The Short Straw Gambit: facing down madness with cleverness

I've suggested this before. Donald Trump is about personality disorders, not ideology! Indeed, the "worst American" George F. Will has reached the same conclusion about the man occupying the Oval Office.  This overlap of diagnosis does not persuade me to cozy up to Will the Traitor. 

Still, by all means read the man's dissection.

Viewing the problem as psychological, instead of fundamentally ideological, opens up an interesting possibility. For example, last month Trump declared war on the GOP's Freedom Caucus -- the 30+ Republican Tea Party radicals who torched Paul Ryan's "Obamacare replacement" bill, though in fact, he was aggrieved personally not politically. His "dealmaking" for the next version (which just passed the House) was entirely about loyalty. He shows no sign of having read or understood the changes.

Hence, this impudent thought: Trump's short attention span and egomania suggest an action by "Short straw Democrats."

== The principle is simple: flattery works! ==

 Donald Trump responds ferociously to those who dislike him and warmly to those who say nice things. Period. Full stop. There is nothing more. There is nothing less. Nothing left or right. Or anything else. So let me repeat it.

Donald Trump responds ferociously to those who dislike him and warmly to those who say nice things.  Period.

And hence, Democrats should hold a caucus to draw straws. Those with short straws must say nice things about Donald Trump.

This does not demand betraying principles! Your stances and votes can all remain the same! But you'll simply and deliberately end any statement about the president with a compliment. 

Example: "While I respectfully disagree with the President on this and a myriad other issues, I will admit that he is among the best-looking leaders this nation ever had."

Will the pandering be obvious? Sure! Will there be nods and winks? Uh-Huh. Will Hannity & Co. scream denunciations of an obvious ploy? Yep! And Trump's inner circle will rail at him to ignore the blatant manipulativeness of the other side's "short straw" volunteers.

But it won't matter! The compliment will stick in Trump's head, where facts and policy positions do not. He will invite the complimenters to dinner, to golf. He'll listen. He'll sway. I'll put money on it.

(Al Franken could pull this off. So could Chuck Schumer. Nancy Pelosi shouldn't try, but Elizabeth Warren?)

Surely there are a few Democrats with the intelligence and strength of character and stomach to do what clearly must be done?

Well.  No.  I guess we've seen the answer to that one.

== The Siberian Candidate – follow the connections ==

Here’s a fascinating timeline, for those who want to study hypocrisy.  If even one or two of these “coincidences” had been done by Obama or Clinton, it would have raised screams of conspiracy! 

What do you do when the “coincidences” pile up and beggar Goldfinger’s Law?

== Sinking their fangs deeper ==

Marissa Mayer Set to Receive $186 Million for Failing...Because... This Is How Corporate America Works.  In addition to $200M in other "compensation."   How is this justified? Our companies are vampired of value in order to "get top talent into management."  Instead of spending to develop new products, members of the CEO-oligarch caste heap on debt to do stock buy-backs that boost their golden parachutes.

Think.  In any other field, high pay would draw in talent from other fields to compete with these 5000 golf buddy CEOs. That flood of competitors should then pull CEO pay down. It's called supply & demand capitalism -- the thing these folks claim to favor!  But it hasn't happened for 40 years.  Instead, this closed cabal appoints each other onto boards that then hire "indispensable" pals at rates that would fund many world nations.

And now they are so rich that wealth disparities have reached levels of 1789 France, affecting politics so that correction is impossible, short of revolution.

See where I decrypt how we came to this. How "business" leaders became the conniving enemies of Adam Smith:

There are still sectors of the U.S. economy that do capitalism and competitive enterprise.  Autos are vibrant and deliver better products, every year. Elon is forcing competition into spaceflight. Silicon Valley is still filled with folks who emphasize product innovation. I do not want the revolution that the Wall Street and CEO caste seem determined to provoke!

We need to remember how FDR and the Greatest Generation staved off Marxism.  With reform.

== Economic and personal freedom: Victims  of government? ==

Libertarians! Does Size of Government (SoG) negatively affect freedom? Is Big Government the enemy of both Personal Freedom (PF) and Economic Freedom (EF)?  The Cato Institute - supposedly the center of libertarian intellect - collected data to study EF and PF and well-being across 160 nations. Some conclusions were expected - EF and PF tend to rise and fall together.

But a simple analysis at Evonomics - using Cato's own data - shows that economic and personal freedom both correlate positively - strongly - with size of government.   That is strongly... positive. Countries with more government tend to have higher PF and EF.  Blatantly so.

Should you be surprised?  As proved during the Greatest Generation - (who adored FDR) - shared investments in infrastructure, schools, health etc. all result in vastly raising the fraction and number of children who can then confidently participate as competitors in vigorous markets, or do the science that stimulates all growth. 

Yes, government bureaucracies can stifle!  But history shows that danger to be far smaller than the threat of re-established cheater-oligarchy.

Finally, it's time to banish the mythos that "democrats favor personal freedom and republicans favor economic freedom."  It is an outright lie.  If 'economic freedom' stands for healthy entrepreneurship, small business startups, competitiveness, innovation, level-competitive playing fields and strong economy-metrics, then democrats score vastly better in that freedom, too.

Republicans only serve the concentration of economic power in an ever-narrowing aristocratic class. 

Name one exception, a vigorously enacted GOP policy that did not pursue that one and only, central Republican goal.

One. Name one.

== Weaponized satire ==

Borowitz is brilliant. "Appearing at his first public event since leaving office, Obama fired off a punishing fusillade of grammatically correct sentences, the likes of which the American people have not heard from the White House since he departed... in what was widely seen as a brutal attack on his successor, without ever once referring to or mentioning Donald Trump." -- writes Andy Borowitz in The New Yorker.

“About five or six sentences in, I noticed that all of his sentences had both nouns and verbs in them,” Carol Foyler said. “I couldn’t believe he was going after Trump like that.” "Obama’s blistering deployment of complete sentences clearly got under the skin of their intended target, who, moments after the event, responded with an angry tweet: “Obama bad (or sick) guy. Failing. Sad!”