When I was a kid, I played a lot of sports. The one coach I hated was my freshman football coach, whose name I no longer remember. He was the classic Type-A personality, at least what popular culture has come to think of it. The guy was always on edge, ready to explode into a purple faced rage, which meant everyone around him was always on edge too. The guy found a way to get under everyone’s skin. He had some way to needle every player on the roster, often with some sort of nickname.

The thing is though, the guy managed to squeeze out more from the roster than logic said was possible. In my case, I was always just at the point of wanting to bash his skull in with my helmet, but I channeled those pleasant thoughts into execution. I was not giving that prick the satisfaction of making a mistake. Even though I hated the guy, he did make me and my teammates better players. I still recall the joy of winning with my teammates, but I don’t remember the coach’s name.

My guess is everyone who played sports growing up had at least one of these types of coaches. Bill Parcels was famous for playing head games with his players. He was big on keeping every player on edge, even his stars. At the NFL level, the psychological aspects of coaching are more complex, but the underlying strategy is the same. You make the players doubt themselves in a way that results in their natural hyper-competitiveness kicking in, so they push themselves to the edge of their potential.

I’ve been thinking about this watching Trump torment Congress, especially the Democrats, over immigration. He’s not just making the open borders people nervous with his rhetoric. He is getting under the skin of his allies and his own staff. The blockheads in the gentry media are calling it the Jell-O strategy, but it is a safe bet that none of them ever went outside as kids, much less played competitive contact sports. In the world of high-pay, low-work professions, the hard driving boss does not exist.

What Trump is doing with his comments about DACA, in particular, but immigration in general, is keeping the issue boiling. That is Trump’s natural style of negotiating, but it has the benefit of keeping immigration patriots slightly ticked off and highly engaged in every aspect of the process. Congress has seen their e-mail flooded with messages opposing amnesty. Their voicemail boxes are constantly full. This puts pressure on Congress to do a deal and get the issue off the agenda for the midterms in ten months.

Steve Sailer compares Trump to George Steinbrenner. It is a good comparison as they both have a similar style. Both men understood that pressure reveals character. The great players, the great deal makers, rise to the occasion when under pressure. On the other hand, the fakers and losers crack under pressure. If you read Trump’s book or listen to people with whom he has done deals, you see that he is always looking to bring things to a boiling point, where everyone is under the gun to get something done.

That’s what Trump is doing with DACA. He’s cleverly made this the goal of the Democrats, thinking they will push themselves to the breaking point to get it. At the same time, the laundry list of immigration reforms has become the all or nothing end game for immigration patriots. Trump’s public statements are keeping the good guys fired up and willing to hammer Congress on the finer points of immigration. Every time Trump says something positive about DACA, the phone lines melt in Washington.

There is no question that this style of managing people does get the most from those willing to give their all. It also boils off the people who like to talk about maximizing their opportunities, but unwilling to do what it takes to accomplish it. In the realm of sports, this result in better teams. Bill Parcells was a wildly successful coach because his style gets the maximum from the roster. Trump’s success as a businessman and media personality is largely built on getting the most from top people in their respective fields.

Whether this will translate to politics is hard to know. One constant that comes through from people who have done business with Trump is that he is exhausting. The never ending competition and wrangling over details wears people down. In business, you can always get new people when the old ones wear out. In politics, you can’t easily get new supporters. His style could end up exhausting his base. How many times can someone call their Congressman, enraged about immigration or trade policy?

That’s a question often asked of sportsball coaches. How long before they wear out their players? How long before the team stops responding? The great ones seem to get that and they make sure to reward their players so they keep wanting more. Trump’s zingers on twitter or when speaking in front of a crowd may serve that function. He has an uncanny way to saying the obvious in a way that outrages the enemy and amuses his supporters. Perhaps that’s enough for President Coach to get us over the goal line.

One of the mysteries of the election campaign has been the ongoing Russian hacking conspiracy nonsense that was forced on us by the Democrats after the election. The absurdity of it should have been enough to get the story laughed off the stage. Even if the Russians had meddled in the election, which happens all the time. The Chinese invested heavily in the Clintons during the 1996 election. Israeli maintains massive lobbying efforts in the US, including campaign operations. It is the nature of empires.

Even if it was just a distraction to shift the focus from the problems of the Democrats, it is a one week story at best. Yet, it went on and on, forcing Trump to appoint a special prosecutor to chase ghosts and phantoms that could not possibly exist. My hunch was that maybe some FBI insiders were simply using the fake scandal as a pretext to circle the wagons and protect their own. Former director Comey seems to be exposed six ways to Sunday for the way he handled himself in the job.

Well, we may now have an answer. It may simply have been the old Progressive tactic of preemptively accusing others of something they are doing. The Hill is reporting that the FBI had stumbled onto a plot that looks a lot like bribery by the Russians to get the Clinton’s support in their efforts to grow their nuclear business inside the US. This goes back to when Cankles was working for Obama as Secretary of State and had the authority to approve foreign energy deals, like selling uranium to Russia.

Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States, according to government documents and interviews.

Federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show.

