The Trump Gambit

For a few weeks, Trump has been saying and doing things that do not seem to make a lot of sense. The black pill interpretation is that he has decided to cuck on all of his promises and cave into the establishment. Of course, the anti-Trump loons are claiming they were right all along and Trump is now finking on his stupid voters. Then you have the mouth breathers that hoot about 5-D chess all the time. The more likely explanation is that Trump is making a calculated gamble on himself and his read on public opinion.

Take the DACA controversy. Trump can count, so he knows the Democrats have far fewer members in both houses of Congress than the Republicans. He can cut all the deals he likes with Pelosi and Schumer, but those deals will go nowhere without the GOP leadership, as they control the legislative agenda. The game was to embarrass Ryan and Mitchell. By making it look like the Democrats were willing to work with him, he forced the GOP to make its own moves on immigration. It is petty, but it works.

The other point of the exercise was to get people talking about immigration in a way that works in his favor. News stories about “dreamers” makes him look bad. He rightly figured that his voters would get mad over his rumored cave and they would take it out on the GOP leadership. It would also trigger the immigration patriots to fire off a million proposals for fixing immigration. From Trump’s perspective, turmoil is good as it gets his people fired up, looking for a fight and it forces the GOP leadership to respond.

Trump did not get this far by not understanding the political map. He knows he is the leader of the White Party, which has been forced to vote within the Republican Party. He certainly never says it like that, but he is an old school New Yorker. He understands the skins game better than most. His opposition is not the Democrats. His enemy is the GOP, which has traditionally served to blunt the interests of the White Party. Therefore, Trump needs to keep the fires burning for the coming fights in the Republican primaries.

You see glimpses of what is coming in the Alabama Senate Race. The White Party is lining up behind Judge Moore, mostly because he is not on the side of Mitch McConnell. Trump has endorsed the establishment guy, claiming to do so out of party loyalty. At the same time, an army of Trump surrogates are in the state endorsing Moore. Even Trump has given mixed signals about his endorsement of Luther Strange. There is a wink-wink quality to all of it. It is theater and everyone in the audience is in on the gag.

Next year, there will be a slate of candidates running against GOP incumbents, promising to support the Trump agenda. There will be Democrat challengers making the right noises on immigration and trade. How successful these challengers are will depend a lot upon how things go in Washington the next six months. That is the message Trump is trying to send to guys like Ryan and McConnell, who seem to be trapped in a fantasy world where the 2016 election never happened and they are beloved figures on the Right.

From Trump’s perspective, the result on Tuesday opens up opportunities. If Strange pulls a miracle and wins the election, then Trump will be tweeting about how he can deliver votes even for a bozo like Strange. If Moore wins, then Trump will tweet that he tried to be loyal to McConnell and the GOP, but they refused to learn from past mistakes. In a few hours, no one will remember that he endorsed the loser. Instead, the story will be about the impending disaster for the establishment GOP in the coming primaries.

There is risk to what Trump is doing in Alabama. If Luther Strange wins, the White Party will be discouraged and may start to turn on Trump. At the minimum, it gives the anti-Trump loons ammunition to accuse Trump of finking on his base. It could also embolden guys like Ryan, who are convinced that Trump has no base. On the other hand, a win by Moore and the same cucks will argue that Trump cannot deliver votes, so they are wise to oppose him. You can be sure they have those op-eds written and ready to send.

It is a gamble, but Trump is a guy who thinks he can make something out of anything, as long as he has options. Whether it was by design or serendipity, this election is a referendum on the GOP establishment. The most likely outcome, according to polling, is a Moore win and maybe a big win. Trump will not only take credit for it but start to bet his winnings on the belief he can scare the GOP into passing his agenda items. They may hold the result against him, but Trump is betting they cave and play ball with him.

The reason it is a good gamble is the pressure on leadership will now come from their own ranks. Ryan and McConnell can keep discipline as long as they can promise their members, they will keep their seats. If the rank and file start thinking they are safer with Trump or that Trump will back their challengers, then it is game over for Ryan and McConnell. They have to play ball. From Trump’s perspective, he has everything to game and nothing to lose. Ryan and McConnell cannot hate him more than they already do.

