Malevolence Tempered by Incompetence | Hacker News Reader

Malevolence Tempered by Incompetence

lawfareblog.com

76 pointsTorKlingberg22 comments

A really important point from the article:

Put simply, I don’t believe that the stated purpose is the real purpose.

This is a ban on Muslims under another cover, it has no practical purpose, and that's what makes it malevolent. Like the fact that it was released on Holocaust memorial day, and the statement on that day omitting to mention jews for no discernable reason, it is intended to demonstrate absolute power, and to inculcate a feeling of helplessness in any that oppose the administration or belong to groups they do not respect.

I now believe it is a prelude to much worse. This is why trump has moved from being a political opponent to a moral enemy for many people these last few days.

> it has no practical purpose

“One Trump friend and adviser, Tom Barrack, said the president has indicated that the immigration order serves two purposes: one, to keep a potential terrorist out, but two to send a signal to the larger Middle East that the countries there need to take control of the situation at home and stop using a flood of refugees as a bargaining chip to pressure the West.”

(Note: not agreeing with the stated purposes, just pointing them out as hypothesised motivations.)

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-01-30/trump...

> Rudy W. Giuliani said President Trump wanted a “Muslim ban” and requested he assemble a commission to show him “the right way to do it legally.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/29/tr...

Well, this strongly implies it is a muslim ban under another cover:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/29/tr...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9GKL6i38pI

Oh my god, that video they are advocating and conflating Muslims with criminals that should be deported or put into detention centres. What the actual fuck?

Why is it only 7 Muslim countries then? Why not all of them?

To try to confuse and disarm partisan Democrats and legitimise by comparison - they clearly had that line about it being Obama's list prepared.

Plus you've got to start somewhere, they had plans to expand the list. Remember Trump would have preferred to ban all muslims, he was quite explicit about this.

Those countries come from a terrorist watch list from the previous administration, 'countries of concern' is the collective term, as used in the order.

I suggest you read the executive orders, more than the news about it.

The other ones do buy weapons from the US.

Trump has businesses in many others

It's claimed that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. The current presidency seems to be a troubling mixture of both.

Experience often tempers incompetence, but there's no such hope for malice. Given what we've seen so far of Trump's autocratic tendencies (issuing executive orders rather than passing legislation), there's plenty more of both to come...

The author views this from a utilitarian point of view. As he seems to view torture under the same point of view, I have very mixed feelings about this. There should be lines not to cross, no matter what.

I've got to both agree and disagree with this point.

On the one hand I'd agree with you on the point of speaking out against torture from a moral perspective (further, from a utilitarion perspective as well because it doesn't work[0]).

On the other hand, I think the point is more emphatic because even on utilitarian grounds, this policy doesn't make any sense, so the only logical argument is malevolence. I'd say this is a more chilling proposition, especially when stated by someone who has the views he admitted to having.

[0] http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674743908

I agree, but the point appears to be to prove how far afield trump has gone in the authors eyes. He's demonstrating that he's not intrinsically opposed to anti terrorism policies, even unsavory ones, to emphasize how bad this one is. Rhetorically I think it was a pretty effective point.

I think you misunderstand what he's saying. He's not saying torture is justified, or that it isn't, or that it achieved anything worth achieving, he's saying that the people who instituted torture used it against the people they said they were going to use it against, etc. That they were honest about it.

Trump is a high functioning sociopath. You cannot convince him with appeals to morality, but his ego might be convinced if you let him know he's gonna be judged when it doesn't work.

It does say something about Trump when an individual with that pedigree is that vehemently opposed.

One weird thing is the way it doesn't ban Muslims from the countries which are primary exporters of anti-American violence: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE and Lebanon.

And pulling out the hundreds of military bases from foreign lands could be a way to resolve the "why is our oil/resource under their soil" intrigue, along with reducing anti-american violence.

It's not weird. They are 1) the US's closest allies, who we enable to repress their own populations, and 2) Trump probably has major business ties in those places, as do most wealthy westerners.

The countries are the ones identified as high risk by the Obama administration.

I posted this after seeing it linked in several other places. To me, the key quote is this one:

In other words, this is not a document that will cause hardship and misery because of regrettable incidental impacts on people injured in the pursuit of a public good. It will cause hardship and misery for tens or hundreds of thousands of people because that is precisely what it is intended to do.

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