Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

[Thad]

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.

[Romosome]

Yeah, I feel like trying to suss out Trump's motivations is a waste of time for everyone. Malice and ignorance are distinct, but in this case the results are equally serious.

[Mongrel]

Agree as well. There's no reason it can't be both. The coup idea seems way too thought-out and far-thinking for Trump and some of his cronies or GOP goons, but not for some of the others behind him.

Also, there's a real possibility that there's just dozens and dozens of conflicting plots and agendas as everyone seeks to use the whirling chaos engine for their own ends, with more or less success.

Bannon is an especially large question mark, because no one really knows if he's really a qualified evil mastermind, totally insane, or both.

[patito]

I Have some really bad news for Thad http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/is-donald-trump-a-pawn-in-steve-bannons-game

[Thad]

Yeah, I feel like trying to suss out Trump's motivations is a waste of time for everyone. Malice and ignorance are distinct, but in this case the results are equally serious.

But we don't have a clear picture of what the results are yet. This is only the beginning. Whether or not there's an endgame here is a very important question. We've already got ample evidence that civil action is needed, but it's a legitimate question at this point whether armed revolution will be needed at some point in the near future.

We can't know that yet, but I think we need to ask the question. I don't think it's certain that we're looking at an executive branch in the process of stacking itself with armed authoritarians who won't listen to the other two branches of government. But I think we've hit a point where that's a legitimate possibility, and we're less than two fucking weeks in.

As I've said before, there's a very big difference between somebody who's dangerous like an enraged bull and somebody who's dangerous like a supervillain. The early results of the two types may be indistinguishable, but the long-term results are very, very different. We don't know which one we're dealing with yet because it's still early, so we may want to start preparing for both cases. (And other cases outside of those two.)

I Have some really bad news for Thad http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/is-donald-trump-a-pawn-in-steve-bannons-game

I'd actually say Bannon's own words are close to meaningless in determining his real thoughts or motivations; remember that quote where he compared himself to Satan. He's a very dangerous man, but he's also a troll. Anything he says is a lot less likely to be a revelation of his true thoughts than a calculated dig intended for the specific purpose of pissing you off. No more and no less.

[Mongrel]

To me the absolute most worrying thing is the non-compliance on court orders by various agencies full of armed officers with wide powers of arrest and detention. That's a red line in the rule of law, real scary praetorian guard shit.

[beatbandito]

Yeah, I feel like trying to suss out Trump's motivations is a waste of time for everyone. Malice and ignorance are distinct, but in this case the results are equally serious.

But we don't have a clear picture of what the results are yet. This is only the beginning. Whether or not there's an endgame here is a very important question. We've already got ample evidence that civil action is needed, but it's a legitimate question at this point whether armed revolution will be needed at some point in the near future.

Hey, this guy we let in to the house is taking all our stuff. But we better make sure he's not a literal nazi before trying to stop him.

[Grath]

https://twitter.com/Trump_Regrets

I can't find it now (probably got deleted) but someone made a Facebook post along the lines of "I can't help but read all of the Trump Regrets as 'I was fine with this when you were doing it to (other) minorities'."

[Thad]

Hey, this guy we let in to the house is taking all our stuff. But we better make sure he's not a literal nazi before trying to stop him.

It's not a question of whether we should try to stop him (YES), it's a question of whether the framework of our Constitution, our separation of powers, and our legal system are still operational means of doing so (maybe).

If this is really a case of an executive stacking his administration with loyalists who will not respond to court orders, then all the ACLU donations in the world aren't going to stop them, and the threat of force may be the only remedy to such a scenario.

I think that that is a possible scenario. But I also think it's a very bad one, and that we don't have enough data to conclude that that's really where we are now. It's one outcome we need to consider, but I sure hope things haven't gotten that bad. The donations to the ACLU suggest that a whole lot of people think the legal system is still a viable remedy to the situation we're in, and I hope they're right.

We need to watch very carefully for the next time something like this happens (because it will). If, the next time, DHS defers to court orders, then okay, this was a one-off; things are bad but the court system is still functional. Which suggests civil society itself is still functional.

