Donald Trump
May. 3rd, 2016 09:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretThe thing that scares me most about Donald Trump is that his ideas actually make sense. Not as, you know, good ideas, but as things that could happen.
Like, for the first six months after his I'm going to get Mexico to build the Wall comment, it struck me as ridiculous, a joke. How would he get Mexico to build the wall, committing so much money to something that's not particularly in their national interest?
And then he gave an answer: He said he would threaten to cut off remittances by Mexican immigrants to the US through US banks to Mexican banks if they didn't. And the liberal media devoted a day or so to just how evil a plan this was, to all the immigrants, many of them legal and some of them US citizens, who were dependent on remittances to support their families. And then they went back to snickering at the ridiculousness of the idea.
Not me. I listened to Trump's plan and to my horror I said "That might actually work." Not to my horror because I thought the plan was immoral, though it is. My horror is because a lot of Trump's rhetoric becomes clear in the light of that plan. Trump doesn't want to do most of the horrible things he says he's going to do, I realized. He's not a politician offering policy positions. They're just bargaining positions.
If a President Trump went to Mexico and said "If you don't build a wall, if you don't take responsibility for making sure your citizens don't cross our border illegally, we will cut off access to part of our financial system to you," well, the Mexican government might actually say "He's Donald Trump, he might not be bluffing. We'd better do what he says, because if he actually carries through on this threat, our people will suffer and they'll blame us." It's clear that this is true, because as soon as Trump revealed his plan to threaten remittances, the Mexican government fired its US ambassador- as if to say, we recognize the seriousness of this threat and we need someone more effective to oppose it.
This doesn't scare me because I think it's immoral, because when Trump threatens to do something like this it's not because he wants to hurt all those immigrants. He's threatening it because he knows it's a threat that will scare the Mexican government. It scares me because it's only one half of the scenario.
The other half is this: Mexico calls Trump's bluff, Trump is forced to actually pull the trigger on cutting off remittances, and Mexico retaliates by nationalizing all US industry in Mexico.
All of Trump's most outlandish campaign promises look like this if you know how to look. He's not promising the impossible. He's not pandering to peoples' base instincts. He's promising to risk the country's security on a series of high-risk/high-reward negotiating ploys. Which specific negotiating ploys he would actually undertake is less important.
This is Donald Trump's general MO. It's how he worked as a businessman, and you can look at how it turned out: For the first decade or so of his business career, he had a series of phenomenal successes, bigger and bolder and more massive than anyone thought was possible. And then the market fell and some of his projects failed and since the early 1990s no lender will lend Donald Trump money to build a building. Because that's how high-risk/high-reward strategies tend to play out, in the long run.
So what scares me about Donald Trump is not that he's making ridiculous promises with no chance of happening. What scares me is that he's declaring a willingness to do risky things that might actually have a chance of working, and he's claiming willing to pay the costs of those things not working.
But this time he's not betting with his own company money. This time he's proposing to bet the country.
That's why Donald Trump is so dangerous. Not because he's a potential fascist. Not because he's a preposterous incompetent. Because he's a gambler riding an inexplicable winning streak. We know how this story turns out.
Cruz/Fiorina '16!
or, hell, I'll settle for
Clinton/O'Malley '16
Like, for the first six months after his I'm going to get Mexico to build the Wall comment, it struck me as ridiculous, a joke. How would he get Mexico to build the wall, committing so much money to something that's not particularly in their national interest?
And then he gave an answer: He said he would threaten to cut off remittances by Mexican immigrants to the US through US banks to Mexican banks if they didn't. And the liberal media devoted a day or so to just how evil a plan this was, to all the immigrants, many of them legal and some of them US citizens, who were dependent on remittances to support their families. And then they went back to snickering at the ridiculousness of the idea.
Not me. I listened to Trump's plan and to my horror I said "That might actually work." Not to my horror because I thought the plan was immoral, though it is. My horror is because a lot of Trump's rhetoric becomes clear in the light of that plan. Trump doesn't want to do most of the horrible things he says he's going to do, I realized. He's not a politician offering policy positions. They're just bargaining positions.
If a President Trump went to Mexico and said "If you don't build a wall, if you don't take responsibility for making sure your citizens don't cross our border illegally, we will cut off access to part of our financial system to you," well, the Mexican government might actually say "He's Donald Trump, he might not be bluffing. We'd better do what he says, because if he actually carries through on this threat, our people will suffer and they'll blame us." It's clear that this is true, because as soon as Trump revealed his plan to threaten remittances, the Mexican government fired its US ambassador- as if to say, we recognize the seriousness of this threat and we need someone more effective to oppose it.
This doesn't scare me because I think it's immoral, because when Trump threatens to do something like this it's not because he wants to hurt all those immigrants. He's threatening it because he knows it's a threat that will scare the Mexican government. It scares me because it's only one half of the scenario.
The other half is this: Mexico calls Trump's bluff, Trump is forced to actually pull the trigger on cutting off remittances, and Mexico retaliates by nationalizing all US industry in Mexico.
All of Trump's most outlandish campaign promises look like this if you know how to look. He's not promising the impossible. He's not pandering to peoples' base instincts. He's promising to risk the country's security on a series of high-risk/high-reward negotiating ploys. Which specific negotiating ploys he would actually undertake is less important.
This is Donald Trump's general MO. It's how he worked as a businessman, and you can look at how it turned out: For the first decade or so of his business career, he had a series of phenomenal successes, bigger and bolder and more massive than anyone thought was possible. And then the market fell and some of his projects failed and since the early 1990s no lender will lend Donald Trump money to build a building. Because that's how high-risk/high-reward strategies tend to play out, in the long run.
So what scares me about Donald Trump is not that he's making ridiculous promises with no chance of happening. What scares me is that he's declaring a willingness to do risky things that might actually have a chance of working, and he's claiming willing to pay the costs of those things not working.
But this time he's not betting with his own company money. This time he's proposing to bet the country.
That's why Donald Trump is so dangerous. Not because he's a potential fascist. Not because he's a preposterous incompetent. Because he's a gambler riding an inexplicable winning streak. We know how this story turns out.
Cruz/Fiorina '16!
or, hell, I'll settle for
Clinton/O'Malley '16
(no subject)
Date: 2016-05-03 06:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-05-03 09:14 pm (UTC)How easy would it be for Trump, if elected, to turn these ideas into action? Can the President of the United States actually make that threat to Mexico of cutting off remittances - would Congress support it?
(no subject)
Date: 2016-05-03 09:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-05-03 09:36 pm (UTC)