Donald Trump Does Not Have a Plan
He has dictatorial desires. But not everything is a brilliant distraction or part of a cunning masterplan. Let’s not turn incompetent agents of malice into omnipotent supervillains.
Some thoughts from my new piece:
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https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts/70c12168-9b07-44a1-aadc-a4ced5a2d5aa
Donald Trump Does Not Have a Plan
He has dictatorial desires. But not everything is a brilliant distraction or part of a cunning masterplan. Incompetent agents of malice are not omnipotent supervillains.
Even now, prominent people suggest there is method to whatever Trump is doing – that it’s either all a cunning distraction from matters Trump wants to obscure or perhaps all part of a devious long-term scheme to erect a Trump dictatorship. I strongly disagree.
This regime is not systematically implementing a masterplan. We are dealing with chaotic destruction wrought by an increasingly delusional wannabe-dictator who leads a comically incompetent government and a movement drowning in its own conspiratorial hyperreality.
If we suspect coherence and foresight as the main drivers, we fail to understand the inner thinking of this regime. If we insist there must be strategic deliberation underneath the escalating chaos, we risk sanitizing what this government is doing and what fuels the man who leads it.
In this piece, I first examine why the assumption that everything this regime does is strategic in nature, either deliberately deceptive or part of a devious masterplan, is utterly implausible – and why other frameworks are a lot more helpful in grappling with the escalating chaos.
I also investigate why so many pundits and commentators are nevertheless clinging to the idea that there must be a secret scheme behind Trump’s actions, that everything he does is a clever distraction. What is it that makes such assumptions so appealing?
There is something faux-“savvy” about insisting that Trump’s actions are only ever intended as a distraction. “Look at me, I am not falling for it, I can see right through the deception!” But the “distraction” framework misunderstands why the regime acts the way it acts.
The idea that we are facing a competently scheming regime following a reliable playbook offers a form of mental relief – certainty amidst all the chaos. Our minds desire coherence. And if we have identified the playbook, we want to believe we know what is coming and can prepare.
Presenting Trump as a cunning, irresistible political force, a master manipulator, also creates a self-exculpatory tale: No one could have resisted him, so no one is to blame. It is attractive to both those who supported him and those who failed to stop him.
Finally, we may hesitate to foreground the chaos, the delusions, the incompetence because we don’t want to downplay the danger emanating from Trump and the MAGA regime. I am extremely sympathetic to this impulse.
Alas, the greatest danger now is not that they will systematically execute some complex secret masterplan, but that delusion, ideology, and ineptitude are conspiring to make escalation almost inevitable. Chaos, bloodlust, and zealotry breed destruction.
Beware of the coherence fallacy. We are not witnessing the early stages of a sophisticated scheme to erect dictatorship, but the horrifying result of fusing ideological bloodlust, religious zealotry, and a violent obsession with projecting “alpha-male” dominance.
Let us not overlook the immense threat right in front of us because we are obsessing over secret schemes and cunning deception.
Whatever MAGA’s version of scorched earth is, that’s what they will seek to unleash before they are done.
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https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts/70c12168-9b07-44a1-aadc-a4ced5a2d5aa
Donald Trump Does Not Have a Plan
He has dictatorial desires. But not everything is a brilliant distraction or part of a cunning masterplan. Incompetent agents of malice are not omnipotent supervillains.
@tzimmer_history
Trump is the figure head of a crazy cult of billionaires.
Trump doesn’t have a plan but these nut jobs do. Their ideas are unworkable despotic lunacy, but the plan is to wreck this country and rule on its ashes. They want it to break. They figure they will profit from it.
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @tzimmer_history Trump was meant to be no more than a wrecking ball to implement Project 2025 for the Heritage Foundation.
The billionaire fossil fuel lobbyists within the Atlas Network will exploit all the resources this world has for profit. They think they can use Ai to run things in a new world where poverty has been eradicated because the poor people have all been killed off.
There very much is a plan, but its not Trump's.
Thomas Zimmer
GhostOnTheHalfShell
MostlyTato