Bannon wanted it this way
Dan Drezner raises the question: was The Ban incompetence or malevolence?
He starts with saying it was Bannon’s baby, which seems to be generally accepted. Next, The Ban is a disaster. Then he points out that Bannon is definitely not stupid. Agreed…so I wonder what it can be like for him having to baby and cajole the amazingly stupid Trump.
So why did not-stupid Bannon perpetrate a disaster?
The most plausible story to assume in this instance is incompetence. Ordinarily, when the federal government does something stupid, it’s best to assume incompetence rather than malevolence. This is Bannon’s first week in a White House job and, like most other really smart people who lack high-level government experience, there will be a lot of rookie mistakes at the outset. The Trump administration will be different from past administrations on a lot of dimensions, but screwing up in the first few months is not one of them. This is particularly true given the abject lack of government experience among Trump’s White House staff. Maybe this is just a case of smart people doing stupid things because they are inexperienced.
But smart people know when they’re inexperienced, and they know they need to act accordingly, at least to some extent. They don’t barge ahead at 500 miles an hour, dodging a rain of pitchforks and slop buckets. That would go double or triple or more when the experience in question is managing the government of the United States.
He did it out of malice and “Leninist” destructiveness. He did it because he’s a shit.
Drezner quotes Kevin Drum:
In cases like this, the smart money is usually on incompetence, not malice. But this looks more like deliberate malice to me. Bannon wanted turmoil and condemnation. He wanted this executive order to get as much publicity as possible. He wanted the ACLU involved. He thinks this will be a PR win….
[B]oth sides think that maximum exposure is good for them. Liberals think middle America will be appalled at Trump’s callousness. Bannon thinks middle America will be appalled that lefties and the elite media are taking the side of terrorists. After a week of skirmishes, this is finally a hill that both sides are willing to die for. Who’s going to win?
I don’t even particularly think Bannon thought it would be good for them – I think he just thought it would be fun. It’s trolling writ large.
I can more or less understand calling Bannon ‘not stupid’ – though I’m not completely sold on it – but smart? By comparison to Trump I suppose he is a genius, but… that’s Trump.
False dichotomy.
It’s amazing, and quite appalling, how many Trump supporters are screaming that he’s keeping his promise. As if keeping a bad promise is a good thing.
I’ve always told friends since pre Gulf War 2 that governments and some businesses were complicit in making the population of the west fearful because a fearful population are more easily manipulated and controlled. Many people not only allow their rights to be taken away in the name of security, they’ll actually throw them away.
I never thought it would be quite as blatant or successful a strategy as it has become. The ‘funny’ thing being that governments have acted in concert with terrorists to achieve the same outcome.
One of the things that worries me is what this is leading to in the end. Trump’s antics are creating a wonderful screen for anything other Republicans are doing, because in most places (not here) they are going unnoticed. I’m sure this fact has not escaped their attention, and they figure they can run around behind Trump as long as the public is willing to pay attention to the antics of the clown.
It’s like that gorilla video – we’re so busy watching the basketball, we miss the gorilla. Which is more worthy of note?
At least Ophelia has the ability to notice the ringmaster, even while keeping track of the showboat behavior of the clown.
It would be almost reassuring to think that SOMEWHERE in the circus, a sane, competent Evil Mastermind was at work.
I don’t think so. A panoply of political loonies, from libertarians to ‘leninists,’ have hitched their wagons to the Big Cheeto. Their greed, and malevolent spite, won’t permit them to let go.
Oh, I don’t think there is any sane competent mastermind behind what the Republicans in Congress are doing. I think they’re just shredding things out of the sheer delight of shredding things – especially things that help people they don’t like. They don’t bother with looking at consequences, because they are pretty sure that the consequences will be good – for them. They are just like Trump in most ways. Greedy narcissists who believe they accomplished every single thing they’ve done without a single person helping them along, and who believe they are entitled to rule, and entitled to be rich, and entitled to have nice things, even at the expense of anyone else having nice things (or maybe especially at the expense of anyone else having nice things). They might have noticed that the attention was on Trump, so they decided to throw a bit of poop around while no one’s looking at them. Then, when everyone loses interest in Trump, and they’re standing there with poop all over themselves, they will blame it on the Democrats. It’s their usual technique.