They also obtained an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill.

The racketeering scheme was conducted “with the consent of higher level officials” in Russia who “shared the proceeds” from the kickbacks, one agent declared in an affidavit years later.

Assuming the evidence presented is accurate, it looks a lot like the sort of frauds the Clinton crime family has been running since their days in Arkansas. Hillary has always had a thing for the old fashioned graft rackets. This is where the Clintons grant favors from the government in exchange for cash. In order to avoid bribery charges, they always use a cutout of some sort. In Arkansas, it was campaign contributors who laundered the cash for them. In the 90’s, Chinese money flowed into the campaign.

The Clinton Foundation has always looked like a money laundering operation. The whole point of money laundering is to make the transactions seem legitimate. The smarter drug dealers in Baltimore will have a cash business they move their drug proceeds through in an effort to hide the source of their income. Famous people have foundations so they can use it to hire friends, family and supporters, but get a tax break. Politicians put their family on the campaign payroll at inflated salaries so they can keep some of the cash.

That is what the Clinton Foundation was for initially. The millions Bubba was getting from speeches and back dated transactions would go tax free into the charity. The Clintons would take a salary, but the foundation would pick up a lot of their expenses, like travel and security. It would also be a nice patronage system for future campaign workers and contributors. The Foundation was always a front operation. It was never intended to do any charitable work, which is why it has done no charitable work.

The thing with Hillary Clinton is that all of her scandals are about money. Going back to Arkansas, everything she was mixed up in was a money scheme of some sort. Bill was always getting jammed up with sex. It is reasonable to think he got into politics for the easy access to women. Hillary, on the other hand, has always been about the cash. That is why the Russians were willing to bribe her. They knew she would play ball if the price was right. That is what this looks like. Old fashioned pay for play.

This brings as back to the Russia probe.

The prevailing assumption regarding the Russian investigation is that it is a big nothing cooked up by bitter Democrats and promoted by the media to avoid facing up to the reality of the 2016 election. Once it became clear that the Podesta e-mails were causing trouble for Clinton, her people started chanting “Russian hacking” at every press conference, as if they had an exotic form of Tourette’s syndrome. It has all the hallmarks of a Clinton media fraud. They repeat something over and over, knowing the press will echo it.

The appointment of a special prosecutor has been viewed as an effort by the Trump administration to put the issue to bed. The press was never going to stop talking about and the Democrats were going to keep screaming about it. Name a special prosecutor and everyone has shut up about it. Mueller will spend a year and millions of dollars to discover there is nothing to the claims. That is the official version. What if it is something else entirely? What if the special prosecutor is just an excuse to handle some other matter?

The rule of thumb with political scandals is they fall into one of three buckets. There is the sex scandal, as with Bill Clinton. Then there are the money scandals, involving graft and public corruption. Hillary Clinton is the obvious example here. Then there is the personal scandal. This is the scandal where hurt feelings or a broken promise result in one member of the political class dishing dirt on another. Watergate was this type of scandal at its core. Mark Felt was angry at being passed over so he ratted out people to the press.

That is the odd thing about the Russia business. It has none of the markings of a political scandal. It works as a media event, as it ticks a lot of boxes for the press. They get to trade on salacious rumors for a while, without having to do any real reporting. Throw in some conspiracy theories and the Boris Badenov angle and it fills the news cycles for a few weeks. Otherwise, there is not enough to this Russian conspiracy to warrant a phone call from the FBI, much less a full blown investigation.

That is what makes the appointment of a special prosecutor so strange. The guy who convinced Trump to fire the FBI Director was Rod Rosenstein. He is pretty much a career Justice Department hand. Trump accepted his recommendation and fired Comey. Then Rosenstein ended up as the guy handling the phony Russia story after Sessions mysteriously recused himself. Trump then went on a rampage for a few weeks complaining about Sessions, even hinting that he may fire him over it.

Rosenstein then recommended a special prosecutor. The guy he recommended is a close friend of Comey and the former FBI Directory, Robert Mueller. In fact, Mueller preceded Comey in the job. Forgotten in all the excitement is the fact that Trump claimed the Obama people had bugged Trump Tower. The new was full of stories that the FBI may have a former Trump adviser on a wire. Of course, we now know that the Obama Administration was running a widespread domestic surveillance operation.

Then there are things that seem unrelated, but maybe not. Comey personally handled the Clinton e-mail probe. He is either a world class bungler or he had a reason to bungle it. Either way, he bungled it. He also appears to have perjured himself in his Congressional testimony. In one case, he later amended his testimony when it became obvious, he made false statements under oath. Maybe Comey was trying to hide something, but the more plausible answer is that he is just not good at this sort of work.

Regardless, there should be a whole bunch of attention on the FBI right now. At the minimum, they have been outlandishly incompetent over the last half of the Obama Administration. That should warrant a house cleaning. Alternatively, they may have been corrupted by the Obama Administration. It is clear that Samantha Power was abusing her authority with regards to domestic surveillance. It is reasonable to assume the FBI was compromised in some way during Comey’s tenure.

