is not terrified by the increasing nastiness between the US and China on a generalized/cultural level . . .be terrified), which is enough reason that Trump really, really has got to go.
(I'm not ready to say "will not" because people are distressingly stupid sometimes, but.)
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They don't catch on because politicians ALWAYS lie. They do. HRC lied. She lied less, more persuasively and with a lot more care than Trump does, but there were things she said that were blatantly, outright not true, and certainly she's said things BEFORE this last election race that were untrue in previous campaigns. They actually do know that. And all of the US news channels - like alllll the national ones - are actually designed to keep people in a highly overstimulated state of panic and flusteredness. It's something that's actually easy for me to forget out here, until I get reminded again by experience that news coverage from CBC that they get criticized about being "sensationalist" for actually reads like the most reserved, staid, stolid, calm analysis in comparison to the shit on CNN. Even NPR is pretty bad. And when totally confused as to who to trust, humans tend to revert to trusting the person who says what they want to hear.
They don't catch on because we're shitty at talking to them. We condescend, insult, and dismiss. We refuse to engage with real actual problems they have, tell them they don't have any, and sneer at them when they don't understand what we haven't bothered to explain. The left has a massive goddamn classism issue, especially in the US, which is HILARIOUS given the origins of how we think of class and of the "right" vs "left". A rural trucker who barely makes ends meet tends to react badly to someone with a university education who seems dead set on telling him how easy his life is and how much more privilege he's got than anyone else, and for good reason, and we do absolutely nothing to ameliorate that problem - rather, we get upset at him for not seeing what is "obvious" to us. We're snotty and dismissive. It's something we actually need to fix. (Hope Not Hate, in the UK, is actually doing pretty well at this for the moment, for the record. Gold star to them.)
This is actually something Obama was good at dealing with in BOTH of his campaigns: his ability to reach the rural blue-collar voter/etc was a massive advantage.
And they don't catch on because we're human, and stupid, and there's plenty of people on "our" side who are just like them, they're just not a "problem" for us because they're on our side. But they're not on our side for any better or more intelligent or more critical-thinking based reasons than the other kind of person is on Trump's side: they're on it for reasons of gut emotion, social and cultural affiliation (the kind of stuff sociology talks about in terms of "tribal affiliation" - the sense of the in and out-group, Us and Them), etc.
I'm not actually worried about Them. There are actually more of us than them, even in the election numbers. I'm worried about US being stupid and complacent AGAIN, like we were when we got into this problem (and into Brexit, etc - the "us" here is not so much about one country, but being about a certain turn of mind as to how the world should work together), once the initial prod of Trump's utter insane ridiculousness is past.
..../DEFINITE OPINIONS ON THIS SUBJECT. Ahem.
*I actually don't identify that way, and I think "progressive" as a label is dangerous as FUCK historically - Prohibition was an actively and self-consciously "progressive" policy - but eh.
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However, I don't think
My husband is a conservative. He's a reasonable, libertarian-leaning one, but through him I have a sort of insider's-view window into the parts of the political and social ecosystem that I never see, because I've curated my own social circle towards people whose company I enjoy, and most of them are, well, not that kind of people. According to him, the base that elected Trump are people who view themselves as the losers in a revolution that took place in the 1970s. Since then, they've nursed growing, massive resentment about everything THOSE PEOPLE (minorities, feminists, non-Christians, the coastal elite, etc) took from them, all the ways THOSE PEOPLE have abused and oppressed them, and they view the Tea Party and Trump as their chance to crawl back, not to the top, but just to basic equality rather than being the oppressed and trampled underclass like they have been for the last 30 years.
... which is obviously completely batshit (and I should note that he's not one of those people) but ... how do you reach out to THAT?! The Democrats could do WAY more for working-class whites and rural communities than they do, and it would probably help, but at some point you run up against an impenetrable wall of fuckwittery and I have a sinking feeling that those people are way, way more numerous than I ever realized. Just looking at my own family ... my aunt's entire family has drunk the evangelical koolaid (we're talking to an extent where I remember my cousins telling me when we were kids, little kids mind you, that the earthquakes that killed a bunch of people in California were God punishing them for abortion), my brother is a flaming racist who thinks that women should have the vote taken away from them and refuses to let his wife buy a microwave because he thinks it would make her lazy, my father-in-law is one swastika away from being an actualfax Nazi (the man became a vegetarian in college because he was attempting to pattern his life on Hitler's, that's how Nazi he is) - AND THESE ARE THE PEOPLE I'M RELATED TO! There is no way ANY of those people is ever going to vote for a Democrat as long as they live, no matter how much pandering takes place. The Democrats could literally be standing around waving large wads of cash to vote for them and they wouldn't take it.
