sholio: sun on winter trees (Default)
Sholio ([personal profile] sholio) wrote2017-01-31 05:57 pm

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.
arianna: (Default)

[personal profile] arianna 2017-02-01 03:59 am (UTC)(link)
I think you're probably right about Trump and his CEO mentality of issuing orders and saying 'you're fired' if people don't follow them or do and fail. But ... I'm not sure you can say the same about the puppet master, Steve Bannon, who is writing all these orders and who, fairly quietly, got himself appointed to the National Security Council (the guys who order assassinations, even of Americans and declare war) in place of both the Chairman of the National Joint Chiefs and the Chief of Intelligence (who links the 17 civilian intelligence agencies). Bannon has been wanting to declare war in the middle east for a very long time (see his writings) and he's a proponent of destroying all institutions and letting chaos reign (because it's the rich white guys who can survive and everyone else will get plowed under). Watch Bannon very closely - he's the dangerous one in this Administration. Then, watch Mike Pence, the golden haired fav of the Republicans who'd like to see him become pres when Trump is inevitably impeached. Trump could be described as chaotic evil. Pence, on the other hand, is deliberate, reasoned evil, especially toward women, LBGT, persons of colour, everyone with medical care and illegal immigrants. He's one VERY nasty guy who does know how the system works and how to play it.
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[personal profile] recessional 2017-02-01 04:11 am (UTC)(link)
I would note: Bannon thinks he's one of the guys who will survive while everyone else gets plowed under. At this point, given who the majority of the Angry Masses are, he's actually much more likely to be the first up against the wall. Not that I think he realizes this, but frankly if actual chaos hits, I wouldn't give an icicle in Hell for his chances.

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.)
arianna: (Default)

[personal profile] arianna 2017-02-01 04:19 am (UTC)(link)
Hmm, good points about Bannon; that guy really creeps me out. And also about China. As for people being really stupid, well, I think there's what, 40 or so million of them who put us all in this mess and I'm not sure they're getting any smarter. It's sad because they'll probably be hurt the most by the crazy scorched earth plans of the Administration and Congress, especially when they live in states with R governors and legislatures. I don't know why they don't catch on that they are being duped and used and abused; but then, I sometimes think either old pipes in much of America are made of lead, with the predictable damaging results or that they live in places that only get FOX 'News'.
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[personal profile] recessional 2017-02-01 04:39 am (UTC)(link)
They don't catch on for a lot of reasons, some of which are our (that is, the "left" or whatever you want to call us* own dam fault.

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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[personal profile] recessional 2017-02-01 05:31 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, quite a lot of the base are: no question.

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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[personal profile] recessional 2017-02-01 05:44 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah I mean my pessimism is on that whole "Democrats on a national level learning how to do this shit" - at this point sometimes they feel like the Canucks, our Vancouver hockey team, who look like they should be shoe-ins for the Cup year after year, and year after year SCREW THE POOCH in the last metaphorical lap.
kore: (Default)

[personal profile] kore 2017-02-01 06:57 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, I think that's the big point. These guys are all terrible in different ways, but none of them are reality-based. Granted a lot of politics can't be described as "reality-based" but they don't seem to know how government works -- like, how to actually do the job and keep the country going. The Republicans were all about completely stalling out the machinery during Clinton's terms and again, even moreso, during Obama's, and now they're not even really in power -- I think they thought Trump was going to be a lot easier to control and flatter than he actually is.
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[personal profile] recessional 2017-02-01 04:03 am (UTC)(link)
...people have any doubt about this whatsoever?

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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[personal profile] recessional 2017-02-01 04:46 am (UTC)(link)
I'd have to go find it, but the leaked sessions of the last meetings are actually where I get the strong sense that they're well aware they're already at the very least teetering precariously over trouble, or at least the smart ones are. They're already trying to figure out how to spin shit, up to and including the . . .what to even call it? It's not defunding, it's blocking medicare users from using, Planned Parenthood - they already KNOW that's unpopular and aren't sure how to spin it, and the leaked documents pretty clearly showed they're already scared about the knock-on effects of the immigration ban/etc.

