[FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

[Marcus Daniels]

People like Barr and Pompeo are happy to exploit the consequences of Trump’s financial desperation for their authoritarian agenda.  Authoritarianism is not an uncommon personality trait – they would find support in the population.  Trump just wants to be the winner, but at any cost.   At some level it is just ridiculous.   But he sees ruin on the horizon and his family sees ruin on the horizon.   With the people around him, it is a dangerous situation.  Hopefully Biden has deep allies in government from his long career and isn’t just bluffing with his current sense of calm.

To resist a plausible scenario like you lay out, enough people need to wake up and plan how to stop them.   They would have to admit that norms have collapsed and their countrymen had just gone insane.   It is stupid to be goaded into open violence, but if things really went off the rails, I think it is naive to believe violence could be completely avoided.

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2020 3:11 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

So at some point, too, though, there are actual facts and things and events in the world, which aren’t just cut from the fabric of human impression and attitude.

Suppose the following; as I was walking thisPM, after finally watching the Van Jones TED that Glen circulated, it seemed quite believable to me.

1. Suppose what Van sketches is actually the plan.  Trump plans to instigate a constitutional crisis.  I think he is capable of planning to that degree of complexity and on that time horizon.  And I have no reason in the world not to think Bill Barr would be down with the lark, and could advise him on the law to do it.  I’m not sure Pompeo has the same background, but in character I expect he would think it is a great idea.

2. Then we wind up in congress.  He doesn’t have a huge margin; there are only 26 republican representatives (or whatever the name is for them).  So he really needs them all.  That’s what the last four years has been for.  Figure out who has any other levers besides greed of fear, and get them out.  Keep Graham and Cruz and all the rest like them, who are amoral and predatory, and Collins and her ilk who can be terrorized.

3. Suppose people decide to object, and want to take to the streets.  Really a terrible time to have Esper running DOD.  He wouldn’t sic the US armed forces on them.  So find some quasi-fascist brigadier general who thinks might is not merely right, but Everything.  Of course, you have to goad people and try to provoke them, so that the lower-downs in the military will be willing to take orders, not because they think the orders are moral, but because they feel threatened and are trying to protect themselves and each other.  That’s always how you co-opt soldiers.

I look at the footage of old civil rights protestors, singing, dancing, and clapping while being herded into paddy wagons, after generations of abuse, and I cannot imagine a large cross-section of Americans today with the discipline to do the same if provoked.  So goading a few people into violence, and then using that to excuse a military lockdown, doesn’t seem out of reach.

Does anyone, anywhere, think the thing to make this unrealistic would be trump’s getting cold feet or having qualms?  If so, then I think that person is on the wrong side of a factual evaluation that has nothing to do with values or character.  One of the two positions is right.

The rest is really a calculation.  How degraded are the other needed actors, and how wide is the margin of error for the ones who would try it?  There people could have opinions deriving from their own characters or their beliefs in the characters of others, which I can easily see disagreeing.  It also may not have a deterministic answer, but boil down to accidents of circumstance.  So the disagreement could reasonably reflect this too.

Dunno.  If you can read enough news to know that S. Korea exists, how can your intelligence lead you to believe either that trump and co have done this well, or that if they haven’t it’s no big deal?  That to me does not seem to be a question about ideology.

Eric




On Nov 11, 2020, at 5:50 PM, Stephen Guerin <stephen.guerin at simtable.com<mailto:stephen.guerin at simtable.com>> wrote:

Marcus,

Do you have close friend or family member with strong character and high intelligence that is also a Trump voter? My brother-in-law is a submarine captain. It was helpful to have a 3-hour call with him last night.

I come away with the idea that his mental model is not opposed to mine...it's more of a dual to mine on which future Action can be defined :-)

-Stephen

On Wed, Nov 11, 2020 at 11:35 AM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com<mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
Roger writes:

< These people weren't voting for rascism, misogyny, narcissism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, gimp shaming, science denialism, or all that other baggage, they were overlooking it for reasons. >

Many of those that could not work due to COVID restrictions are often in battleground or red states.   That’s the only way I can possibly begin to rationalize the 71 million.  To me, overlooking those things is unacceptable.   It’s not useful to exercise any empathy for them.   They made a deal with the devil.   It should have been a win by 50 million, not 5 million.

Marcus
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