Text: It would be easy to assign malice to this nonsense, and there is a degree of it. There is also indeed self-interest on behalf of the oligarchs backing Trump, who might still hope they can get their tax cuts while holding onto Trump's populism (though I suspect they realize their losses aren't worth it). However, Trump isn't doing something that every political movement does in one way or another. He's trying to create a narrative and set of common reference points that transform issues associated with complex systems into digestible ones with easy solutions. To give him his credit, that's his greatest talent. The man is a master ideologist in a world where ideologies have fewer stable reference points in "big ideas." However, I suspect that the contradictions and unexpected consequences of trying to take as complex a system as global trade and payment out of homeostasis with blunt tools will create feedback loops that even he can't paper over.
Text: It would be easy to assign malice to this nonsense, and there is a degree of it. There is also indeed self-interest on behalf of the oligarchs backing Trump, who might still hope they can get their tax cuts while holding onto Trump's populism (though I suspect they realize their losses aren't worth it). However, Trump isn't doing something that every political movement does in one way or another. He's trying to create a narrative and set of common reference points that transform issues associated with complex systems into digestible ones with easy solutions. To give him his credit, that's his greatest talent. The man is a master ideologist in a world where ideologies have fewer stable reference points in "big ideas." However, I suspect that the contradictions and unexpected consequences of trying to take as complex a system as global trade and payment out of homeostasis with blunt tools will create feedback loops that even he can't paper over.