I like that Trump is a game-changer, a disrupter, a practitioner of what I see as “crafted chaos.” Our stale system and its corrupted processes are in need of disruption.
To me, much of the blowback that Trump gets is a reaction to all this disruption, to the establishments he challenges in both parties and to a news media that was, for at least a year, planning extensive and glowing coverage celebrating the first female commander in chief. Trump spoiled that, too, and they are not pleased.
Bonfire of the Insanities
Satire, commentary, analysis—throw it all out the window. What’s happening in Washington is beyond parody, beyond fiction. What will happen tomorrow, what will happen in the next hour? No one knows.
.. Trump doesn’t want stability, he wants motion. He isn’t interested in details or arguments, he’s energized by accomplishments, achievements, placards on the wall. He doesn’t have a cabinet, he has employees. And the primary job of those employees is to protect their boss.
.. Which is what Anthony Scaramucci understands. Like Trump, he’s a showman. Larger than life. He’s familiar with grand gestures. He’s not a D.C. guy.
.. So the man whom the voters brought in to disrupt Washington brought in Scaramucci to disrupt his own White House. Well, mission accomplished.
.. I have been reading past issues of National Review, including bound volumes from 1977-1981. I do not know whether Donald Trump fits the historian’s model of a “disjunctive” president like Jimmy Carter, but the two chief executives do share this in common: Both campaigned as outsiders, both brought fellow outsiders with them to Washington, and these coteries of trusted advisers did not mesh with the institutions and personalities and manners they found in the city. In both cases there was a culture clash, apparent from the beginning. It soon became apparent that Carter’s presidency was not only dysfunctional, but a failure.
Trump-Putin Will Talk Against Backdrop of Broader Russian Mischief
Debate over Russia’s role in 2016 election blurs larger picture
Less obvious, but more important, is how any Russian meddling in the American presidential-election season—whatever form it may have taken—fits into a much larger tale. This is the tale of a systematic Russian effort to disrupt democratic and capitalist systems internationally, using an updated version of tactics Mr. Putin learned in the bad old days of the Soviet KGB... The Playbook is an in-depth study of Russian efforts to use overt and covert tactics over a period of a decade to expand its economic and political influence in five Central and East European nations. A group of regional leaders from such nations warned President Barack Obama in a 2009 letter—which also looks prescient now—that Russia was conducting “overt and covert means of economic warfare, ranging from energy blockades and politically motivated investments to bribery and media manipulation in order to advance its interests….”..The Russian strategy, the study finds, isn’t ad hoc. Rather, it is the implementation of a doctrine developed by Russian Gen. Valery Gerasimov called “new generation warfare.” One European analyst called that “primarily a strategy of influence, not of brute force” aimed at “breaking the internal coherence of the enemy system.”.. 1) The first track is economic. Russia seeks to find business partners and investments that allow it to establish an economic foothold, which in turn produces economically influential patrons and partners who have a vested interest in policies friendly to the Kremlin. That is a particularly fruitful endeavor in Europe, where many nations depend on Russian energy supplies.The goal on this track is to cultivate “a network of local affiliates and power-brokers who are capable of advocating on Russia’s behalf.”
2) The second track, perhaps more relevant to the U.S., is designed to disrupt prevailing democratic political patterns. The goal, the Playbook says, is “to corrode democracy from within by deepening political divides and cultivating relationships with aspiring autocrats, political parties (notably nationalists, populists and Euroskeptic groups), and Russian sympathizers.”
.. “an acceleration” of Russian influence-seeking, ranging from a plot against the prime minister of Montenegro to interference in the French election to cyberattacks in Ukraine.
‘Bannon’s War’ Review: Captain Chaos
A ‘Frontline’ documentary looks at the life and career of Trump’s chief strategist.
The subject of this documentary has never yielded in his regard for the infliction of shock and chaos as a political tactic, according to the commentators, mainly journalists, assembled for “ Bannon’s War,” a “Frontline” film on the life and career of Steve Bannon... an enduring belief in the value of chaos and disorder to undermine the establishment, usurp its power... he ran for student body president and won a surprise victory by running on a platform in which he attacked his rivals as tools of the administration—of the establishment—and by claiming for himself the mantle of “an outsider.”.. The young Bannon who emerges from this background is an omnivorous reader—a devourer, especially, of philosophy and history that yielded clues to the future. Future calamities, in particular. No danger preoccupied him more than the one posed by the Islamic world, which would in his view forever be a mortal threat to the West... nothing would have greater impact on him than the Sept. 11 attacks, proof to him of Islam’s continuing war against Western civilization... had lost none of his ingrained belief in the value of disruption... Mr. Bannon and President Trump, the film notes, wanted the ensuing outrage, the protests, the shock and, not least, the media’s cameras. They were sending a message: Change had come; Trump was making good on his promises.