Trump completely directionless?

I've seen some posts today pointing some interesting things. While Trump is terribly racist and fascist, there are white supremacists and Nazis for whom he does not go far enough. There are far-right kooks who think Trump is not far enough right. Some pointed out he is too much of a capitalist to go that far, that in looking out for his bottom line, he avoids too much extremism because he'd start losing money.

On the other hand, he seems to have no financial goal for the country. Constantly flipping tariffs on and off, switching "buckets." Making propositions that any businessman would know is completely unrealistic. He has no idea how to be a capitalist either, it seems! So is he completely directionless? He just kinda goes wherever feels good to him at the moment? Is he possibly in some kind of cognitive decline, unable to make reasonable decisions, but since his base worships him no one can take the reins from him?

22 comments

His goal is bringing back manufacturing. He genuinely is pursuing that goal.
The problem is, they don't know how to do it. They have no plan. And every possible option that exists is either against their ideology or comes with so much pain they're unwilling to bear it. This is created by the conditions, the Chinese have the winning hand in every conceivable way.
The border shit is going pretty smoothly for them though.
- This is what happens when you allow your ideologically driven state to drive all critical thinking out of universities.
  They literally don’t have any more ideas because neoliberalism didn’t tolerate other ideas.

He's pretty good at manipulating the market for insider trading.
The purpose of a thing is what it does. Man's grifted his whole life. Grift doesn't stop after becoming president

After a lot of stress, far too much time staring at screens for my physical and mental health, and attempts to understand our stupid financial system, my conclusion is that he's caught in the middle of a tug of war between the technofeudalists and the war hawks. The technofeudalists are okay with international train so long as the line continues to go up and they consume a larger piece of the pie. There was an initial strain of thought among this group that the tariffs could be used as a bargaining chip to weaken regulations (especially around social media) abroad as part of negotiations. They originally signed on to the tariffs, realized very quickly that that wasn't going to work, so now they're demanding that the tariffs get rolled back to bring the line back up.
The war hawks are okay with crashing the economy so long as enough industry is reshored to keep the war machine going against Iran and/or China. This is why Trump is ranting about semiconductors and rare earths, because someone told him we need that stuff to keep the bombs growing. They want this to happen on probably an impossibly compressed timeline because they have yet to wake up to the fact that China outplayed them the US would likely lose any war that it attempts to start.
Caught in the middle are the run-of-the-mill finance ghouls who just want to make money uninterrupted and have taken to trying to persuade him through the press by issuing increasingly bleak predictions of economic disaster, even though Goldman Sachs just posted a record profit off the volatile market.
Trump's policies and what pass for official announcements about them flip depending on which camp talked to him last. The consensus emerging right now is that he'll eventually be pressured to drop the tariffs and things will go back to normal, except the decoupling of the global economy from the United States will accelerate as a result of the uncertainty and obvious incompetence. What time scale that starts playing out on and what the consequences will be, I have no idea.
- I've also read and discussed the two capitalist factions as the internationalist and the localists. International capitalists are financial and tech industries, generally favor the Democrats, and have been the larger influence on the government/economy since the fall of the USSR. The localists comprise heavy and light industry and extraction enterprises, like coal or logging. They generally favor the Republicans and have been losing power since the 70s and even worse since NAFTA. Agriculture, oil, and military industries would also count as "local", but their unique relationship with US diplomacy and hegemony means they'll side with whatever political is in control.
  The internationalists are in decline and I wouldn't be surprised is Musk and Thiel represent the tech part of that class abandoning "reasonable Democrats" for the Trump camp.
  
  Tech industries pivoted hard to republicans during the bush era, I feel like institutional tech being against trump 1.0 was an anomaly. After 9/11 they lobbied hard for the creation of the modern surveillance state
- Thank you, your sacrifice is not in vain
  
  Thanks, I dunno if it was particularly useful, I think I got swept up in the early drama and it took me a minute to notice that a lot of what is happening -especially in the stock market - is mostly some cheap theatrics. This is having an accelerating effect on trends that are already in motion but the timelines are still long and I'm not sure this is going to be The Big One all the talking heads are nattering about.

trust the plan

Trump’s worldview is that everything is deals, and deals are zero sum game. There are no win-wins, only losers and winners. Anything he is doing in the moment is whatever he thinks positions himself best to be the winner in the deal. So I suspect he’s being erratic as a game of chicken, get the other countries to accept his terms as to get stability back.

Is he possibly in some kind of cognitive decline, unable to make reasonable decisions, but since his base worships him no one can take the reins from him?
I mean that's what everyone was saying about Biden, except for the worshiping part.
- And I think Biden was in decline. Not to excuse anything he did, just as he freezes and jumbled his word. Not shame for being in decline, but maybe don't be the president at that point.

For a lot of his stated goals he's just making shit up on the spot really. Only thing he's effective in fast tracking fascist actions but for the rest? There is no plan. They switch up strategy on damn near every action day to day.

All I know is every day it continues, I lose belief in "the deep state". Turns out you really can just openly grift your way into being president and do whatever you want as long as you get a couple of friends into the jobs that would look into your crimes. Hell, you don't even have to do that! Dems won't do anything about anything. I don't even think we're close to the angry mob/pitchfork moment either. There are still treats.
Not trying to be a doomer, just trying to point out that there doesn't really seem to be a shady cabal of lizard people running the world after all.
- I think a large part of the deep state genuinely buys into Trump's bullshit.
- The "deep state" that actually exists, and the original usage of the term, is the various agencies made up of hired functionaries that persist between administrations. They aren't some sort of cabal calling the shots, but possess institutional inertia which keeps things going in a certain direction. Trump blowing up the NOAA is an example of dismantling the deep state, for instance, though I don't know if it's being presented as such. Other than HAARP conspiracy weirdos I don't think anyone's too concerned about the people who track hurricanes being evil.

I think he really is just trying to line the pocket of his and his kind. Probably combined with cognitive decline meaning he's having a harder time hiding it.
- I'm in the hes trying to rug pool the American economy boat lol.
  He's just super fucking cynical, grew up rich in the greediest generation. He's just doing a financial fraud publicly because he knows he'll get away with it. He's not ideological about the right wing stuff (social at least of course he's a capitalist), he just wants to make money
  Now is that also scary? yeah he's a fucking psychopath. No scruples no convictions, will kill for money if that's the easier path forward for scamming
  
  He's a white supremacist and spends money furthering white supremacy, so there's that

22 comments