Razors

 Josh Marshall once posited "Trump's Razor" which was a spin on Occam's Razor. Occam's Razor is the logical tool that posits that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Trump's Razor is that usually the stupidest explanation is the correct one. Did Trump engage in a 24 hour trade war with our biggest trading partners, because he didn't really understand the impact of those tariffs until the markets tanked? Seems pretty stupid! Probably correct!

Paul Krugman, perhaps, offers us Musk's Razor. He was writing, in general, about the ongoing autogolpe against the Constitution. (An autogolpe is a coup by an already elected leader.) In the process, he offers this suggestion:

You should look at everything they do through that lens. Yes, we can ask whether a policy move makes sense in terms of its announced goals. But you should also always ask, “How does doing this serve the autogolpe?”

There's a similar lens to look at Trump, which we could call Xi's Razor. "If Donald Trump were to be an agent designed to destroy American influence in the world, would he be doing anything different than he is?" However, that suggests that Trump is some sort of Manchurian Candidate, and I think the said truth is that he's just a mental slob who manages to push the right buttons in America's Id and win elections because of it.

Musk's Razor is a good one. It's converse is the Democratic communication strategy of asking "How does this lower the price of eggs?"  But that only works when talking about things like invading Greenland, renaming the Gulf of Mexico or banning trans people from doing stuff. For the full-blown assault on the Constitutional Order, we need to keep applying Musk's Razor. 

The destruction of USAID is a personal project for Musk, as an unrepentant Afrikaner Nationalist. However, it also serves the autogolpe by creating the precedent for shuttering an entire agency without Congressional approval.  Seizing control of the Treasury is, of course, the biggest threat, but so was the ham-fisted attempt to get Federal employees to take a "buy out" that had no legal justification or financial backing.

When it comes to Trump and Trumpy shit like releasing millions of gallons of water that farmers will need this summer in order to...something...that's Trump's Razor. There's no secret plan there, he's just an idiot.

When it comes to actions that revolve around Musk or even some of the Project 2025 people, pay attention to how it serves the autogolpe.