That may be what is really going on with the special prosecutor. The phony Russia scandal provided an excuse to bring in a political pro like Mueller to clean up the mess left by Comey and the Obama Administration. The FBI is not supposed to be spying on Americans without a warrant and they are really not supposed to be listening in on politicians. Someone signed off on bugging Trump Tower, during and after the presidential election. Who knows what other shenanigans have been going on?

The most likely answer for why a special prosecutor was appointed is that it was an easy way to get the whole thing out of the White House. Since the story is bogus and Mueller surely knows it is bogus, it will be a nice patronage program for a year or two and then the whole thing goes away. The second most likely answer is that Mueller’s job is to clean up the mess left by Comey and protect the reputation of the FBI, maybe even some other intelligence agencies. That way, no one gets hurt the problems are quietly fixed.

What this is not. is an investigation about Russia meddling in the election.

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.

The Idiot is a novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Like most Russian literature, it is a big book full of complicated characters, with funny names. The central character of the novel, Prince Myshkin, is a young man whose good intentions and decency are taken to be stupidity by the worldly characters of the novel. The title is intended to be ironic. His naivete is assumed to be due to stupidity. The novel is a study of what happens when such a person is put in a world populated by people lacking basic decency and morality.

Our cultural elites use something similar to promote the values of the ruling classes through movies and television. The movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is the classic example. The twist our betters put on it is the innocent adventurer taking on the corrupt system holds all of the values cherished by our actual ruling class. Meanwhile, the fictional villains are always people who sound like the critics of managerial state democracy. Even so, the basic theme is the same. We have the naïf versus the cabal of the cynical.

Whether as propaganda or psychological study, the central question is whether a corrupt and malignant system can be changed or defeated by a morally good person. The Hollywood version will on occasion have the white hat defeated, for the purpose of reinforcing some element of the one true faith. Usually though, the good guy triumphs over the system. This propaganda has been so effective, most American honestly think that by assiduously obeying every rule they will one day have their country back.

One of those Americans seems to be President Trump. The back story to his run is that he was motivated to run, after being disrespected by various on-line propagandists like Jonah Goldberg. Trump could not understand why a billionaire like him was mocked, by guys like Goldberg, who are nothing more than servants to rich men like Trump. To Trump, this made no sense. He was motivated to run in order to prove to these people that he could do anything they can do, but even better. There is nothing bigger than President.

Since his victory, Trump has been searching around for some way to be accepted by the political class. He assumed that winning the election would also win him the respect of official Washington. Instead, they locked shields to oppose him, even installing a special prosecutor to dig around in his life for a way to impeach him. Unable to figure out why he is treated like a skunk at the picnic, he has flailed around looking for something to give away in order to get the respect he craves.

Now, he is willing to fink on his voters by breaking every promise he made during the campaign. That is why he is dealing with Chuck Schumer. The sole reason for Schumer to exist in Washington is to guide troublesome Republicans through the process of committing political suicide. In the case of Trump, that means going for amnesty, abandoning the wall and supporting candidates who hate him. It is not enough that Trump fink on his voters. He must humiliate himself in front of them as well.

This is not to say that Trump is just a craven liar. He is one of the few people in the financial elite who embraces those old ideas of civic responsibility and fair play that used to define the American elite. Trump is from an age when it was your duty to uphold the rules and be a good example to others. He naively thinks that is how things still work. They do not, which is why the ruling elite looks at him as odious interloper. They do not hate him as much as they hate what he represents. They also think he is an idiot because of it.

One of the main critiques, from the Dissident Right, of Buckley Conservatives, is that they naively cling to ideas that are no longer applicable. Waving around the Constitution, for example, when the document is now interpreted to mean the opposite of what the Founders intended, is idiotic. The foolish embrace of principal, when it means sure defeat, is proof that the alleged opposition to the managerial state is either composed of fools, or traitors sent to subvert any real opposition to the status quo.

Now, much of what comes from the alt-right is ignorant chanting that is not based in anything but frustration with their fringe status. Even so, they are not wrong to point out that the Civic Nationalists and the alt-lite are naive and foolish to think they can talk the other side into turning away from their suicidal course. Every attempt to affect change within the system, is bound to fail, as the rules of the system are designed to protect and perpetuate the status quo. The people in charge are not going to quit on their stool.

“We’re not voting our way out of this” is a popular way of making this point. That is not entirely true, but it is a useful way to put it. Simply electing people who say the right things is not changing a system that has been corrupted to defend the interests of the two percent. The system, as it stands, must be subverted and destabilized. That does not happen at the ballot box. That is what we are seeing with Trump. He is being swallowed up by a system designed for that purpose. You do not beat it by playing by the rules.

It is hard to know if Trump will pull out of his death spiral. He has shown a willingness to reverse course if he feels he has made an error. It is also possible that he fears Mueller has something on him or his kids and he is hoping to trade away your future for his dignity and freedom. Maybe it all just part of the chaos that Trump seems to enjoy. Regardless, it is another reminder that the people putting their trust in the system are idiots. The system is not the solution to out problems as a society. The system is the problem.