111 thoughts on “The Trump Gambit

  1. I could use you help in the pending election Mr. Trump.
    Very well Mr. Moore. Here, hold my beer*. Watch THIS!
    “I, Donald Trump, Support Mr Strange, in no uncertain terms, as the BEST candidate for this HUUUUUUUge job!!!!!!”
    Anything ELSE Mr. Moore?
    No, Thank you Mr. President.
    (* Yes, I KNOW he doesn’t drink.)

  2. It’s not that we think Trump is playing 5D chess… it’s that he’s playing Chess and most of the public, Media, and Politicos are still playing checkers.
    He makes mistakes, and failed gambits, But he is a master at grasping opportunity and always has been… as long as the game keeps moving, he can find a way to win. His enemy is stagnation, and so he occasionally has to shake the board to keep it going.

    • I’ve posted this before, and will again. Tocqueville–The mental habits which suit action do not always promote thought. The world is not directed by longand learned proofs. All its affairs are decided by the swift glance at a particular fact, the daily examination of the changing moods of the crowd, occasional moments of chance, and the skill to exploit them.

  3. Maybe it’s me, but does it seem logical that Bannon would be booted out of the White House, only to show up in Alabama to help Roy Moore win down there? That seems pretty logical to me. Play the establishment game in D.C. to get them off your back a little bit, but send your people down to AL to help the opposition win.

    Expect a bunch more “retirements” this year to be announced. Jeff Flake is toast.

  4. Always go for the simple. If you’ve watched Trump around New York, he thrives on chaos, since his OODA loop is tighter than most. Don’t think much different now. As I believe Z pointed out, most of the Washington press corps (and most Democrats now) are like kittens with laser pointers stapled to their foreheads—give them anything distracting and they are after it. So he give them distraction and Trump can do it faster because he is untroubled by the normal political calculus that McConnell and the Fossils go through. The NFL is a double bonus since the base loves it and Democrats so far are spending 90% of their bandwidth on a few tweets and a press conference.

  5. America will soon be a Nation of Color. Nothing you can do about it! Sorry!

    How does it feel? Knowing that your daughters will bear Children of Color

    • Pathetic provocation. If you hadn’t been dumbed down by your low-IQ people-of-color genes, you might have been able to do better. Can’t help it, it’s your haplogroup! Don’t worry, smarter and more decent people will continue to create civilizations that would otherwise be out of reach for people like you. You’re welcome.

    • Tiny, if you were as intelligent as you are persistent, you would be a rich republican. You know that don’t you?

    • How does it make you feel? Knowing that your sons and daughters would live in a semi-moronic third world backwater if that were to actually come to pass?

      Oh, I forgot. You can’t think that far ahead.

  6. While congress people of diverse genders were publicly wetting their pants over Trump’s “fire the sons-of-bitches” broadside to the NFL, I’ll bet their mail boxes were filling up with letters saying “right on”.

  7. Somewhat related: more rocks and hard places revealed:

    “Most pollsters and pundits report that President Trump’s approval ratings are in the tank… In every poll, Democrat respondents outnumbered Republicans by significant amounts. The Economist poll was the worst. Only 24 percent of respondents (360) were Republicans compared to 38 percent (570) Democrats – which means that 58 percent more Democrats were polled than Republicans …”

    https://www.bombthrowers.com/article/mainstream-political-polls-commit-fraud/

    Actually, TheConservativeTreehouse.com reported this phenomenon often and in detail during the Presidential campaign.

    The good news is that increasing numbers of people are distruting the institutions that have been feeding them shit — in this case the pollsters. Ther’re doing this even without the analysis that shows the details of the fraud. Seeing the cooked books in black and white just speeds things up.

  8. “he has everything to game and nothing to lose. ”

    Minor nit; in 2nd last sentence I think “game” should be “gain”.

