Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Preserving norms is, in its way, the opposite of a power struggle. Your constant insistence of finding dubious equivalence between different parties, to turn them into parallel and competing sides, leads you to say some stupid things. The intelligence community is not trying to run the country. Trump is. In that way, they are very, very different. Unclear why you feel a need to describe their struggle in a way the avoids this difference.
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Only if you’ve concluded the norms are valid. If you believe the institutional norms are part of the problem, and I think the Trumpkins do (Trump himself is just blundering forward like a Chainsaw Al Dunlap in the White House), then you’ve got the definition of a power struggle.
The Trump people believe the intel agencies’ and systemic DC norms need to be overturned. They do not seek to ruin the country as they see it. They think it’s already ruined.
It’s a power struggle between agencies and the exec branch.
That you and I think the current norms are valid and Trump an aberration doesn’t mean it’s objectively right versus wrong, or ruin versus stability. It just means we see it that way. But really, it is a power struggle. A lunatic versus the entrenched system. I see no winning, as we need reform, but not of the Trumpian kind.
The casino always wins. Trump will disrupt, but in the ultimate game, he loses. The agencies are just going to have play some really nasty cards (leaking his returns) to put this to rest. They’re reluctant to do so for obvious reasons. But they’ll be pushed to it sooner or later.