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).
sheron: RAF bi-plane doodle (Johns) (Default)

[personal profile] sheron 2017-02-01 05:14 am (UTC)(link)
oh wow good to hear that (about the leaked docs!) :D
kore: (Default)

[personal profile] kore 2017-02-01 07:03 am (UTC)(link)
Data point, which I found hilarious: the one news source left in my life is Rachel Maddow because she makes me laugh, and we stream her show online and there has been a repeating commercial from AARP that shows Trump promising not to cut Medicare and Social Security. And I'm just like oohhhhh Paul Ryan, you grabbed hold of that third rail with both hands, yup. They know the whole "repeal and replace" thing is unworkable and actually unpopular, they know it's going to fuck them over, and actually all the sound and fury from Trump is cloaking that for now but it's going to be a HUGE problem later on.
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[personal profile] recessional 2017-02-01 04:50 am (UTC)(link)
Also, separately: they may be TRYING to run a coup, but they've pissed off (and pissed on) the military, so they're already fucked. Like truly, I could not believe they'd actually gone so far as to punt the Chiefs of Staff rep off the Security Council, because that is just mind-bogglingly insulting and just head-hurtingly STUPID for an authoritarian regime to do. You cannot be a dictator without the military. You can't. We know that from watching dictatorships: the minute they lose the military, their dictatorship is over. Now, it may be replaced very shortly by a military dictatorship no better than the previous one, but the original dictator is still out on his ass (or his head's up on a pike over the bridge - you know, whatever).

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.
lynnenne: (mood: not afraid to use it)

[personal profile] lynnenne 2017-02-01 05:30 am (UTC)(link)
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.

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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[personal profile] recessional 2017-02-01 05:35 am (UTC)(link)
I'm coming at this from having lived with a military officer for six years (and actually talking about this kind of thing a lot, I clarify: I did not just absorb her brains and training via OSMOSIS or MAGIC or something): even in the US, the Cheeto still cannot hold the country without the military, because while I was being flip in my phrasing, there is a hell of a lot more to it than just having the guns - I was using that as synecdoche for a lot of other shit as well. (Which was not great communication on my part, mind!) (And I will stop editing this comment now I swear, and also I will go to bed, omg self.)

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.
Edited 2017-02-01 05:40 (UTC)
lynnenne: (mood: puppet angel wants a new village)

[personal profile] lynnenne 2017-02-01 06:02 am (UTC)(link)
OH, I agree, it was a supremely stupid move to shuffle out the Joint Chiefs of Staff for Steve Nazi Bannon. What an insult.
kore: (Default)

[personal profile] kore 2017-02-01 07:08 am (UTC)(link)
That's a good point, but the majority of gun nuts also aren't organized and have very little training. There's this whole myth about the founding of this country and the Little Guy Militia standing up to the evil gummit invading forces, but IRL you get idiots like the Bundys. They're dangerous, yes, but not on the same level as an entire military backing a ruler.
bluemeridian: Blue sky with fluffy white clouds through a break in the tree tops (Default)

[personal profile] bluemeridian 2017-02-01 06:14 pm (UTC)(link)
I would second this (there's an experience list, my own and my significant other's, that I won't go into) - an experienced paint ball player would transition better to a paramilitary force than your average gun nut, especially if you consider at least part of the ex-active military/gun nut crossover section would side with the military. Having said that, military service is venerated enough among his base that if Trump went one way and the military went the other, I think he'd lose hard and fast.

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.
lynnenne: (life: land of the capscicles)

[personal profile] lynnenne 2017-02-02 01:52 am (UTC)(link)
Let's hope so! Some small, hopeful flame inside of me still believes that the American military wouldn't fire on their own citizens - that they're more loyal to country and Constitution than to any commander-in-chief. Maybe that's naive, but it gives me hope.
Edited 2017-02-02 01:53 (UTC)
rachelmanija: (Gundam Wing: Face-down Heero)

[personal profile] rachelmanija 2017-02-01 04:17 am (UTC)(link)
This is also my take on Trump himself (and in fact he ran partly on saying he'd run the country like a business), though some of his Nazi buddies probably have equally evil but saner/more thought-out ideas. I'm not sure he'll leave office before his term is up, though. Depends on whether there is literally anything that can make a critical mass of Republicans publicly turn on him and Democrats grow spines.