    Cheers

  9. “His opposition is not the Democrats. His enemy is the GOP, that has traditionally served to blunt the interests of the White Party.”

    Never forget: the Republicans didn’t defeat the Dems last November; Trump did. He won because he’s Trump, not because he’s “Republican.” The GOPe deserves zero credit for his victory, the GOPe being merely the trailing edge of the Democrat wing. As Michael Walsh has observed repeatedly, there are not two parties but one Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party. Put another way, last year’s election was Cloud People vs. Dirt People. Had the cucks nominated ¡Jeb! or Micro Rubio, the race would have been Cloud People vs. Cloud People. There’s a reason traitors are detested more than sworn enemies. This is why Republican Party delenda est.

  10. It is easy to become impatient with the President and worry that he’s given up or never really intended to drain the swamp. I do it frequently.

    This post and the comments reinforce how wedged-in Trump actually is … multiple rocks and hard places.

    I don’t know that I believe 5-d chess is going on, exactly. But it’s pretty clear that significant action requires prelimiary changes and those changes, in turn, require their own prerequisite changes. I think the man is playing the long game about as well as anyone could.

    When I get impatient, I remind myself that without Trump, Ms. Clinton would be president now. Scary thought. If she were in office, it wouldn’t have surprised me to see an executive order making sites like this illegal.

    • Yes, given that the most proximate backstabbers to Trump are in his own party, he has to play the long game. I often look around and think that elections change nothing, but then think “Neil Gorsuch” and realize half a loaf is better than none.

    • “it wouldn’t have surprised me to see an executive order making sites like this illegal.” More likely it would have been an IRS audit, a visit from whatever government agency they could best harass him with, and an NSA scan through his phone and e-mail records for any dirt they could throw at him.

  11. You’re pretty damn smart, Zman. I don’t go for multi-D chess, but the patterns are easy to see for the non-rabid.
    President Trump could use a hand like you on the ranch.

  12. Zman, I guess you are just having fun with this, but it comes across wrong…. you do the “white party” folks in Alabama a disservice pondering that Trump might lose them if Strange wins. Kinda insulting. As if they aren’t aware… as if there is another national candidate, much less office holder, that has so solidly trashed the status quo and spoken in the olden tongues of nationalism and American is great, etc.

    Those Moore supporters are really going to feel so betrayed, they’d stay at home and not vote for any other politician b/c of Moore losing? There is no one else to vote for. No way they would protest and vote for a Democrat. They will be disappointed but Trump has made it clear, he has a agenda and Strange stepped up so Trump stepped up. It’s clear Trump is making an effort to stand by someone.. to show others.

    And the 5-layer chess crack was insulting. I don’t know who you are referring to.. but where I’ve read it, it is not literal, but trolling the crap out of RINO’s , NRO folks and Bernie bots. But whatever. Trump took very little risk with this gambit. win/win/win…

  13. Having been a single issue—Second Amendment—voter for the last few decades, I got from Trump what I wanted: Gorsuch. Anything else is icing on the cake.

    Another thing Trump might be doing that seems counter-intuitive presently is letting anti-Trumper Mueller do all the heavy shovel work on digging a hole to punish, or at least expose and shame, Hussein’s spying efforts.

    • The more Mueller scrambles, and the less he delivers, the greater the Trump victory over the rest of the Washington swamp. A high-risk gambit by Trump, but it just might pay off for him in a big way.

  14. I don’t think most folks nationally understand how the Confederate statue destruction movement is playing in the deep South. This travesty opened a visceral wound that will not heal quickly or easily. The Alabama senate primary will be the first manifestation of how deeply and passionately they react to the carpetbagger methods of Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan.

  15. Z Man;
    Excellent analysis. However, I’d posit that the MSM is *still* the enemy center of gravity*, even after the election, and not entirely the GOPe per se. It is as much for fear of the media as it is love for their big donors that the GOPe is stalling his agenda (that they ran and won on). In addition to providing favorable election coverage, the media can, to some extent, direct large donations from those who care about ‘hangin with the Kardashians’ in elite circles. They do this, of course, by hyping up one Repub. (looking at you McCain & Collins) while trashing another, selectively, hence strategically.

