what does trump want?

[luka]

lot of talk of the new world order being ushered in but what would it look like? whats the end goal? what would it look like?

 

[version]

Love, validation, respect and remuneration.

 

[luka]

for example with regard to europe? they say its not a concern of theres any more but as yyyyyyyyyyyyaldrin points out its riddled with american bases which presumably they want to keep. they want to europeans to pay more towards defence/nato, and they might get some traction in that area but do they really want or think they can have a self-reliant europe? i dunno. you tell me.

 

[luka]

do they want to break up the eu?

 

[luka]

do they support the far right in europe becase they share a beautiful dream or becasue it destablisies the eu project?

 

[luka]

the strong borders thing is pretty clear and the sense that mass migration is a threat to internal stability.
a lot of talk about ripping up international law too, altho that never applied to them in any case.

 

[luka]

what is their vision for russia? what role do they want russia to play? how strong do they want russia to be?

 

[luka]

with china it seems more clear cut. they want to 'beat' them. but how will they go about it?

 

[luka]

loss of faith in soft power, aid and development. how will this play out? what are the likely consequences?

 

[version]

I can't work out how cognisant Trump is of things like international politics. He seems to operate on impulse and be motivated by fairly base urges. The question, I suppose, is who's in his ear and really directing policy. I think Stephen Miller's still in favour.

 

[luka]

yeah, whos in his ear. what ideas is he picking and choosing from? i dunno. maybe he has his own very clear vision of how the world should work. hes inarguably A Man of Destiny.

 

[luka]

the conventional wisdom was europe should be under american control becasue it helps them secure the atlantic ocean and it helps pin russian down. also its a huge market and so on. do these things no longer hold true? does america really want to move on from this arrangement? i dunno you tell me.

 

[luka]

i do like the idea of them wanting to make europe more dependent on american energy imports in particular. try and cut them off from china and russia econmically so more euro moneys flow directly into american pockets.

 

[Murphy]

he wants us to pay, the long term strategic costs seem irrelevant

 

[Murphy]

Shakedown Street, pay up or we remove our legions

It’s not quite Britain in 407/410AD, we have even less choice now

 

[version]

 

[IdleRich]

I always think Trump is pretty much without ideology. People calling him a fascist miss that point, he's not a fascist he's just an arsehole, if he bans protest or whatever it's just to make things easier for him, not part of some totalitarian vision. That's not to say that he won't bring about fascism cos he surrounds himself with whoever he deems useful and if they want to bring about a Fourth Reich while helping him he doesn't really care.

So I don't know if he wants anything but to stay out of gaol, make money and have a warm place to shit. It's the people around him who might have vision (or visions) but presumably competing ones - I mean do Musk and Bannon want the same things? Only up to a point.

At the moment it's crazy exciting, like a spinning top that has to keep moving to stay upright... you always have people talking about poll ratings etc and saying he won't last or will be impeached etc and normally you can just ignore it cos what do poll ratings matter when he never has to face another election (unless...) but the situation does feel dynamic, he could collapse or America could collapse cos they accidentally fire the people preventing that... or maybe it could all pay off and Canada becomes the 51st state.

What's crazy is his army of slavish followers who will twist themselves into any knots to justify anything he does "we have always been at war with oceania" etc which conveys a certain base level of security.

 

[IdleRich]

I saw this thing on twitter about this woman who was a park ranger, Trump supporter etc lost her job cos of the cuts and was moaning about it. People replying were saying "I don't see a sidearm, how could she protect people? Justified cutting of the fat" - so you've got this thing where people can look at a picture of a person for three seconds and decide how good they must be at their job... if they need to to justify Trump's actions that is.

 

[version]

I always think Trump is pretty much without ideology. People calling him a fascist miss that point, he's not a fascist he's just an arsehole, if he bans protest or whatever it's just to make things easier for him, not part of some totalitarian vision. That's not to say that he won't bring about fascism cos he surrounds himself with whoever he deems useful and if they want to bring about a Fourth Reich while helping him he doesn't really care.

So I don't know if he wants anything but to stay out of gaol, make money and have a warm place to shit. It's the people around him who might have vision (or visions) but presumably competing ones - I mean do Musk and Bannon want the same things? Only up to a point.

Yeah, it's interesting. Maybe I'm overestimating how much of an ideologue someone like Hitler or Mussolini was, but Trump feels like something of an inversion of that kind of figure. Those guys seemed to operate as a solid core, projecting ideology outward, whereas Trump's more like the eye of a storm, a hollow centre, the ideology coming from those around him.

 

[IdleRich]

Absolutely... yeah it's hard to know. But Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, Trump wrote The Art of The Deal - and when I say wrote, I mean he dictated a bit and then likely got bored and let a ghostwriter finish it.