That last part is the terrifying bit, honestly. Trump is an egomaniac with the attention span of a toddler. He’s an unguided projectile of spite and vanity.
Imagine someone competent filling his shoes with the unprecedented powers that were recently granted by the supreme court and the rabid MAGA fanbase behind them.
The potential for lasting damage goes (even further) off the scale. I shudder to think what that might actually look like.
Honestly, in the event Biden loses, the best hope the US has is Trump’s general incompetence.
Imagine someone competent filling his shoes with the unprecedented powers that were recently granted by the supreme court and the rabid MAGA fanbase behind them.
During the early pandemic, I was 100% convinced he was going to declare a national state of emergency as a pretense for a kind of coup. It would have been easy to have disproportionate military occupation of population centers like NYC, enforcing curfews, enforcing distancing and masking, while generally fomenting unrest through non-military groups. Throw in some old-fashioned resource scarcity by restricting shipping in the name of quarantine and, baby, you have a stew going. Once people are incited to riot, martial law is easy to justify.
Instead, the Republican party doubled-down on the dumbest plan possible - literally betting on the stupidity of their base - to secure political power. The sheer greed, ego, and narcissism in the upper echelon of their leadership has them stepping on their own feet half the time, and I’m convinced we’re lucky for that.
It’s a good thing the Republican leadership is as incompetent as they are morally bankrupt, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t managed to stumble their way into pushing the US to the brink of a dictatorship. As the KGB used to say, a lot of them are “useful idiots” which can be orchestrated by careful external manipulation.
This is the same line of reasoning that created the “Allies actually didn’t try very hard to assassinate Hitler, because they realized he was a really bad tactician” conspiracy theories. Basically, the reasoning is that while Hitler was charismatic and had a massive cult following, he wasn’t actually that good at making tactical decisions in war. So the allied powers didn’t really try very hard to assassinate him, because they feared an actual competent ruler who would potentially take his place.
Basically, “never interrupt your enemy when they’re making a mistake.”
I’m not onboard with that conspiracy, as there were certainly attempts on his life throughout his reign. But I do agree with the relevancy of that Sun Tzu quote.
By 1943 Hitler was making such poor decisions it would’ve actually benefited the Nazi war effort if he had been removed from power.
That last part is the terrifying bit, honestly. Trump is an egomaniac with the attention span of a toddler. He’s an unguided projectile of spite and vanity.
Imagine someone competent filling his shoes with the unprecedented powers that were recently granted by the supreme court and the rabid MAGA fanbase behind them.
The potential for lasting damage goes (even further) off the scale. I shudder to think what that might actually look like.
Honestly, in the event Biden loses, the best hope the US has is Trump’s general incompetence.
During the early pandemic, I was 100% convinced he was going to declare a national state of emergency as a pretense for a kind of coup. It would have been easy to have disproportionate military occupation of population centers like NYC, enforcing curfews, enforcing distancing and masking, while generally fomenting unrest through non-military groups. Throw in some old-fashioned resource scarcity by restricting shipping in the name of quarantine and, baby, you have a stew going. Once people are incited to riot, martial law is easy to justify.
Instead, the Republican party doubled-down on the dumbest plan possible - literally betting on the stupidity of their base - to secure political power. The sheer greed, ego, and narcissism in the upper echelon of their leadership has them stepping on their own feet half the time, and I’m convinced we’re lucky for that.
It’s a good thing the Republican leadership is as incompetent as they are morally bankrupt, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t managed to stumble their way into pushing the US to the brink of a dictatorship. As the KGB used to say, a lot of them are “useful idiots” which can be orchestrated by careful external manipulation.
This is the same line of reasoning that created the “Allies actually didn’t try very hard to assassinate Hitler, because they realized he was a really bad tactician” conspiracy theories. Basically, the reasoning is that while Hitler was charismatic and had a massive cult following, he wasn’t actually that good at making tactical decisions in war. So the allied powers didn’t really try very hard to assassinate him, because they feared an actual competent ruler who would potentially take his place.
Basically, “never interrupt your enemy when they’re making a mistake.”
I’m not onboard with that conspiracy, as there were certainly attempts on his life throughout his reign. But I do agree with the relevancy of that Sun Tzu quote.
By 1943 Hitler was making such poor decisions it would’ve actually benefited the Nazi war effort if he had been removed from power.