    Trumps genius is to be able to disrupt the MSM by being inside their scandal/outrage cycle as much as possible. This cycle takes about a week to gin up, so an ‘outrageous’ tweet every two or three days has them like cats chasing the laser spot but never catching it.

    His problem with the fearful, office-loving GOPe is that he has not yet convinced them that he has neutralized the MSM, if indeed he has. They’re likely thinking that disruption is not the same thing as killing the MSM’s power and influence. So they’re better off keeping still under cover to see if the dragon is dead instead of merely dazed temporarily, so to speak.

    His plan now, as you say, appears to be to convince the GOPe that they have just as much to fear from him and his base as they do from the unhinged media that hates them anyway.

    *The enemy center of gravity is that position, once taken, which collapses the entire enemy line of resistance. The MSM was clearly Hillary’s center of gravity and they were almost powerful enough to drag her decrepit carcass over the finish line despite Pres. Trump’s disrupting them.

    • the gope is the enemy inside the wire. they *have* to be taken down first, in order to get anything else done. Ryan and Mcconnell are like the Diem brothers 🙂

      • Absolutely- gotta get thru the guys running interence to get to the guys with the ball

        (Diem brothers! Let us pray for such a fate!)

        • Interference
          (Allergic to sports, unless holding 3 min-wage jobs at a time since 14 is a sport, wish I knew the futbol terms)

  16. Trump gave Strange the most backhanded endorsement you can give somebody. He basically said, “Well, if he manages to win, we’ll get credit for that. But if he loses, I’m going to campaign like hell for the other guy.”

    If Moore wins, expect additional primary challengers in red/Trump states against the Flakes currently holding those seats. In fact, you might look at this primary as a bell weather of the Flake primary next year, and he will not get a backhanded Trump endorsement. Trump has already tweeted out support for one of the opponents (Ward), and has people helping her. When you can’t poll over 20% as an incumbent, and somebody nobody ever heard of is in the 40%’s…you’re in big trouble. McCain survived re-election with terrible poll numbers, but that has more to do with lack of a real primary challenge (Trump is not McConnell, and McCain and Trump hate each other hard), and that AZ is still a very red state…the Democrat was never going to win.

    I hope Flake loses by triple digits, lol.

    McConnell should be relieved he won re-election in 2016 because if he was up next year, Trump would primary him as well.

    • I’m not entirely sure McConnell and Ryan are fully in touch with reality. Ryan talks like a man who was transported from 1994 to the present, but it unaware of that fact. My hunch with Ryan is he knows he has sold out to the donors. He’s no longer his own man so he just runs around saying banal things and waiting until the trap door under his feet opens.

      • As long as that trapdoor opens to a poition as a lobbyist, a foreign direct investment representative , a corporate consultancy or office, onboarding to collect taxpayer-funded ‘investment’ streams, managing a tax-evading university trust, laundering money thru community outreach programs… or a thousand other scams

      • Ryan calculated the immense powers working against Trump from every direction and expected to ride him out and stick a fork in him. Lots of people were betting real money that Trump wouldn’t finish his term. So Ryan has no plan B, yet. My question is, will Trump let him off the floor when he does? Either way, Hail Trump.

      • Ryan is definitely still playing the old Conservative Inc. game. I get his Facebook updates still (The Weekly Standard blocks me now), and just love his posts about immigration reform, tax reform, repealing Obamacare, etc…and it’s like this alt-reality where nobody knows how badly he and McConnell have failed.

        Have to say I am increasingly thrilled that my term for it back from our NRO days – Conservative Inc. – has stuck and made it into the mainstream. I’m not so arrogant as to assume I’m the only person to ever think of something, but I’ve been calling them Conservative Inc. for 6-7 years now pretty much everywhere I comment on things. I’m pretty sure I coined it.

        These primary challenges are going to be interesting because even with Strange it’s pretty clear that Trump is trying to kick the legs out from under the stool. If he gets a few of his people elected, watch for McCain, Collins, and other Democrats in the GOP to just make it official and switch parties like Arlen Specter did.

