I can't imagine Trump didn't anticipate the results of the tariffs. Then again he's been yelling about America being treated bad even when he was much younger.
But still: many advisors must have told him what could happen. Since flattery so easily manipulates him, surely some must have gotten through to him. So, maybe even the protests within his own party are part of a thickening plot.
I think he knew, that this disarray is what he needs, and that his plans will become apparent soon.
uspol, long-ish
@pascaline Honestly, I don't think he has a coherent plan. Keep in mind that he's extremely arrogant; he may well believe that he can somehow magically convince everyone to do his bidding no matter what he does.
His past history doesn't make it very likely that this is all part of some grand scheme on his part either; perhaps other party members may be scheming and Trump is being convinced to do their bidding, but I think Trump himself is simply someone who has a lot of power but no idea what to do with it, and so he just does *something* that sounds vaguely right.
It's something you see all too often at a smaller scale with middle managers in companies. They hear about some new idea, and they must do *something*, and that new idea is something, and therefore they do it. That's the end of the reasoning. And everyone else is left to pick up the pieces of whatever business process they destroyed.
(I also think it's not too helpful to try and find a grand scheme; it mostly just ends up distracting from concrete steps that people can make today to interfere with his power trip regardless of the underlying motivations)
I really have no idea what he's thinking, and can only guess about his motivation from what he actually does.
So, you're right about it not being helpful to try and find a grand scheme 😊 It doesn't help the people struggling to stay afloat in this brown bog.
But discovering motifs can help prevent something like this from happening in the future. He did so many bad things and yet: a convicted felon is now president. This should be the first and last time like this can happen.
uspol, long
@pascaline Right, I see where you're coming from, but I still don't feel that the motivations are too important even in that context.
I personally think the structures and mechanisms are more important to understand than the motivations; there are plenty of people who are power-hungry, and they all have their own strategies, but what made them *succeed*? How could they turn their (unspecified) motivations into actual power?
Looking at historical fascist governments in democracies, the picture looks roughly the same every time - there is heavily centralized power in a government that's nominally benign, there's a culture of "listen to all sides no matter what" that fascists exploit to manipulate people emotionally, and eventually the fascists gain power over those centralized power structures in a nominally legitimate way (by the rules of the democracy anyway), and immediately turn it on the people and tear down the democracy.
From that perspective, there are two main problems:
1. "Listen to all people no matter what", basically the centrist view that treats all opinions as equally politically valid no matter what. Even if that opinion is oppressive or outright genocidal.
2. Central government with a lot of power; lots of institutions, laws and processes that can be used as weapons if they were to ever fall into malicious hands. This is and always will be a juicy target for power-hungry people.
I think the problem can be addressed through either of those two points, but I suspect that solving the latter is the more durable option, because it's harder to undo with propaganda. Either approach would solve the problem by removing (one of) the critical angles that fascists exploit.
(As a sidenote, the rise of the nazis before WWII happened in pretty much the exact same way. Exploiting the apathy of existing systems of power to gain a lot of power very quickly. So this definitely isn't the first time.)
@joepie91
This is a very detailed extension of what I meant 😊 Understanding the motifs is pointless because it's the results we need to work with, and we need to make sure this kind of thing never happens again.
Democracy means you even allow undemocratic voices, which turned out to be bad.
And central power is a big problem. The dismantling of so much at the moment gives Trump et al even more power to manipulate things.