I saw that clickbait headline and thought, naw. Then Edroso restacked it. Ok, I'll read it. As you sort-of said, its Explanation #2 of What They're Really Doing. It doesn't conflict with my theory, which is that Trump's been fed a story that the height of American wealth and power was the end of the 19th century, and abandoning that system was the cause of all our troubles. No doubt dear old Dad taught Trump his history, but there are people around him telling this story. But why feed him that story?
My own Grand Unified Theory that I've pitched a few times here and elsewhere is apparantly too dumb to even mock, but here it is. The one thing uniting the theocrats, tech bro futurists, libertarians, whatever Miller is and devoted Trump voters is a burning desire to destroy the modern administrative state to return to a 19th century federal government focused on the military and collecting tariffs and other fees and little else. Grabbing assets for pennies is a nice lagnappe but that destruction is the goal. A federal government that can't afford to do stuff is much easier to drown in a bathtub. This has been an explicit Republican goal for a long, long time. Trump is the battering ram, a weapon. He's the only possible President deluded enough to believe the story he tells, that tariff $ will flood in and simultaniously industrialists will invest in American factories that will sell those same goods to Americans.
Alla these theories just read more or less like bog standard Republican dreams of the last hundred or more years. Linking them to the vision of god-willed dominion, plus the unattended firehose of modern media just gets them further along their path.
Even the deranged incompetents have a place – every Republican probly has, or at least knows of, a mouth-breathing cousin who couldn't piss in a bucket if it was strapped to the front of his tighty whities. Those people could easily get ambassadorships.
It’s a great plot for the next MCU film but I suspect these kinds of things will tend to run afoul of reality. Yes, there are a bunch of people who have glommed onto Trump in hopes of bring their pet vision to life, be it network states or Gilead or the new Confederacy or whatever. But how they get from here to there is all Underpants Gnomes theory: 1. Wreck economy. 2. ??? 3. Preferred outcome materializes! If the Russian experience is any guide, the most likely outcome is a failed mafia state. Which is bad enough.
It's not a UG scenario, step 2 is filled in: Thiel and Co. buy up what remains of the productive economy and own everything that still works, media, energy, armaments, real estate. Ex-Soviet oligarchs didn't regard themselves (maybe they do now) as subjects of a failed mafia state, they understood they were the bosses, and at worst went to England and bought soccer teams.
Yes, and: Every libertarian I know (there's three, but I extrapolate!) entertains very seriously a fantasy of total civilizational collapse, which will sweep away all the sniveling little mice whose only skill is office politics, and let rise to the top those heretofore oppressed Men of True Ability. These great figures will then organize a new, more just world order. I see Tech Bro DNA as closely related to Libertarian DNA, plus even bigger anger at humanity for not being more like AI/more into them. So they want to see the world blow up, are convinced the explosion can't hurt them -- and lately, they have the social position actually to light the fuse. I think we are watching them do it. Trump, diseased in a different way, is happy to hand them the match because he sees how it will hurt people who don't love him. But if they succeed... I guess we really get to see what comes after capitalism. Not an uncritical fan of capitalism, me, but also: absolutely sure what they engineer to replace it will be worse.
I saw that clickbait headline and thought, naw. Then Edroso restacked it. Ok, I'll read it. As you sort-of said, its Explanation #2 of What They're Really Doing. It doesn't conflict with my theory, which is that Trump's been fed a story that the height of American wealth and power was the end of the 19th century, and abandoning that system was the cause of all our troubles. No doubt dear old Dad taught Trump his history, but there are people around him telling this story. But why feed him that story?
My own Grand Unified Theory that I've pitched a few times here and elsewhere is apparantly too dumb to even mock, but here it is. The one thing uniting the theocrats, tech bro futurists, libertarians, whatever Miller is and devoted Trump voters is a burning desire to destroy the modern administrative state to return to a 19th century federal government focused on the military and collecting tariffs and other fees and little else. Grabbing assets for pennies is a nice lagnappe but that destruction is the goal. A federal government that can't afford to do stuff is much easier to drown in a bathtub. This has been an explicit Republican goal for a long, long time. Trump is the battering ram, a weapon. He's the only possible President deluded enough to believe the story he tells, that tariff $ will flood in and simultaniously industrialists will invest in American factories that will sell those same goods to Americans.
That makes the tech bro futurists a little bit steampunk, doesn't it? LOL.
On the grabbing assets, I think the end is some kind of power, somehow tied in with the AI religion.
Alla these theories just read more or less like bog standard Republican dreams of the last hundred or more years. Linking them to the vision of god-willed dominion, plus the unattended firehose of modern media just gets them further along their path.
Even the deranged incompetents have a place – every Republican probly has, or at least knows of, a mouth-breathing cousin who couldn't piss in a bucket if it was strapped to the front of his tighty whities. Those people could easily get ambassadorships.
It’s a great plot for the next MCU film but I suspect these kinds of things will tend to run afoul of reality. Yes, there are a bunch of people who have glommed onto Trump in hopes of bring their pet vision to life, be it network states or Gilead or the new Confederacy or whatever. But how they get from here to there is all Underpants Gnomes theory: 1. Wreck economy. 2. ??? 3. Preferred outcome materializes! If the Russian experience is any guide, the most likely outcome is a failed mafia state. Which is bad enough.
It's not a UG scenario, step 2 is filled in: Thiel and Co. buy up what remains of the productive economy and own everything that still works, media, energy, armaments, real estate. Ex-Soviet oligarchs didn't regard themselves (maybe they do now) as subjects of a failed mafia state, they understood they were the bosses, and at worst went to England and bought soccer teams.
Yes, and: Every libertarian I know (there's three, but I extrapolate!) entertains very seriously a fantasy of total civilizational collapse, which will sweep away all the sniveling little mice whose only skill is office politics, and let rise to the top those heretofore oppressed Men of True Ability. These great figures will then organize a new, more just world order. I see Tech Bro DNA as closely related to Libertarian DNA, plus even bigger anger at humanity for not being more like AI/more into them. So they want to see the world blow up, are convinced the explosion can't hurt them -- and lately, they have the social position actually to light the fuse. I think we are watching them do it. Trump, diseased in a different way, is happy to hand them the match because he sees how it will hurt people who don't love him. But if they succeed... I guess we really get to see what comes after capitalism. Not an uncritical fan of capitalism, me, but also: absolutely sure what they engineer to replace it will be worse.