Great Read. Though Provoking.
Headline: Yes. Yes, he is. Yet the MM is trying to paint the narrative like he’s failing at everything. It’s like watching the Keystone Kops fight godzilla.
Your Point: Standard measurements of how he’s doing? Maybe not useless, so much as not on the menu. The MM isn’t using them. The MM is focused on what the Germans call raisin picking. They are looking for mistakes and weaknesses with hyper acuity, while he switches the cards with his other hand. The news reports we are getting of how the President is doing? Completely and absolutely worthless.
If they would cover the administration with a critical eye sans panic, we’d know more, panic less, and be able to judiciously oppose more effectively.
Standard means of opposition: Here standard measures aren’t useless. But there’s not going to be a “win” as a result of a standard measure. They can certainly slow him down though. The ACLU’s lawsuit was one example. And he’s had to narrow his focus to get a ban posted again. So standard measures of political opposition are just as important as figuring out the what’s in the other hand, up the sleeve and behind the curtain.
Deep Gov &NSC=FSB: Go a bit deeper. Truman distrusted the OSS because he said the presence of such an organization operating in the US, would be like having an American Gestapo. He wasn’t far off. Keep in mind, that it doesn’t matter who is in charge of it, but rather that American Spy Agencies operating in the US is the problem period. Bannon won’t get it. The man they picked won’t play puppet to him. He might listen to Priebus. This fear of Bannon is slightly overstated. The Deep gov if it becomes self aware so to speak is far more of a concern than Bannon. McCarthy never purged Congress. It was the Deep Gov he partially cleared out. But the GOP is certainly intact enough to oppose for now, if the adminstration gets out of hand.
Killing in the name of: If they start killing people in America, a la Russia, then the nation will need to act. I don’t see it happening though. Al-Alwaki’s killing was a mistake, and a dangerous overseas precedent, but he was directly engaged in making war against the United States. He should have been captured and tried for Treason. It’s not an indication that polonium tipped umbrellas are going to start being used to silence the opposition. The opposition is super loud. They are just dumb.
Kompromat: Ask Yiannopoulis. The elite engage in all sorts of unelectable behaviour. It’s part of their interclass warfare. They already do it.
Reality TV. Yes. Hey Rocky, watch me pull and EO out of my hat, nothing up my sleeve…but we’ve talked about that.
War Powers? No. The War Powers of the President are huge, but far more recently defined and limited than WWII. Here is a PDF from CIS describing that situation. From the forward “ With respect to domestic law, a declaration of war automatically triggers many standby statutory authorities conferring special powers on the President with respect to the military, foreign trade, transportation, communications, manufacturing, alien enemies, etc. In contrast, no standby authorities appear to be triggered automatically by an authorization for the use of force, although the executive branch has argued, with varying success, that the authorization to use force in response to the terrorist attacks of 2001 provided a statutory exception to certain statutory prohibitions.”
The international state of warring is not the same as declared war and Congress has a lot of leeway in controlling the executive. So far they haven’t reigned him in. They still could. For the time being.
Reichstag Fire: We already had it on 9/11 in 2001. We survived it.So did some of our freedoms and rights. But constant vigilance etc. 9/11 as the current animus to the travel ban as an example is easy to see. The Patriot Act is still in force, but the changes that have occured to our institutions are slow and large. Guantanom is still open, and the Executive has expanded their capabilities remarkably as a result. Al-Awlaki is one example.
It already happened. That doesn’t mean there couldn’t be another one.
Suspension of Rights: So far the courts aren’t cooperating with this and the administration is neither ignoring them, nor removing them but tailoring its EOs to make them legally sound. The ACLU hasn’ been harrased or arrested or disbanded. This is, considering that a big win is impossible until the Midterms Elections bring us to Yavin IV, as good as it’s going to get.
So there we have it. Please excuse my certainly flawed analysis of your analysis.
Theorizing along these lines is invaluable when analysing an adminsitration that thrives on the chaos of their opposition, and literally could go in any direction, rather than being restrained by tradition. Thank you again.
