he wrote, a few hours before seeing footage of Trump give physical "'attaboy" pats to Chief Justice Roberts on the House floor after the SOTU, going down the SCOTUS bench like a t-ball team. but no, obviously he wasn't How are everyone else's prediction models doing? Genuinely asking. And no lying please. See this? This is billionaire-owned media. It is self-dealt delegitimization. It is also killing us. WaPo et al. are incredibly bad at predictions, mostly because they're not even allowed to do the steps before that, like inferring the most obvious patterns of extreme fascist threat in human history. You keep that woke garbage in the op-eds, and if half of the op-eds are equally wrong, hell maybe even much more wrong than the correct/woke ones? That's neutrality-by-billionaire, baby. Everyone: Y'all grasp reality more firmly than, um, both the reigning party and the only opposition party and all of their associated media, right guys? And btw that's something totally normal to ask mixed company on a pseudonymous internet corner, but you might still have to really shock them first to normalize it, maybe by very, very badly AGI/ASI false-flag posting, like a day before.. edit: I can't resist from.. Well thank you sooooooooooooo much for clearing up that confusion with headlines like "Trump is just a twist on Reagan". Spidermans_pointing_at_each_other.gif Hot_dog_suit_looking_for_guy_who_did_this.gif where's that image-based hubski userOne of the only certainties about SCOTUS is that beginning very shortly, at least in public, Donald Trump will decide how fast to take away their legitimacy...
wow! am_U was shocked!
But even Trump supporters are struggling to figure out what it means now.
Try and tell me you ever gave a shit about op-eds. Go ahead. I wanna see you do it. Try and tell me anyone ever gave a shit about op-eds. They've always been conservative - a method for the captains of industry to steer the public where they want them. The Pulitzer Prize exists over guilt that Joseph Pulitzer started the Spanish-American war. Try and tell me that they accomplish anything even then. Despite being consistently conservative rags going back more than a hundred years, fifty seven opinion pages endorsed Hilary Clinton in 2016. TWO endorsed Trump. And yet. "Self-dealt delegitimization" is nothing new; I'd like you to bone up on the tragedy of Gary Webb. But more than that, I'd like you to notice that you're howling at the moon and complaining about the noise. You can't freak out about how powerful the Supreme Court is, now that it's conservative AF, while simultaneously freaking out about how Trump is gonna make them bend the knee. Here's the mechanism you're studiously ignoring: - Team Trump does something brash AF - Liberals freak the fuck out - Trump's brash AF bullshit is immediately opposed by half the attorneys general in the United States; courts affirm that the legislative process has not changed - Team Trump doesn't even respond, does something else brash AF - Liberals, too busy freaking the fuck out about something else, don't even notice any limits on power because say it with me y'all are too busy enjoying the freakout. It's self-indulgent. It's useless. It makes you too fucking tedious to talk to. I used to consider myself liberal AF; any political alignment test puts me off-the-grid Left. But Sweet Holy Jesus Fuck SHUT THE FUCK UP There are people doing actual work, holding up the actual law, keeping the wheels on the wagon, and an entirely-too-vocal minority of disasterporn dipshits gotta stand in the limelight because their Twitter Poisoning has rendered them incapable of talking to anyone unless they're wearing a Saint Mangione hat. I don't know if you've noticed - that's a lie, I know you haven't - but Trump is governing as if he has a 99% approval rating and performing like he's got a 45% approval rating. You think he wanted to roll back his tariffs not once, not twice, but three times in the space of three weeks? Does that strike you as an organization that knows what the fuck they're doing? It's dumb shit like this: Fuckin'A Peter Thiel is a dipshit with little interest in democratic processes but that's not new. Also he gives far more of a shit about Rene Girard - he wrote A FUCKING BOOK ABOUT IT. Finally, why on earth do we give the first fuck about Curtis Yarvin's plan to run the government? Is he a constitutional scholar? Does he have the first fucking clue about the weaknesses of parliamentary procedure within a constitutional republic? Or is he a dipshit blogger that goes by Mencius Moldbug? Here's a hint: it's harder to panic about a guy who insists on calling himself "moldbug." None of this shit is good. None of it. But all of it is going down entirely differently than your freakouts imply. You cannot win a war if you're too busy rending your shirt to shoot back.