    • My impression is the All-Hands-On-Deck alert called by the donor/ruling class during the election season to drag Hillary across the finish line was never cancelled. The donors/ruling class are still exerting immense pressure to bring Trump’s Administration to a premature end, which explains why you see the Leftist Congresscritters acting and talking absolutely crazy nonsense and the Right not supporting the MAGA agenda or our President even though voters gave the GOP the White House and Congress to get it done. So the Congressmen have even less agency than usual due to this pressure. Whores.

  17. I have difficulty understanding why Paul Ryan is still Speaker of the House. I mean, I don’t really have difficulty understanding it. I know it is because he gives exquisite blowjobs to his masters. But, there are essentially 3 parties in the Federal government now. The DemonicRat party, the RINO’s, and the pro-Trump contingent. And Trump’s is the smallest of the 3.

    Trump is theoretically the acting head of the Republican Party by virtue of being elected President as a Republican. But, he has almost no control over his party. The longer the Swamp stymies his efforts, the more his base will become disillusioned. I know that the Speaker can be changed at any time if someone proposes it on the floor and then the current Speaker doesn’t get a majority. I don’t think there is anyone in the House that wants to commit career suicide by doing this. So, the next option is malfeasance on the part of Ryan. Won’t happen. At least he won’t get caught. So, the remaining option are the DemonicRats regain control of the House in 2018 or Ryan isn’t reelected in 2018. And that is over a year away. Trump could get the public on his side and the RINO’s would be forced to work with him, but the Swamp, the media, and over 40% of the American electorate are his enemy. A war with North Korea might work, since everyone becomes a patriot when war begins. No, Trump’s policies will be opposed by Ryan for the next year.

    Can Ryan be beaten in 2018? I don’t know. Wisconsin is a mixed bag of SJW’s and conservatives. Can this country wait a year? The economic collapse is just around the corner, but its been around the corner for decades now. And an economic collapse can hurt Trump since most Americans blame the President rather than actually understand the process involved. Is Trump enough of a strategist to get the people of Wisconsin to reject Ryan or is he doomed to an alliance with those who would rather see him castrated?

    • No one knows what is coming next. But as elected officials go, I will put my bet on those who are most nimble and capable of rolling with the punches. Most of them can’t tell you if it is daytime or nighttime by looking out the window.

    • Trump owns the republican base — all of it. As Zman said, ryan and turtle have been conning the other house and senate members about that fact. Once the scalp count from the midterms comes in, those two turds are finally flushed. no lobbying $$ for them either (i bet).

      • Democrat donor dollars have dried up. Can’t wait to see the GOPe donation glide path go the same way.

        Dems wanted political donations blocked (in a “wink-wink, nudge-nudge” sort of way). Trump is delivering on that.

      • “ryan and turtle have been conning the other house and senate members about that fact.”

        Do you really think there is any conning involved? You have to make sure your minions know what you want them to know, plus at least enough information to know what boundaries have been set down.

        • there is mutual conning going on, but i would say the vast majority of elected gop officials are gope and need to be primarried ASAP. only need to claima few scalps to get the rest in line. keeping the traitors from cashing in as lobbyists is what’s really critical to draining the swamp.

          • About those ‘donors’- Remember McConnel, running for reelection, but he “gave Kentucky a new dam!”

            Dollars to donuts he created the ‘private investment group’ that built the dam, and has a family member on the board to harvest it’s future profit flows.

    • As best as I can figure out, a big reason Ryan is still speaker is that no one else really wants the job. Things are too squirrelly.

  18. I think Trump weakly backed the establishment Luther in Alabama because if he actively turns on the GOP establishment then the GOP establishment would happily work with Democrats to impeach him and get him out of office and replaced with the more establishment Pence (which with the Democrats help they would have the numbers to do). Trump has to essentially subvert or cuckold the GOP establishment while they aren’t looking.

