Coronavirus spreads. But don't panic! (topical thread)

[Dom]

It doesn't matter what or even whether trump thinks.

It is the citizens, all of us, who are playing right into this scenario.

And I don't think for a minute that trump has been the origin of ANY of his policies. 

While Steve Bannon is not in the white house anymore, he is still influential in the alt right, and his position is still quite obviously followed by trump policies.

He literally wants to destroy the state. He told The Daily Beast in 2014, “I’m a Leninist.” He elaborated: “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

Bannon was not subservient and compliment spouting enough to remain in the official inner circle, but like minded people remain in the administration. And we still don't know for sure who is actually running the show, although Putin is still the prime candidate. 

From domestic politics to international politics, trump is dismantling the United States. 

And as long as his politics of division continue to work, he will continue to succeed.

I don't see the country uniting against him, and my biggest fear is that there will be no election, or that it will be severely flawed and compromised.

So you see Trump as a useful idiot.  I see Trump as a reductio ad absurdum of anti-government rhetoric in the Republican Party, which I believe started with Reagan's "Government IS the problem."  Many Republicans voted for Trump to sabotage the government, which he has done to the best of his ability.  However, with the pandemic and economic problems, and lack of progress on income inequality and climate change, more and more people are seeing that a strong federal government is essential.  The thing about reductio ad absurdums is that they enable people to see the obvious failings of certain lines of thinking.  The backlash has already started.

These are not contradictory positions, they can easily combine to form a perfect storm. Probably we are both right.