I think I've spent my whole life believing that was an extreme minority view and while yes, it definitely is, it's also horrifyingly much less of an extreme minority and more of a very large minority than I ever realized.
... Which honestly is why Nazi-punching is a good idea, and the afterschool-special type "racism is bad, kids!" episodes of TV shows that used to air in the '80s were good ideas -- not even because they changed minds, though maybe some of them did, but because they made people like that believe that most people didn't agree with them. Which undoubtedly fed their persecution complex and helped lead to the current situation in some ways -- but literally, if you can't change those people's minds (and trust me, in the case of the ones I know personally, you will NEVER change their minds), what ELSE can you do with them? There comes a point where the only thing you can do is try to keep them from hurting people, push them to the fringes as much as possible, and pass laws to make it harder to do the things they want to do because the things they want to do are BATSHIT.
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The thing is, there are a lot of people who aren't actually the base for either party, but still have inclinations. And it's the people who aren't the base, but still incline one way and not the other, that we're shit at talking to. And they're the ones that MIGHT have some effect on the more extreme ones - even if not to actually get them to vote a different way, at least get them to stay home. :P Etc.
And sometimes even the base is reachable if they stop seeing the person reaching as "Democrat" and start seeing them as "someone who is actually listening to me", which is what actually happened in 2008 with a not-insignificant number of previously life-long republican voters, in SPITE of the deep-seated unconscious racism. Now that shift wasn't proof against the shit that Certain Pundits and Parties then slung for the next eight years? But it happened.
And a lot of it happened because what he actually did was go "you know what? Life is crappy for you too, and nobody's helping you or listening to you. I'd like to help and listen to you. I think you have valid concerns and your problems are also important." It's not really about concrete reward? And I think that's the thing a lot of us REALLY DON'T GET. It's about feeling like you're being paid attention to, considered, and like you MATTER.
And mostly we're shit at making them feel like that. Mostly, we do the opposite.
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So yeah, it is possible! Getting back to Obama, aside from the fact that he was good at coalition-building, I think picking Biden was also probably the best VP move he could've made, because Biden was an old-school blue-collar working-class Democrat, and was able to pull in those people in a few key swing states. (It's interesting to think about a Clinton-Sanders ticket, and whether that would have worked to pull in enough extra voters, regardless of which was on top, to make a difference. Different demographics, but same idea ...)
So yeah, you're not wrong, and if the Democrats want to stop losing elections, they have GOT to get better at outreach. I'm a lot more pessimistic than I used to be that the divide is bridgeable, though, especially at a national level.
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Pence is horrid, but at least he's establishment horrid, which is not saying a whole lot, but I doubt he'd be worse than, say, Reagan or GWB. Who were AWFUL. But not "burn everything down" awful. I'm also thinking that if Trump does get impeached (I suspect the fact that Pence has been so incredibly low-key ever since the administration took power means even HE thinks so) it could make it harder for Pence to get his agenda through -- he'll be in a Ford-type situation, might lose the Senate in mid-term elections, and basically will be facing a divided mess of a government with rock-bottom approval ratings rather than a unified "Republicans control everything" scenario.
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Like. I more or less thought this was obvious? The worrying part for me (and it was a worry, but is honestly less so now, tho not GONE) has always been that people who were GOOD at politics, while being Bad People, would manage to rein him in enough, teach him enough, control him enough, to actually make a presidency happen, an actual functional (for value thereof) enough thing that it basically worked; this combined with the fear that people would settle down and decide they were OKAY with being ruled like this.
