Comment by mytailorisrich
16 days ago
Sometimes something does not make sense because we don't see or understand the big picture and what people are trying to achieve, and thus it literally does not "make sense".
Trump is neither stupid nor insane and he will have access to many very smart people, too. Based on that the reasonable assumption is that they are trying to achieve a well-defined objective and have set a plan in motion to do so.
The "game" is thus to figure it out. @ggm's comment above is one possibility.
There are two issues with this thinking:
1. It is authoritarian. Democratically elected leader's duty is to present the policies he plans to implement so that voters can decide if they want them implemented.
2. It is based on the "4D chess" myth - that the leader is way smarter than the rest and is capable of outsmarting other countries. The history shows that it is never true. The leaders are normal people. And the institutions are as good as the founding principles that are honored by them.
(1) is you not liking it, not that it isn't the case. Whether it is authoritarian or not is besides the point. (2) I am not claiming that they can "outsmart" anyone, just that the objective and plan may not be publicly or explicitly stated, or even that what is publicly stated is not the real objective (this is not "4D chess" this is actually how things tend to be in practice from politics to business).
(1) Bypassing the judicative branch is authoritarian.
(2) You just claimed trump has access to smart advisors and some hidden masterplan but you ignore all counter indication. He ousts critical journalists, nominates incompetent staff, invasion-mongers, tweets and plays golf alot.
If i can see any common factor in his insanity, its the need to have an enemy to pose as the strong man against, which indicates that trump does not have a constructive vision for the US.
> Democratically elected leader's duty is to present the policies he plans to implement so that voters can decide if they want them implemented.
That's 100% not true. A candidate leader might tell you what they're going to do, and then you elect the leader, and then they do them, but they don't propose plans once in power to see if the electorate like them.
As much as I'm not a Trump fan, I really don't like that people use a separate yardstick to measure him vs people they like.
There is a fine line between democratic leadership and authoritarianism.
Public consultations and transparency are two crucial and lately very under appreciated parts of democracy.
If a leader cheats the voters it is no longer democracy.
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1) heads of state can in fact be incredibly incompetent 2) the goal could entirely be 'stay in power' (which can also be implemented incompetently!)
The UK for a good few years had a government which had both these attributes. They were only interested in policies which would appeal to their base, but eventually even those soured on them because the policies were implemented so badly.
"Very smart people"
https://nitter.net/KushDesai47/status/1907618136444067901
Occam’s razor is specifically a counter to this.
The simplest solution is the right one. You are projecting intelligence, because you are used to.
This is AFTER the US government has roundly fired thousands of their experts and workforce, AND has just told everyone of its intelligence and army rank and file that there are no repercussions for a massive dereliction of duty.
AND IT IS ONLY APRIL.
On the contrary, in context I believe my comment is actually the simplest explanation. Claiming that the US government is insane while we, as random members of the public know better, is certainly not the simplest explanation...
It does not imply that what they are doing is a good idea or will work (whatever the objective is), just that there is more rational thought in what they are doing than what people might assume because the public does not have the information and seeing through what is going on requires insights that most people don't have, either.
Again, check @ggm comment above. I am not saying that this is what is going on but it is a possibility, and an average member of the public would never think of that scenario and thus wouldn't see the order in the apparent chaos.
> Claiming that the US government is insane while we, as random members of the public know better
Not insane, incompetent.
The problem with primarily hiring sycophants from his favorite cable news channel is that he's not getting the best, even from the GOP. This also makes him even more susceptible to people with their own agendas like Musk since no one is willing to pushback.
You don't need much background in Economics to understand that blanket tariffs hurt companies that rely on imports and exports and lead to higher prices. They used an LLM to come up with a formula that's just the trade deficit when you simplify it and called it "tariffs charged to the USA".
Curious - what would count as a non-average member of public?