I think that you're overestimating Trump's ability to dismantle institutions, even if we stipulate that he's a machiavellian schemer who's successfully sowing chaos among his opponents by "destabilizing the narrative coherency."
If the US is in fact constantly on the brink of collapse, it sure is a wonder we made it this far.
Having a stated goal doesn't mean that you have the means to make that goal happen.
Also: You're just a dude on the internet, but you've apparently deciphered the evil scheme of this master of media manipulation. Are we supposed to believe that you're uniquely talented, or what?
Uh. He paraphrased, but could've just copy-pasted for same effect. Jeez man, just do a search before you challenge...
> “I’m a Leninist,” Mr. Bannon was quoted as saying by a writer for The Daily Beast who met him at a party in 2014. He later said he did not recall the conversation. “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too,” the site quoted him as saying. “I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/us/politics/stephen-bannon...
Bannon shot his mouth off at some point and made some grandiose claims about his goals. There's no particular reason we should believe them, and no particular reason we should think he's capable of those goals even if he does actually hold them, rather than being something he said to sound cool at a party.
But, if we accept for the moment that Bannon really is going to destroy the state by manipulating the media, and that we should take seriously for just one second that he might be capable of that, we find immediate direct evidence that he is in fact not capable of directing a secret conspiracy to manipulate the media after all: because he told people he was going to do it, got quoted by the media, and ended up in the crosshairs of people like you, who are now presumably going to be watching his sinister schemes and warning other people.
Dismantling institutions will not be done secretly, it is being done openly (which is what you initially seemed to doubt.) There's no secret conspiracy. Secret conspiracies are not the only thing a person could possibly be worried about.
> stated goal
and
> deciphered the evil scheme
very directly conflict as concepts. The above poster did not have to "decipher" anything because the goal is "stated."
At any rate, I wasn't saying that Trump is personally incompetent (I'm agnostic in that respect), and thus that he will not succeed in dismantling institutions. I'm saying that he's a figure within a Constitutional democracy with limited power, who does not have any kind of enormous political support, in a country with a long, stable government, and going up against entrenched interests.
Might he do some damage? Of course. But in general, Presidents break against the entrenched powers in Washington, not the other way around.
Four years from now, we'll have another election and probably Trump will be gone. Eight years from now, he'll definitely be gone. There's no sign that Trump has the ability to dismantle the government in the way that Putin did in Russia.
I hope it proves to be! Also I lol'ed at the integrity safe metaphor.
>I'm saying that he's a figure within a Constitutional democracy with limited power, who does not have any kind of enormous political support, in a country with a long, stable government, and going up against entrenched interests.
But to be serious, I think this response is making a number of dangerous assumptions, which I hear from a lot of moderate voices urging hope/non-alarm/give him a chance. To address them point by point:
- The power of the executive branch relative to the others has steadily risen in the modern era.
- I think he does have significant political support - the senate would likely have flipped if not for the party line support he generated.
- Our "long, stable government" is only 238 years old, not really that significant on any timescale, even compared to other governments in recorded history. And has already included a catastrophic civil war that almost ended it. It's a hard cognitive bias to buck, underestimating our society's fragility.
- Who are these entrenched interests he's going against? The "entrenched interests" of the left, well they may be entrenched, but they don't have trillions or even billions of dollars in their war chests. The actually powerful ones are all going to be represented on his cabinet.
Like I said, I hope I'm being wrong and alarmist, but it seems like the prudent side to err on.
Trump is the incoming president with the worst approval ratings in modern history, who lost the popular vote by a considerable margin, and did so after a lengthy public fight with the Republican leadership. He doesn't have "no" political support, certainly. But he doesn't have the kind of overwhelming popular support that might allow him to bend or break the rules that govern him with impunity, certain that his political enemies are too cowed to make a fuss.
238 years is a pretty long time by governmental standards. Our government is much older than Russia's, China's, France's, Germany's, Japan's, etc. Older than essentially every government in South America or Africa. The UK hasn't had an actual revolution in the last 238 years, but 238 years ago it was a genuine monarchy, and now it's not. Etc.
The entrenched interests of Washington are the government itself, and Congress, and they do have all the money they need. Also, money, it turns out, is not actually as big a deal as people would have you believe. Clinton's campaign outspent Trump's about 2:1.