Thad wrote:So I don't know if anyone's linked this yet, but, Yonatan Zunger at Medium: Trial Balloon for a Coup? Keep a stiff drink and/or panic pill handy, and if you make it to the end and your conclusion is that Zunger is full of shit and just being paranoid, let me know, because I could use some reassurance over here.
Tom Pepinsky has a rebuttal: Weak and Incompetent Leaders act like Strong Leaders
tl;dr Hanlon's Razor with some polisci to back it up.
Basically, all we're seeing right now is the end result of Trump's policies, not the thought process leading up to it. And the actions of a leader who's thoroughly in control produce surprisingly similar behavior to those of one who's flailing around in a panic.
Let me explain how observational equivalence works with an example. President Trump may have brought Steve Bannon into the NSC because he is consolidating power and intends to sideline all regular establishment players in the formulation of American foreign policy. Or he might have brought Bannon into the NSC because he is so isolated that he needs someone who he believes he can trust, and everyone in the foreign policy establishment is dragging feet and dissembling. The former is a sign of strength. The latter is a sign of weakness. Both have the same observable implication.
Another example: the swift release of President Trump’s Executive Order on immigration without much advice or feedback from the affected bureaucracies may be evidence that the administration is completely centralizing control within the office of the president. Or it might be because the administration does not understand standard operating procedures in a presidential administration. Or it might be because they worry that they have lost the narrative, need to do something, and a gross Nazi is calling the shots. Again, only the first is a sign of strength. The latter two are signs of weakness. All three of the same observable implications, but have radically different interpretations.
What Pepinsky misses is that they're not mutually exclusive, because we're dealing with more than one person here. I don't think anyone believes Trump is actually an evil mastermind. Bannon's another story. It's entirely possible for Trump to be flailing about incompetently and Bannon being completely in control of the situation.