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For the last two weeks (basically since the whole tariff conversation kicked-off) I've ve been seeing comments here about how trump is "erratic", "stupid", "illiterate", and a "retard", about how he's going to tank the economy and usher in a new age of Democratic party rule, about how his supporters are all deep-throating cock-slobberes who deserve to loose everything.
I would like to propose an alternative take. What if The Art of The Deal is an accurate reflection of Trump's beliefs and and approach to the world? If that were the case, it would seem that theMotte may be seriously underestimating Donald Trump.
I recently started reading Art of The Deal and I found it interesting to contrast Scott's review of that book with his latest on "The Purpose Of A System Is Not What It Does" as Trump (or his ghostwriter if you prefer to continue believing that Trump is illiterate) makes a similar but inverse argument.
According to Trump (or Tony Schwartz) one of the key skills of a sucessful negotiator is the ability to remain focused on what is rather than what ought to be, or what people say. Scott alleges in his review that the purpose of a real-estate developer is to lie, and there is a naive "the purpose of a thing is what it does" interpretation where this is plainly true but I don't think Scott gives the Trump/Schwartian position enough credit.
Regardless of it's purported purpose, the "role" of planning boards and zoning laws is to prevent buildings from being built. in orderfor a building to be built the planning board must be thwarted.
Thus the Developer tells the Contractor to start pouring concrete. The planning board is going to approve this project, we're just waiting on the paperwork. The contractor starts pouring. The Developer then goes to the planning board and tells them, you might as well approve this project because we already started work and otherwise you'd have go down to the job-site and tell the Contractor to stop. The planning board approves the project.
Scott would characterize the Developer as having lied to the contractor about having the approval, but did they? The planning board did in fact approve the project after all. That the contractor beginning to pour without approval played a major part in the granting of approval is either of vital importance or completely irrelevant depending upon which side of the managerial versus working class divide you are sitting.
Another key element of the Trump/Schwartian approach is the idea that there are no "friends" and no "enemies" at the negotiating table. Only people who are willing to negotiate in good faith, and those who are not. People who refuse to negotiate at all are definitionally in the "not" catagory.
Finally, contra Scott, i would hold that rather than being vague and unsatisfying the solution of "find someone who knows more about the issue than I do and pay them to persue my prefered outcome" is sensible and actionable advice.
With these ideas in mind a lot of his allegedly "erratic" and "nonsensical" decisions regarding Tariffs, Zelenskyy, and Immigration start to look less "nonsensical" and more like deliberate tactical choices.
Erratic? Definitely. Stupid? In a sense. Illiterate? No. Retard? By the medical definition, of course not.
I prefer the term "buffoon" myself.
I'm assuming that's supposed to be "cock-slobberers". I wouldn't call all his supporters that, but a decent chunk, roughly about 33-37% of the country certainly are. I'm confident enough in that assertion that I'd be willing to bet money on it, if such a market existed.
There's two big problems with the "4D Chess, Art Of The Deal, Trust The Plan" style of arguments.
It's deployed as yet another everything-proof shield for any of Trump's actions. Trump cultists desperately, desperately want any reason to love the man, so there's an extensive distributed search to come up with any reason to do so. This is just like how woke academics searched for any reason not to blame black people for their own problems, and ended up coming up with unfalsifiable ideas like "structural racism" as the cause for everything. When the motivated reasoning is this blatant, you should be suspicious of the purported results.
Where are the actual results? Trump has already had a full term where he was full of erratic actions. Where are his successes where the erratic behavior clearly led to a good outcome? Note that there are going to be happy accidents every once in a while, so we would expect at least a few good results even if we made an RNG simulator the President. Trump certainly had a few good results during his first term, but they were mostly just him acting like a conventional politician, e.g. Operation Warp Speed (which Trump later disavowed, because of course he did) or his SCOTUS nominations (more of McConnell's victory really, but Trump gets some credit for not buffoonishly sabotaging it in some way).
If, come the 2026 midterm or 2028 presidential elections, the economy was looking decent to strong and there had been significant progress towards any of the following goals; balancing US trade deficiets, restoring US shipbuilding capacity, or peace in Ukraine. Would you update your priors? Or is being an anti-populist such a core component of your identity that you would deny reality to protect your ego?
If the latter, how is your claim that "Trump is a buffoon" any less of a fully general "everything proof" argument?
I already give Trump credit for destroying wokeism or at least hastening it's demise. I also gave him credit for announcing a buildup of the military, which is a good idea. Hopefully he actually goes through with it and doesn't waffle.
I don't find balancing US trade deficits to be a priority. Something like reshoring (high tech) manufacturing though, sure.
Yes, it would be great if he could restore US shipbuilding.
Peace in Ukraine is highly contingent on what the peace looks like. If it's effectively "force Ukraine to surrender and give up huge swathes of land that they wouldn't need to if Biden were still around" is not a good peace. If it was "ceasefire at current lines, and Ukraine protected from future invasions by European guarantees", that'd be reasonable.
So that is a "no" then, you would not update your priors.
This is pretty low effort and seems meant only to antagonize and not actually get at the other person's reasoning. Playing gotcha with "I asked you a yes or no question, and you gave me a couple of paragraphs of explanation but didn't say yes or no therefore you didn't answer my question" is obnoxious. If you genuinely believe you still do not have an answer:
Honestly it must be said that these rules are often honored more in the breach than in practice, but this one-liner just stands out as egregiously "ZING! I am not arguing to understand but to score points."
@TheAntipopulist is one of the specific users i had in mind writing the OP.
Their three paragraphs here and replies elsewhere in this thread can be summarized as; "even if the populists are sucessful (which they wont be) it will be for reasons outside thier control and thus not count."
So cutting to the chase, no the anti populist is not going to be updating his priors regarding populism and populists.
With that in mind do you really think they are arguing to understand rather to score points? A large portion of the users' output (along with thier user name) is little more than casual disparagement of anyone outside the managerial class.
Casual disparagement that you are not just tolerating but actively defending from push-back.
All three specify circumstances under which he would update, and some of them aren't even all that demanding. None of them require things outside the government's control or at least not wildly more than your list that he was replying to. Reading "here are three ways I would update" as "I wouldn't update" is... certainly a thing someone said on the Internet today.
Honestly, you're not making much sense. You don't seem to be reading what the words in front of you actually say, but what your opinion of the person posting them leads you to expect to be there.
No they did not specify any circumstances under which they would update, they explained why even if x y and z were to happen they are not high priorities and thus beneath consideration. While there is a throw-away line about giving Trump credit for setting "wokeness" back a bit the possibility that Trump and the people who voted for him might genuinly believe the things they claim to believe is dismissed out of hand.
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I sincerely don't understand how you're coming to that conclusion based on what I wrote.
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