  19. The next 9 months or so will be an interesting political stretch. Do the establishment Republicans value their campaign donations and whatever principles they have more than their seats? The great cuck-chuck of 2018 is coming – are they going to try to avoid it?

  20. Moore has a double digit lead over Strangelove, and it increased after last night’s Bannon appearance. The GOP establishment is terror stricken. Trump has discovered their Achilles heel.

    • There is zero plausible deniability remaining for the cucks. It’s similar to the Dems IV drip of claims of concern for the brown poor. With 50 years of Great Society decay data ignored, it can be concluded they don’t care about these people’s well-being.

      Back to the cucks. The gig is up and you can see it on their faces. Ryan looked like Terry Anderson’s 1980’s hostage videos during his recent town hall. (((Jake Tapper))) crafted the first 15min as a Marxist struggle session with a parade of jews wagging their fingers at him regarding Charlottesville and their mortal terror, then judging if Ryan was sufficiently apologetic for the actions of others. They also demanded “hate crime” legislation. Imagine Ryan trying to sell that to Trump’s base whom he must know despise him. Ryan should have been born 20 years earlier. Like SSI with anyone younger than Boomers, he will outlive the Ponzi scheme…. left to hide behind the one wall he did approve which surrounds his house….a target on his back…out of excuses and audiences for pretty lies.

    • Strange would stand a much better chance if McConnell hadn’t endorsed him. People down here noticed that. As I posted elsewhere, I’d vote for a dead syphilitic dog just to poke McConnell in the eye. And since there’s no dead syphilitic dog on the ballot, Moore will have to do.

    • From Yahoo News tonight:

      Incumbent Sen. Luther Strange wished jurist Roy Moore well after losing the Alabama Republican primary for Senate. Strange told his supporters Tuesday night that “we wish (Moore) well going forward.”

      But he quickly shifted to his own bewilderment at the race he just finished. “We’re dealing with a political environment that I’ve never had any experience with,” he said. “I’m telling you, the political seas and winds in this country right now … are very hard to navigate, very hard to understand.”

      It’s only hard to understand if you don’t speak English. “We hate you people, and we want all of you gone.” Maybe if we yell louder??

  21. That’s the funniest part of this “literally Hitler” business — of the many lessons we should’ve learned from that mustached fellow, a very big one for Establishment politicians is: The clown you think you’re using is actually using you, much better and far more ruthlessly.

  22. So – 5D Chess it is
    Also, this sentence should read,
    “From Trump’s perspective, turmoil is AS good as it gets.”

  23. I believe Trumps’s mixed signals on various issues (DACA, Strange) are tactical. His NFL gambit is a clear message to the Dirt People that he’s still on their side.

    • Trump creates chaos. He thrives on it as he is quick on his feet and shameless about it. Name another politician who would be so brazen about what he is doing in Alabama. What no one has bothered to notice on the DACA thing is they are now deporting these people. Unless Congress acts, the program ends, the illegals are deported and Trump will say, “If you don’t like it, call your Congressman.”

    • In a way, earth shattering that Rush Limbaugh is boycotting football, or so he says. Sports is crack for too many so we shall see.
      Still, in the culture battle (sideshow distraction) it is worth noting.

      • David;
        Agree. The NFL fracas features similar methodology on Trump’s part. Apparently the NFL was hiding in the weeds, hoping to ride out the planned media s**t-storm over concussions killing black yuts, etc.: Another re-run of ‘Black Lives Matter’ for anti-Trump political use.

        The NFL was apparently planning to play ball with the Cloud Folk by appearing to side with their employees while maintaining elite solidarity. But Trump flushed the NFL from cover amid great squawking. The only question now is how many shotgun pellets they get in the backside from their customers. As Instapundit says, ‘This is a battle that the NFL can’t win and Trump can’t lose.’

        • the nfl was dying before this fracas. now they are dying much faster. what’s funny about the CTE affected negroes (who oddly enough are more intelligent than non-CTE negroes) is they think they are showing unity against Trump, while their dwindling audience of whites see them as united against America. next season they will be handing out tickets in Cracker Jacks boxes…

      • Once you view the NFL as largely populated by thugs posturing for the cameras, it is so easy to walk away and never look back.