As for Congress I'm p sure that the Republican majority is - to borrow a word out of Watership Down - just straightup tharn: they are just flat out frozen with fear, they damn well know they've fucked the dog in letting this guy get to the top, and they also know there is no good option for them in terms of action from here, and none of the few that weren't part of the Trump-o-matic machine to get where they were are inclined to help the party keep from burning down. Basically the ones who signed on to suck the Trump koolaid know they're already fucked and they can't figure out an exit-strategy that ends with them still on top and are panicking.
And the Dems CAN'T do much unless/until some of those Repugs un-tharn themselves, so those who are really worth a damn appear to be doing what they can with things like showing up to airports to Emphatically Prod At Immigration Assholes, etc and the others are milling around uselessly, as appears to be standard with a lot of Dems. *EYEROLL*
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As for Congress I'm p sure that the Republican majority is - to borrow a word out of Watership Down - just straightup tharn
HAHAHA. To some extent, I still think it's less that and more that they still hope to get what THEY want out of the administration -- I wish they had that much self-awareness, but I think with a Republican in the WH, even this particular one, they're still so much in their bubble that they're hoping to get a socially/economically agenda out of it yet. I don't think most of them have actually realized how fucked they are or how unpopular he's likely to get, or they wouldn't be rubberstamping his nominees like they have been. On top of that, I don't think they actually ARE fucked, yet, with regards to their base. Trump still had something like a 42% positive approval rating late last week (I look forward to seeing how much more it will have dropped when the next set of polls come out) and that's concentrated mainly in their states/districts, so as much as it pains me to say it, I think most of them are still clear to sail through to another term, and they know it. A couple more weeks, at the rate things are going, is when I think the sinking-ship rat scrambling is going to begin.
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I identify it as "tharn" because it's still in that stage of "if we hold very frozen still maybe the bad will go away" - it's not yet the mad sinking-ship-rat-scramble, it's the "FREEZE AND MAYBE THE PREDATOR WON'T SEE US?"instead. Dithering, basically. Because the thing is, opposing him is ALSO going to fuck them over - there ARE people who approve of them, and mostly those are the people they can count on to vote Republican. They just can't ONLY skate by on those people. So they're between a rock and a hard place.
Gallups was the highest of the ratings, tho, which was the 42 one - the others were in the thirties, and he'd dropped 8 points even on Gallup by the second day of the presidency. And even that much is shockingly lower than any recent president at this point in his term (ie less than two full weeks in).
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When you start dismantling civil society and turning it into authoritarian crap, you have to have the support of the majority of the people with guns. You don't do that by tossing them off the national security apparatus and then replacing them with a guy who used to run a newspaper. That doesn't play well.
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Great point, but in the United States, "the majority of the people with guns" includes every Drumpf supporter - plus Customs and Border Patrol, plus local sheriffs' departments in just about every rural area. Thanks to the NRA, U.S. citizens are armed to the teeth.
Granted, the military has much bigger guns. But even they don't have enough active personnel to go up against 20 million nut jobs.
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I'm not saying the military would have an easy or civil-war-free coup on ITS hands if it TRIED. But that's not actually my point. My point is you don't piss on them if you want to rule via the metaphorical sword.
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But I don't think DT is even after a (badly run) coup - I agree that he's literally being an incompetent CEO and the Leninist and ostensible puppet master Bannon... possibly thinks he's more clever than he is. Which isn't to say he definitely won't succeed, but Trump's narcissism and the greed for power they both have might end up skewing the odds in our favor.
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The reason for the H-1b visa thing may be the Nazi buddies. It will affect other immigrants also, but I think the largest number of immigrants on it are from Indian and other southeast Asian and Asian countries. So I think it was probably intended as racist, but may have been suggested to Trump as "punish [whatever business he's mad at.]" I don't think it originated with Trump himself because I don't think he knew what it was until someone told him.
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Depends on whether there is literally anything that can make a critical mass of Republicans publicly turn on him and Democrats grow spines.
I'm starting to wonder that too. FFS. The Democrats have no idea how to be an opposition party, the bare remaining handful of moderate Republicans are falling in line like good little dominos -- while trying to have it both ways, at least our Sen. Murkowski is, by making waffly noises about how "I don't REALLY support this person" and then going ahead and voting for them.
