Trumpology: Analysis and theories on what Trump is up to

ok then this thread is fine. but please, terrifying and brutal times as these are, no more new trump threads, there are plenty

anyway my theory is that he is power-crazed and that is more or less all

bannon's endgame is probably more outright evil than trump's but really that's splitting hairs

it's kind of funny when being the most powerful man in the world isn't enough for you.

my theory is that he has no idea what he's doing and what his responsibility and authority is, and doesn't trust anybody else except for steve bannon, who also has no idea what he's doing. eventually he's going to piss off fox news (possibly because steve bannon will get upset that people are listening to fox news instead of him), at which point he will be toast.

what dyou think he'll do in the week between realising he's toast and popping up out of the slot all golden?

Pretty sure he made an enemy of Fox during the Republican nomination contest--he was lumping them in with NBC and the Times and everyone else. Long time ago, followed by a truce, but that did already happen many months ago.

at which point he will be toast

That sounds familiar too.

He thought being president would feel good, but it feels shitty and is a lot of work. So he does the parts that he likes: Wielding power, in public, which means taking his own ideas and hastily writing them down on paper and signing them as Executive Orders. Getting other people to look them through would be a lot of work, and they would take out all the good stuff. Working with congress is boring and they're all whiners.

I have no idea what kind of orders he intends to sign for the next four years...

well either that or he's an immortal demon and will actually be president forever. now _that's_ a good piece of trumpology!

Pretty sure he made an enemy of Fox during the Republican nomination contest--he was lumping them in with NBC and the Times and everyone else. Long time ago, followed by a truce, but that did already happen many months ago.

― clemenza

for a man like trump, truces exist to be broken.

Bannon is a nationalist authoritarian. He openly advocates the collapse of the post-war international order. His ideology -- every nation for themselves -- would quickly lead to nuclear war, which is probably what he secretly wants. His whole schtick is extreme loathing and resentment of every form of idealism ie he hates the world.

Right now his strategy is to provoke as much conflict and confusion as possible as these kinds of conditions are friendly soil for authoritarianism to take root. He wants authoritarianism because it is a slap in the face to all those smug liberals who thought life could be about something more than a zero sum power game.

Trump is obviously cognitively impaired in some way but he has an instinctual affinity for Bannon's ideas because, like him, he is a shallow person who worships power and resents people who try to work for something bigger than themselves. Theirs is an ideology of cynicism.

Sounds about right. Neither has any idea how govt actually works tho. Which will hopefully be their undoing.

one day somebody's going to walk into the white house and "HELTER SKELTER" is going to be scrawled in pig's blood on the walls, isn't it?

I proposed the other day (and surely have done so here at some point) that what we're seeing from Turnip and Bunion are basically just inverted self-loathing. They are aware of and disgusted by their status as shambling beast monsters without being able to articulate it in any other fashion than smashing the world around them in hopes that everyone else winds up as miserable as they are or that everyone just dies. Either is acceptable. You can hammer all kinds of ideological finery onto those tendencies but I think that's the most stripped-down precis of their underlying impulses.

I don't think he has any particularly finely wrought endgame, though that in itself is pretty terrifying. He's a chaos agent with a nationalistic bent.

Addendum: What's scary is seeing democrats entangled in all kinds of conspiracies about his intentions, which is typically right-wing behavior. I mean, I understand why, but it's a weird switch.

trump endgame ts: "say hello to my little friend" vs. "made it ma! top of the world!"

and yeah look i have a history of extensive paranoia and even i'm starting to get worried at the degree to which people are losing their shit. but i can't say that or they'll call me a "collaborator" and accuse me of gaslighting them. for the record it is not "gaslighting" to suggest that perhaps donald trump will not be rolling tanks into chicago by the end of the week, although admittedly i can't rule out the possibility.

he couldn't roll tanks into washington dc for his own parade

ts: donald trump in a tank vs. michael dukakis in a tank

This was p/good on debunking all the conspiracy stuff (reading events in more than one way at the least): https://tompepinsky.com/2017/01/30/weak-and-incompetent-leaders-act-like-strong-leaders/

*sits down to watch Mr.X bit off JFK on youtube*

"HERE'S EXACTLY HOW ALL THE PIECES FIT TOGETHER" published on Medium by James Altschuk, entrepreneur and masseuse

Synthesis: http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/31/14442190/trump-is-no-evil-genius

Is it me or does the worst crazy conspiracy shit all seem to be coming from Medium?

its not you