        If I were in sports, I would be building a rugby or Australian rules football semi-pro league TODAY. White middle class guys want and need roughly played team sports, enjoyed over beers. Soccer and baseball don’t scratch that itch. Hockey does only to a point.

  24. Trump is just a stepping stone and a passing political landmark.

    The dissident right as you call it – is growing. They’ve done the soap box, they’ve done the ballot box, and this is pretty much the last chance for everyone to wise up and play ball.

    From here on out I think it will be cartridge boxes and candidates that make Trump look like a saint. The left has no answers, they’ve bankrupted their constituencies and all they have to offer Americans is to bankrupt the other half of the nation that still works and pays the bills.

    Life is going to become a lot tougher for everyone – especially stupid people.

      • Unfortunately, steely-eyed Minutemen are in extremely short supply. Most on our side can’t even kill/dress a chicken, and don’t want to learn.

      • Z Man;
        Probably true *unless* the Cloud Folk use the legal sophistry you talked about in your last post to repudiate the internal debt in some way. See my comment in the previous thread about ‘odious debt’ for more details.

        • Al from da Nort
          Will;
          I agree that the USA will default on our national debt at some point because it is simply impossible to pay it, particularly politically, as you point out. But the important question is how it’s done and what happens afterwards.

          It may be that there is a scheme in the works right now using just the sort for of legal sophistry that Z Man describes above. The generic name of that scheme is ‘odious debt’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odious_debt

          Now, the historical precedent is that there is some sort of coup or revolution and the new regime repudiates the debts of its predecessor. Those inside without connections to the new regime are ‘SOL’ as we used to say (s**t out of luck). Those outside without a powerful and ruthless patron to force payment have to figure out how far they are willing to go to collect. Usually negotiation ensues.

          The doctrine of ‘odious debt’ was conveniently concocted by a Russian emigre shyster in Paris in 1927 to provide a rationale to the war-weary Western Powers why they shouldn’t try to collect the debts incurred by Russia under the Czars from the USSR.* It is beloved in NGO world to this day. Briefly, it holds that it is *morally wrong* to try to collect any debt that was created against ‘the will of the people’ and against their interest, by unjust rulers, etc.

          Ordinarily, this doctrine is attempted by NGO’s against the foreign creditors of their particular favorite third-world pesthole (e.g. Haiti). But could the Cloud be so mad as to try to apply it against domestic creditors, like us_? To ask is to answer, I’d say. They have to know that the debt cannot be paid. Suppose their plan to pay it is to make the US majority-minority and then apply this doctrine. The NYT editorial writes itself already: “Because of the long history of racism and exploitation, blah, blah, blah, it would be unjust to hold the shiny city of new America responsible for the debts incurred by the evil, bad racist old America…”

          All of a sudden the Cloud’s apparent insanity about immigration and constant race-baiting identity politics make a lot more sense… That it is an evil, stupid plan on many levels, with many ways to go badly wrong, doesn’t mean that it is not their plan_! And they *do* hate us.

          *People didn’t just escape from the USSR in the mid 1920’s and Stalin’s assassins roamed Paris (where the shyster lived) nearly at will, killing regime enemies who put their heads up, as well as those Russian emigres who just pissed him off. Yet this high-profile fellow thrived. At that time, the Western Powers were militarily capable of collecting the Russian debts using their tried and true methods of gunboat diplomacy. ‘This was no coincidence, comrade.’, as the commies are found of saying to this very day.

          • Beggin’ yer pardon, guvnah, but by gum if you don’t repost it then I will.

            Invaluable, as always.
            Definitely bears repeating.

            (Please excuse the editing, limited to a phone.)

          • Al;
            Thanks for the kind words. I try to contribute and not just react our esteemed host’s worthy posts.

          • i am kind of curious where it all went. not out into the general economy (in the form of wage increases). a lot looks to have been loaned to companies for buying back their own stock. anyone have any ideas about where the bulk of obama’s trillions went?

