Good God....

Read this and weep.

One of the fascinating things - as an academic, not a citizen - of Trumpistan is watching how institutions and institutional rules both restrain and enable Trump.  This piece does a great job of showing how Trump's media strategy is perfectly tailored to today's media landscape. Trump's relentless torrent of lies overwhelms the ability of factcheckers and journalists to keep up with him.  But the basic rules of "bothsides" and journalist respectability mean that the president can't be called a childish, unhinged, peevish lunatic, even if that description fits.  When Trump engages in a bizarre rant, it's usually couched in terms other than a "bizarre rant." Jon Chait notes how Trump is successfully politicizing prosecutions by the Justice Department.

But the piece linked in the first line is terrifying in so many ways. If Trump's behavior described in that piece is even 75% accurate, then you just have to pick your jaw up off the floor. He's ignorant, but his web of sycophants and structured bullshit means he's the walking embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect. So, the first horror show is that - when the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretaries of Defense and State tried to educate him about the world - he blew up like a spoiled brat being told he couldn't have all the cookies. Even more troubling is that - challenged in ways that he really never has been before, by people he deep down craves respect from - he slammed them in ways that is...just flabbergasting.

Trump has never been "President."  He's been "President of the Deplorables."  He refuses to unify or engage the nation beyond his base.  When he decided that the military brass and national security apparatus was not part of "the Deplorables," he turned on them, just like he turns on anyone who isn't sufficiently loyal and deferential.

As far as institutions go, this episode could lead in two directions.  One is the Mattis direction. The military and national security apparatus, so steeped in chain of command, roll over for this martinet. The other is that they find a way to interfere in the 2020 election. If they do, that challenges the essential separation of the military and intelligence agencies from domestic politics.  The CIA barely survived the Church hearings and Watergate, but at least in those instances, they were operating under the chain of command. What happens if the CIA and other agencies leak damaging information about Trump in October? Good news!  He's gone!  Bad news!  We've eroded yet another democratic institutions within the borders of Trumpistan.