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[Baffler]

Trump: I'mma gonna make a Muslim ban!
Most Americans: Don't! Also it'd be illegal.
Other Nations: Don't! Also it'd be illegal.
Trump Supporters: Nice! Set them on fire after!

Trump: Gigglyani, how do I ban Muslims legally?
Giuliani: Lol pretend it's about terrorism.
Trump: That's a GREAT way to ban Muslims!

Trump bans Muslims.

Trump: Yay everyone, I banned Muslims, I mean terrorists!
Most Americans: We know it's a Muslim ban, also this is illegal and wrong.
Other Nations: Holy shit he actually did it.
Trump Supporters: Thank you Trump for banning Muslims!
Also Trump Supporters: It's not a Muslim ban, and if it is, it was Obama's idea, and also we're safer now that we incensed many neutral or friendly nations and gave refugees a reason to want to join ISIS.

How many people do you know who would make the jump from "Fleeing the violent, crazy-eyed headchoppers in my homeland to a country thousands of miles away is going to be hard" to "I will join the headchoppers in exterminating the Yazidis, raping 8 year olds (or goats, if there aren't any little kids around,) and chopping people up until I get turned into a fine mist by a Russian airstrike."

Maybe there's some logic I'm missing there.

[Frumple]

The more you keep people bottled up with the headchoppers, the more likely they're going to either join up (to keep from getting chopped, because a russian airstrike gib is later and today is now) or turn into their own bunch of 'em. Either tends to end up a net negative for everyone.

Logic you're missing is PTTG doing the same thing conservatives do and using ISIS as a catchall for particularly violent insurrectionists, probably.

[PTTG??]

Baffeler, Thank you for taking the last statement, ("giving them a reason to join ISIS,") which I put in the mouth of a putative trump supporter, and suggesting that I think that 100% of refugees will immediately turn around and join ISIS. That gives me the opportunity to clarify that my views are quite the opposite.

That said, the travel ban has certainly empowered ISIS' propaganda efforts.

[smjjames]

I posted that one yesterday, but yeah, no surprise that this whole thing empowers their efforts, along with generally damaging relations with our allies and hurting anti-terror efforts.

Meanwhile, the Trump team made an alternate fact out of David Axelrod (senior adviser to Obama during his first term)

They really can't help but lie can they?

[muldrake]

Again, I must stress that we cannot presume that Trump or his staff are entirely incompetent. His success at achieving his goals so far is alarming. What goals, other than incompetence, might be driving Trump's actions?

I'm not presuming it, though.  I am looking at amateurishly drafted mishmashes of nonsense that resemble Executive Orders from previous administrations in the same way a child's scribblings resemble calligraphy.

Also some of them are apparently being drafted by a 22 year old kid right out of college:  https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/825887052587732993

[smjjames]

Again, I must stress that we cannot presume that Trump or his staff are entirely incompetent. His success at achieving his goals so far is alarming. What goals, other than incompetence, might be driving Trump's actions?

I'm not presuming it, though.  I am looking at amateurishly drafted mishmashes of nonsense that resemble Executive Orders from previous administrations in the same way a child's scribblings resemble calligraphy.

Also some of them are apparently being drafted by a 22 year old kid right out of college:  https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/825887052587732993

(laughs)wh-hat?

Still though, GOP lawmakers had been caught by surprise on the exec orders and there are lots of key people that should have been talked to, but weren't. Even Sen. Portman of Ohio is saying that the stuff was poorly vetted.

With this amount of incompentency, one shudders to think what might happen in a real crisis.

Where did this "Bannon secretly runs the government" conspiracy come from? I've only ever heard it here.

Sources among the White House staff. (1), (2), (3), (4). It's really all over the liberal news networks for the past few days, evidently you don't visit them very often.

The scary thing is that it could easily be plausible, though unlike the scandal in South Korea, he actually is an advisor, so I'm not sure how much scandal actually would be present.

[MorleyDev]

I'm not presuming it, though.  I am looking at amateurishly drafted mishmashes of nonsense that resemble Executive Orders from previous administrations in the same way a child's scribblings resemble calligraphy.

Well he started with this mess. That it was all downhill from there says it all, really. Flipping through them, you can pretty much tell exactly when they stopped letting him touch the keyboard.

("Prevent Donald Trump from making a State Visit to the United Kingdom" petition is at 1.5 million signatures and rising, btw).

[Andux]

I'll just leave this here.