          • Karl;
            Reasoning by analogy: Obama. Jerrett, Emanuel, et al, are Chicago machine pols. The Chicago machine sluices tax money through various departments, commissions and foundations, all to support the Prog lifestyle. That is, make-work and no-show jobs for those connected to the insiders, who will be called upon to work for the machine’s powers and existence on any and all occasions. More importantly, there are grants and contracts for the connected (which pay the top Progs way more than a simple no-show job). Public benefit is actually incidental but the sham must be maintained for the low information set so that they don’t ask why they are not benefitting.

            So, in the absence of more specific information, it is a safe bet that much of the new money went to support the Prog lifestyle. Just look at the grants the big alphabet agencies push through the big U’s and the vast array of NGO’s for specific examples.

      • There’s still lots of food around, Z.

        What happens when your kids can’t eat because income is taxed away? What happens when mortgages start foreclosing and repo men are working 24/7/365? What happens when you eat at soup kitchens or not at all – and the blacks are freaking out because their EBT cards and Obama phones don’t work anymore? It is going to be mutiny on the Bounty when the rest of these liberal problems come home to roost.

      • I generally agree that fat, dumb, and lazy folks don’t go to war. Of course the last civil war fought on this soil was not between starving, intelligent, workaholics either, so there’s that.

      • I’m not certain about that. The level of anger is palpable these days and it takes only one minor event to set of a chain of nastiness

        God knows we’ve been buying all those millions of weapons for some reason.

        Even so if we did have \a cartridge box phase to what end?

        Everybody you hate is now gone, now what?

        hell if they all died in a magic comet pass-by you’d still have the same problems

        No one on any side has a even a basic idea as to how a new society could be configured what it should do and assumptions about economics , social structures and the like differ so much in with in factions , no one is going to take orders from anyone else since they don’t want they same things

        I suppose the .Alt Right has a kind of document of principles now, the 16 points kind of but that’s not enough to accomplish anything but that’s about it that is new on horizon

        Hell when the Northwest Front a bunch of Nazi/W.N. clucks has a better workable plan than anyone else we all have a problem

        Not to put too fine a point on it until recently (Mid 90’s) the Cathedral as the NrX guys like to call it did a very good job of governing and even with keeping up with technology . They deserved power because they used it well mostly to the good of people in the West

        Right now though everyone including them is stuck on stupid, The Nazis think its 1938 the Reds still think its 1918,the Democrats 1968, The Actual Republicans 1998 and the .Alt Right thinks we can go back to 1428! The cathedral is just running mad

        Pretty much none of them are fit to lead a cub scout troop and that includes the Christendom part of the .Alt Right . They are good guys but no one is going to let them run anything. Fewer people want that they are selling or believe it than they need to run a society

        Nor doe a single faction has the slightest comprehension of technology, the efficiency trap or the fact the world has changed drastically since 1995 .

        Understanding the concept of technological convergence and its effects on culture and stability is so far beyond most of the elected and appointed they might as well be retarded 3rd graders trying to build a supercomputer

        Seriously as a society we haven’t really adapted to social effects of the pill which has been around for 50 years or more or regular abortion for 40 and urbanization and the logical family size decline

        The faction that can come up with a good workable plan ,to make more homogeneous, fix the family, have stable remunerative work and cut the despair index without being subverted or being a tyrant or being controlled by multinational corporations can win everything but thus far no one has any way to do this

        Frankly none of the other factions are worth lifting a finger for even the .Alt Right who is the best of all them

      • Watch the destruction, in the inner cities, when the first, very minor cuts are made to welfare. The EBT crowd will finally find something worth dying for.

      • I agree with this. with one caveat-if the economy goes to complete shit and those same fat lazy people begin to suffer and really feel the pinch, all while the 24/7 “hate whitey” drumbeats are beating from the left, I think the possibility odds change somewhat.

      • Sure, as things are now, you’re probably right. But things change. I’ll bet there were plenty of people in Yugoslavia that said the same thing.

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