Basically the question is whether the old rules apply at all anymore. If they do, then the courts have the power to curtail Trump's excesses, and if his approval rating starts to threaten Congressional Republicans' chances at reelection, they'll start to inch away from him like they did from Bush in '08. Things will still be bad, but they will be bad within our regular framework of American political badness, not a whole new kind of bad.

Put another way: the question isn't whether the guy in your house taking your stuff is a nazi, it's whether he's a cop.

[Thad]

Another thing to watch in the coming weeks is what kind of consequences the customs officers face for violating the court orders; contempt-of-court orders are already underway.

Question that maybe the lawyers here can answer: if the officials are cited for contempt, can Trump just pardon them?

I think it's pretty clear that, if DHS officers see the threat of direct personal consequences for violating court orders, they're going to be a lot less likely to violate court orders. But if they don't, they're not.

[Cait]

“In the case of the president, he has a broad ability to organize the White House the way he wants to. He also has, frankly, the power of the pardon,” Gingrich said. “It’s a totally open power. He could simply say, ‘Look, I want them to be my advisers. I pardon them if anyone finds them to have behaved against the rules. Period. Technically, under the Constitution, he has that level of authority.”

[beatbandito]

I forget where Gingrich stands now and legitimately can't tell if that statement is purposefully scary, or is supposed to be matter-of-fact about the things Trump can do.

Edit: I am aware that clicking the link answers that, it's a statement on where we are right now.

[Yoji]

Reuters has an idea on how to cover The Bastard's administration: the same way they do for the other authoritarians they cover.

[Mongrel]

AP: Trump just threatened to invade Mexico

Uh.

UHHH.

[Wheels]

That is an awfully alarmist summary of an unconfirmed comment from a not otherwise disclosed conversation.

[Thad]

“In the case of the president, he has a broad ability to organize the White House the way he wants to. He also has, frankly, the power of the pardon,” Gingrich said. “It’s a totally open power. He could simply say, ‘Look, I want them to be my advisers. I pardon them if anyone finds them to have behaved against the rules. Period. Technically, under the Constitution, he has that level of authority.”

Yeah, the first half-hour of The Diane Rehm Show corresponded exactly to my morning commute. I heard that episode and that's exactly what I was thinking of.

(I miss Diane quite a lot already but I can't fault her for retiring; by the end she had a voice like Hans Moleman and it seemed like about 40% of the time somebody else had to fill in for her.)

Reuters has an idea on how to cover The Bastard's administration: the same way they do for the other authoritarians they cover.

Yeah, I saw that earlier today and it's pretty much fucking perfect. I particularly like this part:

Give up on hand-outs and worry less about official access. They were never all that valuable anyway. Our coverage of Iran has been outstanding, and we have virtually no official access. What we have are sources.

Journalists' fear of losing access isn't the biggest problem with the news media over the past couple of decades, but it's in the top five.

I remember an episode of The Daily Show where Woodward and Bernstein were guests. I distinctly remember that when Stewart asked what had gone wrong with journalism since their day, Carl went into a lengthy response about how journalists today are too concerned about their access to speak truth to power.

Bob didn't show any outward signs of squirming, but I can't imagine he was happy with how that conversation went.

That is an awfully alarmist summary of an unconfirmed comment from a not otherwise disclosed conversation.

True. It's best to keep our skeptic hats on.

I think it's entirely possible that the conversation happened exactly as described. But there's no proof.

The shit that we know about is weird enough without wasting mindspace on unsubstantiated allegations.

[Mongrel]

That is an awfully alarmist summary of an unconfirmed comment from a not otherwise disclosed conversation.

Noted rumourmongers, The Associated Press.

I mean, I get what you're saying, and some skepticism is warranted in any "unconfirmed" situation, but how likely do you think it is that a Mexican official senior enough to plausibly claim to have seen such a transcript would make it up for their AP contact, and manage to do so in such a perfectly Trump-like manner.

[Mongrel]

I'm gonna be the best commander-in-chief, the greatest

[Brantly B.]

My first reaction was a flippant "But what about Benghazi???" but I can't maintain that level of detachment from this. God have mercy.

[Yoji]

If this is the same clusterfuck I'm thinking about, one of the civilian deaths includes an 8-year-old girl who was shot in the neck.

#SickOfWinning