I mean, fucking look at this. LOOK AT IT. That, right there, is an elective recession. That is a willful crashing of the economy. Not the red economy, not the blue economy, not the woke economy, not the MAGA economy, the whole goddamn economy. That is, in one month, a greater economic impact than the destruction of Bear Sterns, Lehman and AIG. I don't care how much you hate your neighbors. There are knock-on effects from taking away the livelihood of 165,000 people without giving them anything better to do. People have been bellyaching about those poor coal miners and what will we do with them in a solar economy and there are 45,000 employees of the entire goddamn coal mining industry in the United States. There were only about 120,000 back when LBJ was whining about them! There's no master plan here. There's just hubris. Hubris and incompetence. So stop fucking acting like this is some 4D chess bullshit. It's pure, 100% unadulterated left tail risk.
I guess it's hard to interpret the desires of the billionaire class, but is this not the first time (OK, second, technically) one of them has sat in the US captain's chair? He may be yet another proxy of economic warlords like Musk, Thiel, MBS, and some constellation of Russians, but Trump is not not one of them. Same with his VP and cabinet. I think Trump is a moron, like anyone reasonable. At the same time I can't help but feel there's something more to all of this.
A TALE OF TWO CABINET MEMBERS I. REX TILLERSON Regardless of politics, Rex Tillerson was a vaguely-credible choice for Secretary of State. He had a credible degree from a credible school and worked his way up from entry level to CEO of ExxonMobil. While he lacked foreign policy experience, he had reasonable credentials from the business world to make him a bold, but not bugshit, choice to be our point man on foreign diplomacy. Not that any of that really mattered; he was hired because he looked like a Secretary of State, any number of sources have confirmed this. Unfortunately for Rex he set out to do the job he was hired to do and presumed a reasonable degree of independence. Thus was Rex Tillerson fired by tweet after thirteen months while on the shitter midflight. As aligned with Trump's goals as he was, he wasn't an utter lickspittle. Thus did Rex Tillerson retire to ignominy where he mostly counts his money or some shit, who knows. II. PETER NAVARRO Unlike Rex Tillerson, Peter Navarro has never been anyone's credible choice for anything. He's been a joke in the finance industry for nigh onto 30 years, largely known for bugshit ideas with no basis in truth and some seriously cranky opinions about China and tariffs. But he's on TV a lot. Note that he didn't get a major role in the last administration because "TV Economist" went to Larry Kudlow, whose main claim to fame was being Jim Cramer's straight man on "Kudlow & Cramer." Unlike Rex Tillerson or 99% of the first Trump Administration, Peter Navarro never said shit about anything Trump wanted of him and, in fact, went to prison rather than testify against Trump. Thus does Peter Navarro and his splendidly stupid ideas about tariffs hold Trump's attention... until it doesn't. And then it does. And then it doesn't. And then it does again. And then it doesn't. The best idea Trump has ever heard is the last idea Trump heard. This is as well-documented as his desire for people who look like the role over people who can do the role. Neither of these guys are the ones you want running things. But everyone credible is fuckin' gone, man. If John Bolton thinks you're a lightweight, you're a lightweight and the John Bolton level of competence was entirely gone by 2019. We're now talking about Deputy Director of the FBI Dan Bongino. If Diamond & Silk hadn't half-died of COVID they'd probably be co-chairs of the Department of Sassy MAGA or some shit. People forget but this fucking happened. "Oops I fired my pandemic response team better go check Yahoo!Answers." Venezuela is the shithole it is now because Chavez and then Maduro relied so heavily on cronies that every competent career professional exited the country. Iran had a similar problem but was less brutal; Cambodia had a similar problem but was more brutal. The Trump playbook is to absolutely drive out all the careerists who know what the fuck they're doing to replace them with loyalists, but there just aren't that many loyalists eager to go be park rangers or whatever. Not only that but the Trump administration doesn't have the authority that Chavez or Khomeini or Pol Pot had so he's stuck being thwarted in his dictatorial desires by the American legislative process. He also doesn't really wanna be a dictator. I mean, he does, but that's only because dictators can play golf whenever they want. He's a deeply venial man with an utter disinterest in the world and he's getting on in years. The last thing he wants to do is work. So he's surrounded by lickspittles each pushing their own agenda, being careful not to push so hard that they get replaced by someone who will cause less work. And everyone with any competence is fuckin' gone, man. The "billionaire class" didn't want Trump. When you've lost the Koch Brothers you've lost. Yeah, Elon pumped a bunch of money into Trump but that's because Elon is a Twitter-poisoned edgelord who disregards everyone who doesn't suck his cock. Yeah, Jeff Bezos bent the knee but that's because we gave JEDI to Microsoft. Yeah, Mark Zuckerberg bent the knee but that's because his entire empire is one monopoly bust from oblivion - have you seen Facebook's mote lately? Trump is a populist voted for by idiots who were mad about inflation surrounded by incompetents who think they can catch a falling knife. Never attribute to malice that which is more easily explained by incompetence. - Napoleon BonaparteAt the same time I can't help but feel there's something more to all of this.