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.
rachelmanija: (Default)

[personal profile] rachelmanija 2017-02-01 05:19 am (UTC)(link)
Holy shit, it's only been ONE WEEK? I had literally thought it had been a month. I mean, I do know now that you say it, but so much has happened that I sort of hallucinated it had been longer while replying.

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.)
ivyfic: (Default)

[personal profile] ivyfic 2017-02-01 04:46 am (UTC)(link)
It reminds me of Caligula, actually? In that Caligula thought that because he was emperor he could do whatever he wanted. Which is true...until the people who give you that power decide they're done with you.

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.
sheron: RAF bi-plane doodle (Johns) (Default)

[personal profile] sheron 2017-02-01 05:33 am (UTC)(link)
My job requires certification and there already aren't enough people who can do it--canning the visa won't give anyone a job

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.
sheron: blue beast (02 blue beast)

[personal profile] sheron 2017-02-01 05:10 am (UTC)(link)
I kind of think/hope you are right about Trump. Because the thing with Putin being so behind Trump is...he doesn't want a Machiavellian intelligence at the helm. He wants someone chaotic, who's going to lower the value of American democracy and destabilize "the West" enough that he can pretty much do whatever he wants. His recent shelling in Ukraine and the way he's treating Baltic states is basically him capitalizing on the fact that there's no other power to stop him right now. So yes, I do think that a short-sighted chaos-sowing individual is who we have at the helm right now. (He can't focus for more than 60 seconds. Squirel!)

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.
kore: (WW punching Trump in the face)

[personal profile] kore 2017-02-01 07:14 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, I think Putin wanting to destabilize the West (and get rid of NATO and the EU and anything vaguely unified against him) is a huge part of this. IIRC at first they didn't even like him as a possible pawn because he was so chaotic and unpredictable, but then they decided that was a feature not a bug.
monanotlisa: symbol, image, ttrpg, party, pun about rolling dice and getting rolling (Default)

[personal profile] monanotlisa 2017-02-01 06:02 am (UTC)(link)
You may well be right about this, but I'm struggling with how all of us can stem the tides of people suffering (and dying) in the meantime due to this regime. I'll admit to being ever more concerned because I'm among not one but several groups that will see their rights curtailed and perhaps fully taken away, groups that we know are targeted by Bannon and Pence. Will this regime be toppled? Hopefully. Will many of us come out of this having their careers, health, lives irreparably damaged before? Likely.
kore: (Default)

[personal profile] kore 2017-02-01 06:51 am (UTC)(link)
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.

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.
abyssinia: Sam Carter's first view of Earth from space and the words "all my dreams" (Default)

[personal profile] abyssinia 2017-02-01 07:37 am (UTC)(link)
I was thinking the other night that if he's running the country the way he ran his company, we now know why his company went bankrupt 4 times...the problem is that the consequences of running a country into the group are a heck of a lot higher than the consequences of running a casino into the ground.

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.
secretsolitaire: white flowers. (Default)

[personal profile] secretsolitaire 2017-02-01 01:10 pm (UTC)(link)
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.

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. :/
ratcreature: FAIL! (fail!)

[personal profile] ratcreature 2017-02-01 07:41 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah. I also think there is some of his narcissism causing this, beyond the business analogy. He wants to be a "great" president so his models are probably presidents that got a lot done and are thought of as "greatest" on these lists, not the ones that governed in the most constitutional way.

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.
xparrot: Chopper reading (Default)

[personal profile] xparrot 2017-02-01 08:06 am (UTC)(link)
This sounds terribly plausible to me, though as mentioned above, some of the concern is whether Bannon and the rest of the Nazis manage to leverage Trump's stupidity to gain control (if they know enough to keep it)...and will the Republicans even bother to stop them if they do, as long as they stay in office...
yalumesse: (Default)

[personal profile] yalumesse 2017-02-03 05:49 am (UTC)(link)
...That makes so much sense. He thinks he knows best. Isn't there some quote about how the most dangerous people are the ones who wholeheartedly believe they're doing the right thing and consider it worth "any cost"? (I think they were talking about Hermioine, honestly.)

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.