[Baffler]

I will caution people to remember that someone can put ideas to paper without having come up with them. Did Obama personally write all of the executive orders he issued? The quality is pretty low though, I do admit. Maybe they should get a couple of eloquent lawyers to help like previous administrations have instead of just the one young guy spell-checking from PTTG?'s article.

The more you keep people bottled up with the headchoppers, the more likely they're going to either join up (to keep from getting chopped, because a russian airstrike gib is later and today is now) or turn into their own bunch of 'em. Either tends to end up a net negative for everyone.

I suppose the first part of that makes sense, and I admit it's something I didn't consider, but the difference in being conscripted into a militia and joining/forming one willingly is pretty big to just gloss over. I'm still not convinced that making entry into the USA, where very few of them are even trying to go anyway (compare to those headed for Turkey, other Arab countries, safer parts of their own nations, or Western Europe,) more difficult is going to push people who fled a conflict to just go ahead and join the people who forced them out in the first place instead.

[smjjames]

I'll just leave this here.

We really shouldn't fall to conspiracy theories, but given how crazy and unusual everything is, it's certainly worrying if true. Also, not sure on the journalist, the whole thing appears to be interpretations rather than factual statements of intent.

Not to mention that if there WERE tangible signs of a coup, the media would be all over it.

Though really, if there's going to be a coup, it's going to be within the WH staff.

[misko27]

I'd say "wait and see" but it's quite clear that this is not going to become more normal over time. It's time to take Trump's statements both literally and seriously. He was taken literally (but not seriously) by the media, and seriously (but not literally) by his supporters. The truth of the matter is he is both deeply serious and extremely literal, and thus we should look to his past statements as the watchword of his future intents.

[muldrake]

I'll just leave this here.

Like much of the kind of stuff that gets posted on medium, this starts out interesting and then in the middle goes crashing off the rails into Pizzagate land.

[Flying Dice]

The more you keep people bottled up with the headchoppers, the more likely they're going to either join up (to keep from getting chopped, because a russian airstrike gib is later and today is now) or turn into their own bunch of 'em. Either tends to end up a net negative for everyone.

I suppose the first part of that makes sense, and I admit it's something I didn't consider, but the difference in being conscripted into a militia and joining/forming one willingly is pretty big to just gloss over. I'm still not convinced that making entry into the USA, where very few of them are even trying to go anyway (compare to those headed for Turkey, other Arab countries, safer parts of their own nations, or Western Europe,) more difficult is going to push people who fled a conflict to just go ahead and join the people who forced them out in the first place instead.

The real problem is that there's no practical end-state for that. Either you're accepting (eventually) the entire population of every country so afflicted along with plenty of infiltrators, or... what? You try to do so but don't achieve perfect efficiency? That's why I'm partial to attempting to solve the problem in a semi-competent way-hearts&minds is the right mindset, and it did a lot in Iraq and Afghanistan in the relatively few instances where it was done properly (this is why you need training for troops doing this shit, because poorly done military intervention is worse than nothing).

Could also play the hindsight game and suggest that supporting violent extremists and helping religious zealots overthrow governments ain't a great idea, but that's in the past.

Also worth noting that the refugees heading to the U.S. and Western Europe aren't generally the most desperate, but rather the ones who already had sufficient resources to fund that sort of exodus. A whole damn lot of refugees were taken in by countries much closer to their homes. Never mind that the majority of refugees from the "Syrian civil war" aren't Syrians or from contested areas.

This Trump fuckup just goes to show that there's bullshit propaganda on both extremes that needs to be filtered out if we're to have a reasonable discourse. The execution was shockingly incompetent and heartless, but the list of countries is pretty much identical to Obama's 2015 visa restrictions.

[smjjames]

I'd say "wait and see" but it's quite clear that this is not going to become more normal over time. It's time to take Trump's statements both literally and seriously. He was taken literally (but not seriously) by the media, and seriously (but not literally) by his supporters. The truth of the matter is he is both deeply serious and extremely literal, and thus we should look to his past statements as the watchword of his future intents.

Only problem is, he's been vague on so many things.

He's been wobbly on NATO and some other stuff.

I'll just leave this here.

Like much of the kind of stuff that gets posted on medium, this starts out interesting and then in the middle goes crashing off the rails into Pizzagate land.

The only 'coup' that looks like could happen would be Priebus or Bannon (looking like Priebus at this point) getting pushed out or marginalized. The way Trump set things up with competing power centers is ripe for this kind of conflict.

[MorleyDev]

Only problem is, he's been vague on so many things.

Exactly.

To coup or not to coup...you know, I'm not sure what's a worse quality for a World Leader: Malice, Incompetence, or Incompetent Malice.