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This is the key thing. There’s no way to reconcile the presentation on here with any mainstream narratives about him unless he’s also the world’s greatest and most restrained actor as well.
Trumps not hitler. Trumps not a wannabe dictator (sorry @Amadan). Trumps not senile. Trumps not a dimwitted lazy slob whose world view comes from watching cable news all day. Trumps not a paper thin egotist who doesn’t really like America or hold policy positions. Trumps not a phony fake executive who can’t actually think business.
But also Trumps not a genius. Trumps not a conservative. Trumps not a particularly visionary thinker or populist leader.
That leads to the obvious question: What is Trump?
A 90s pre-NAFTA Democrat who survived to the current day in his old age.
As the line says, you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villian.
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He’s a showman and a patriot.
He’s the reincarnation of PT Barnum, running a rally at Barnum’s own Madison Square Garden. He’s a dealmaker from Queens. He’s someone who took the silver spoon he was given and made the most of it. He’s the average non-ideological American who never really thought about partisan politics until it started affecting him.
He’s a husband and father whose family saw him almost get killed several months ago.
He’s a political moderate who came in as an outsider at a time when Americans wanted an outsider and Bernie had been taken down by the ultimate insider, “Crooked Hillary” Clinton. He’s an anti-woke political moderate who’s seen the beast from the inside, and wants another stab at its blackened heart. He’s the kind of man who believes in strength and power and expects to be lauded for using them for common-sense win-win goals. He’s the kind of American the founders imagined standing next to kings and holding his own.
When everyone else is playing chess, he’s prepping a pro-wrestling move that’ll knock the board over. If Ted Cruz is Batman, Trump is Superman.
Huh? You're talking about a man with ~6 corporate bankruptcies. He made the worst of the several hundred million dollars he inherited.
He also had four years of control of America’s executive branch and armed forces, at the time an exclusive club of 45 men throughout history. A quarter of Americans would willingly fight and die to return him to that control, were cheating provable. That’s riches.
He became a demagogue and rabble-rouser, and rode that to being a poor/mediocre president. I don't think that's related to his silver spoon, or making the most of it.
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I don't think among the superheroes Trump is a Superman. Superman is a Lawful Good with both qualities dialed to 11. Trump is more like Chaotic Good.
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One consistent thing about Trump is that he's of the belief that America has been getting a bad deal internationally and has had poor leadership. You can see this back in the 80's when he was on late night talk shows complaining about America's standing relative to Japan.
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He's my model of Trump:
He's a uniquely talented bullshitter who is also uniquely able to withstand a level of criticism and scorn which would break almost anyone.
He is above average intelligence, but certainly not extremely book smart. His energy and extroversion stats are maxxed out.
His intuitions are incredibly strong and he can't be fooled by other people's bullshit. So he often arrives intuitively at the correct conclusion (build the wall) long before others catch up using rational arguments. He actually is a talented negotiator.
In terms of motivations, he mostly wants personal glory, but he also loves America, and humanity more broadly. He wants peace and prosperity.
He's a bad coalition member. He won't play nice with the other kids unless he is the unquestioned leader. In 2017, he had an opportunity to bow to the uniparty in exchange for social acceptability, but he refused.
He's bad at making a plan and sticking to it. He mostly just goes with his gut, and that's worked for him so far, but it makes him an ineffective executive compared to someone like DeSantis.
This jives with my more general model of him:
He's basically a creature acting on instincts evolved over decades in one of the most competitive and cut-throat environments on the planet: New York Real Estate Development.
His long term survival in such an environment is proof positive that he is good at 'what he does.'
This is a refutation of the "4-D Chessmaster" model that nonetheless respects the fact that Trump is like a shark. Senses honed for finding blood in the water, efficiently targeting weakened prey, and killing and consuming them quickly. Every move is simply based on the innate drive for survival. No strategic thinking necessary. Also like a shark, he doesn't tend to maintain alliances very long, he goes off on his own inevitably.
Thus, even if Trump isn't a 'brilliant tactician' he can still perform well enough against a fractured, weakened, and incredulous enemy that tries to model him as a more standard threat.
It worked so well for him for so many years, it did not take much adaptation to bring it into the political arena, and it turns out that politicians themselves were ripe prey, and they simply haven't adapted to this new type of predator.
Eventually something will come along that is either purpose built to beat a Trumpian candidate, or that has honed insticts that effectively counter him, and THAT will be the new apex predator.
FWIW I watched that recent Vince McMahon documentary and I got the exact same sense from him. I also get this sense from Elon Musk, but with a bit more strategic thinking afoot there.
Creatures that have almost no real 'existence' beyond their drive to compete and win at whatever game they've chosen. Their entire persona is in service of that goal at all times. Trying to understand who they 'really' are misses the point.
This seems exactly right and I dunno from this if you're voting for him or not, so maybe it's a characterisation people on both sides can agree to. I also agree that a new apex predator will emerge (the Marlo to his Stringer Bell) but the interesting thing is what they will have had to go through to be sharpened into such a new variety of shark. Although I really cannot see Musk as commanding much authority with either ordinary people or non-SV elites, I do think Silicon Valley could produce the right combination of brutal drive combined with (lying) idealistic rhetoric. There would need to be an extra ordeal or formative chapter in a candidate's background though for them to reach a broader audience. Vance in theory has both though I feel like he's speedrun poverty and tech too quickly to be adequately honed by either.
I disagree re Musk. The man has run several companies and has managed to build all of them to be successful, he’s created new technologies that weren’t even on the table before he showed up. Nobody in 2010 thought that you could reuse the launch phase of a rocket. Musk figured that out and can actually have one caught in midair at this point. He’s dreaming the future, except that when Musk says he wants to see it, it stands an above average chance of happening. You don’t think that if (when) a guy steps out of a SpaceX vehicle on friggin’ Mars that he’s not going to resonate with average people who will be seeing him as “commanding authority?” I can’t think of anything that would get blue collar voters in line like “when NASA was busy booking trips on Russian rockets, Musk went to Mars.” They like doers, big thinkers, and bold adventures.
I mean if he goes to Mars and back, then who knows. But he doesn't put people at ease and is not gifted as a communicator, so he's got quite a lot to overcome if he is going to get through all the normal gates political candidates go through (debates, speeches, interviews etc).
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I, too, am curious about Vance. It is possible 4 years in the White House will sharpen him even further.
I personally expect something new and 'interesting' to pop out of the Democratic party, eventually, their best hope is someone that can keep the social justice wing satisfied while also restoring populist appeal, I think, and that's going to take a unique set of traits, similar but not identical to what Obama brought to the table.
They won't be a 'standard' politician and will have a unique background, though, I can predict that.
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Who is Atlas?
At this point, I think, it doesn't matter who he really is: the hyperreal personae that the partisan public impose on him are more compelling than the authentic human being beneath it all.
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