oh ... no

[sholio]

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.

Comments

[arianna]

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.

[recessional]

...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*

[rachelmanija]

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.

[ivyfic]

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]

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.

[monanotlisa]

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]

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]

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.

[ratcreature]

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]

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]

...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.