Trump's cabinet is half billionaires, half media savvy loyalists. His core competency is a bizarre command of attention and an ability to get away with anything. That also implies being able to do things nobody else can. Maybe Trump believes in Peter Navarro's ideas, maybe not. It's a knob he can turn, it has tons of powerful people trying to call him when he does, and he can convince half the country that it's all part of his master plan and will work out in the end. These people are driven by faith and will ignore the pain if they think China will hurt and they can keep calling Trudeau governor. Why not create spectacle and leverage while you gut the government? If things get too bad the Fed can just lower rates. What is there to lose? The billionaire class didn't want Trump. He is a chaos monkey. And I guess it's not quite right to think of the "billionaire class" as a unified class, since there are probably many spheres of influence and interest between their fiefdoms (which span borders). But they do want things. Trump is uniquely capable of doing those things. Elon Musk is doing those things right now. The Koch Brothers may not like Trump and did not support him directly, but they bankrolled Project 2025. Jeff Bezos may have bent the knee to Trump but he also learned the hard way from MBS that economic and information power only goes so far. Honestly, Zuck's oversized tee shirt and gold chain iteration are a big improvement over the last version. He probably genuinely thinks he's a genius, but I don't think he cares at all whether tariffs will actually help or not. He completely baffles us all, but at the same time we all know exactly how he works. I claim only that he's a useful idiot to anyone able to get on the phone and have him remember their name.
I think it's foolish to presume Donald Trump has "beliefs." The man is as transactional as it comes and so disinterested in external knowledge that Samantha Bee can make a credible argument that he is illiterate. There's a passage in Mary Trump's book in which she, a girl under ten, watches a young Donald come home from freshman year at college, open the refrigerator in the servants' kitchen, pull out a stick of butter, unwrap it and eat it like a candy bar, his eyes never leaving the inside of the fridge. True story? We'll never know. But the people I know who have worked with Donald Trump - been on the plane, been in the penthouse - describe a man with a singular interest in his perceived level of influence. He wanted a wall because China has a wall. He wants Greenland because it's big on a map. If you examine the extended, historical policy positions of Donald Trump, they have been "acquire things and write 'Trump' on them" followed by "diffuse responsibility for failed gambits." That's it. That's the sum total of the man's contribution to society. Trump's first appearances as a media personality are as parody. He has been that guy from the drop: So what you're left with are people who can advance their own agenda through puffery. You're absolutely right in that everyone of any power or influence is looking to MBS. But I think only MBS is savvy enough to maintain his independence by (A) going through Kushner, whom is far easier and cheaper to flatter (B) acting tough in defiance. The rest of them are just trying to protect their money. Nobody around Trump has the independence to challenge him in any real way. That's by design. So what we're left with is a bunch of lickspittles playing I Got Mine. There's nothing deeper than that. Down to the shitfucks from Project 2025, they're all playing Personal Agenda Advancement with a venal old man who probably doesn't know how to read.