It's only been a week, though (CAN YOU BELIEVE IT'S ONLY BEEN A WEEK) and like I was saying above, I think the rat-ship-jumping will start to kick in eventually. If nothing else -- I sincerely hope we don't have to wait this long, but (assuming none of the true worst-case scenarios come to pass) I DO think there's an excellent chance the Democrats will pick up enough seats to tip the Senate in the mid-term elections (it's how it historically tends to go - all the more so with the administration systematically pissing everyone off).
I mean, it's possible I'm being unreasonably optimistic right now. I've been seesawing between utterly terrified, utterly paranoid and buying into ALL THE CONSPIRACIES, and resigned (as now) to the fact that it's going to be the worst administration we've ever seen, incompetent and corrupt on every possible level, but reasonably confident they aren't going to dig a hole that's too deep to climb out of.
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What the fuck. I mean. What is he going to get up to in an entire month? He's like the "put them in the cornfield" boy from the Twilight Zone.
...I really hope whoever stands between him and the nuclear button remembers Stanislav Petrov and Vasili Arkhopov. (I had to look up their exact names, but if they're not ringing a bell, they're the two Russian guys who possibly prevented WWIII in two separate incidents.)
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Good point about Petrov and Arkhopov -- whose names I couldn't remember either, but thank you for the reminder. Also, apparently in the Nixon White House the chief of staff had given everyone standing orders to CHECK WITH HIM before doing ANYTHING involving nukes, because Nixon had a habit of getting drunk and giving off-the-cuff, nonsensical orders. Not that anyone in the Trump White House is precisely what you'd call reasonable, but I do think the fact that the government is not just one dude in a bunker is at least going to HELP -- one selfish, racist fuckwit could push the button in a moment of weakness, but if two, or three, or five are involved in the process, there's a better chance that they're not all going to be having a tantrum together at any given moment.
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I work for a company with a ton of people on H1-B visas. My job requires certification and there already aren't enough people who can do it--canning the visa won't give anyone a job. And anyone who's watched someone wrestle with the arcane hurdles in the immigration system knows that Amerca's door is far from open. I have coworkers who drive to a different state every weekend to take classes in a degree they don't need to maintain a visa, for a program that treats them like shit because they know they have no choice. I have another who just transferred to London, less than a month after his wife had twins, because getting promoted while working there improves his chances for a green card. THE SYSTEM IS ALREADY INHUMANE. I can't imagine how many corporations are going to lobby the shit out of this if the rumors are true.
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This.
The tech companies aren't hiring talent outside the country "for fun". But it's hard to explain that to a person who's priced out of the market.
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That said, I do think that as a "flawed CEO" his agenda isn't just to make himself as much money as possible. He has some...egoistic needs to remake "the company" in his image. Meaning when he orders an executive order against immigrants, he does it because he's a moron. But when he does it on the Holocaust Remembrance day it's because he wants to send a certain vindictive message about how much power he has. So you know, while he's going to be bumbling about in a typical idiot-in-power fashion, he's not a benign moron either. He does want to crush his enemies, and he sees everyone who's not him as a potential enemy because his ego is just that large and he's just that insecure.
So...we'll see.
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YES
EXACTLY
PRECISELY I was saying this to T just last night, it's like he's a shitty boss who never had to run any real businesses and now he's trying to run the country that way! And it's actually pretty much what he advertised in those damn rallies ("I will be your CEO, I will do this and this and that personally!")....and yeah, there's no game plan.
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Trump is definitely trying to be a CEO and definitely has no clue what he's doing. It's Bannon and Putin I'm worried about - they seem to have actual plans and Putin, at least, is very very good at strategy, etc.
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This is exactly my thought -- Trump is an incompetent CEO with a raging personality disorder and no actual principles or ideology, being manipulated by smarter, more strategic and more evil people. Whether the chaos eventually turns enough independent voters and Republican politicians against him to resist him remains to be seen. :/
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Like I guess in his mind he wants to be FDR, creating jobs (and internment camps), and FDR was issuing a ton of executive orders to implement the New Deal too, and iirc he also had a management style that was very focused on him being central to everything. Unfortunately Trump isn't as intelligent and his "plans" all seem to suck.
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I think you're right. These are going to be some uber tough months and we're going to come out of it stunned at how cruel and racist and stupid a shocking large part of the population is, but his style is so opposite of self-sustaining that it's going to collapse in on itself. I bloody well hope so.