Thread by @AlexandraErin

WOW.

Okay. So. I'm still waking up (my typical post-performance insomnia last night) so it's going to take a while to pull my thoughts together on this, but.

This marks a turning point.

First thing we have to acknowledge is that Hair Furor's Twitter has been considered to be an official source for government directives; quite possibly, it's the most official one because he otherwise hates to make things explicit or put them in writing.

Second thing is, this is not the first time he's tried issuing orders to private companies. Before he was even sworn in, he called the media in on the carpet and tried to give them marching orders for how it's going to be.

His understanding of the presidency is that it's something like being king but even more so it's being Boss of the Country. He assumed President Obama was directing the media, and that if the president couldn't control the other industries it was because he was weak.

So this isn't exactly *new*. But it's hard to get around the starkness of the wording "hereby ordered". Which isn't to say that Kellyanne Conway can't go on television and say "I think what he was speaking to is that it would be in their interest to blah de blah blah blah."

The idea of the federal government seizing control of industry... that's a load-bearing wall of so much conservative rhetoric pushing back against social programs, environmental regulations, etc. as "creeping socialism".

It's also a bright red line for how a lot of conservatives explain away fascism. In their mind, it's not fascism until the dictator intrudes into private enterprise. "The Nazis were national socialists!" plays into this.

So what do I expect to change as a result of Trump making this massive authoritarian powerplay in plain sight?

Nothing at first. Nothing right away. In the short term, damage control will be a mix of walking it back, and trying to figure out why It's Good That He Did That.

Republicans (including both politicians and business oligarchs) who are nervous about this but aren't ready to break with him -- and that's going to be almost all of them -- will wind up toeing the line "for now", thinking that if things go really wrong they can leave.

Again.

In the medium term, the fact that people are saying Trump shouldn't have said this and that he can't order businesses to do things... is going to make him double down, and put all those people toeing the line "for now" on the spot, turning it into a loyalty test.

So in the long term... yep, this is another step towards full and open totalitarian fascism. A lot of Republicans are going to shrug and say "I guess he's in charge of what businesses do now." and a lot of businesses are going to say, "Well, he still beats the alternative."

There's a principle in US politics and how we talk about them, that's sometimes called Only Nixon Can Go To China and sometimes called It's Okay If You're A Republican.

I prefer to call it Rules Are For Democrats.

Or hypocrisy.

Under a Democratic president, because the Right has decades of experience preaching against how Democrats are a bunch of communist authoritarians, we can just barely pass something like the Affordable Care Act (made up of Republican ideas), and that's *still* socialism somehow.

But under Republicans... I mean, they can outright give marching orders to private enterprise and somehow it's what freedom means, because Everybody Knows It's The Other Side That's Commies.

Yep.

I mean, we're hearing right now that the Koch brothers fought authoritarianism. How? By empowering the right-wing takeover of the government that is currently seizing total power over our lives and deaths forever.

They're all afraid of being sent to the cornfield.

Anyway.

A so-called president of these benighted states going on social media and saying that "our" companies are "hereby ordered" to do anything... that *should* be a career-ending move, not just because it's authoritarian but it demonstrates a complete lack of understanding.

But while I'm saying it demonstrates his complete lack of understanding about the nature and structure of government, the way businesses work, etc.... I'm also saying that in effect the political and business worlds will bend themselves into the shape he desires.

It turns out the fascist Will To Power has a lot in common with the Will To Stand In Line At The Subway Sandwich Counter And Say "But I Don't Understand Why You Won't Take This Blimpie's Coupon, It's For A Sandwich And You Sell Sandwiches, Don't You?" Until The Manager Gives In.

Donald Trump's refusal to understand limits is more strategically useful than a refusal to accept limits, because it makes it presents another level of obstacles before someone can even try to argue with him about it.

This is how democracy dies: to thunderous forehead-smacking.

He's mimicking language he's seen in things like judicial judgments. He wants to usurp the power of the courts, which as he sees it can just say whatever they want (and too frequently go against him).

A good place to start if you're not sure why he's saying something is to try to figure out where he heard it (e.g., Fox and Friends). "[X] is hereby ordered to" is legalistic language he's certainly butted up against enough in his lifetime.

He is the "business president" famous for playing a successful businessman on TV.

Talking about business.

I haven't checked but I imagine the stock market may be nosing downward in response to Donald's rage tweets this morning.

The thing is... his supporters always make a big deal out of the fact that he gives up his salary of $400k a year. And his detractors quite rightly point out that he makes more than that back in influence peddling, inflating his club dues, emoluments.

But that's small change.

The grift Trump is performing through his clubs and hotels is just how he keeps his hand in. It's penny ante stuff. Runaway greed, but not enough to prop up his lifestyle or keep his hollow empire afloat.

Where Trump sees big money in the presidency is in the power to wreck the economy.

A lot of people of means were ruined by the Great Depression, but for the ultrarich? It was a means to solidify their wealth and power.

L. Ron Hubbard, before he founded Scientology, would regularly tell anyone who would listen and many who wouldn't that there was no real money in science fiction so he was going to get rich making up a religion.

And Donald Trump told us all before he assumed the presidency that he would ruin the economy and get rich.

I've said before that Trump doesn't invest in the stock market in a conventional sense. When he talks about buying stock in something, it's almost always in terms of getting a significant stake, if not a controlling one. He doesn't want an interest in their success but ownership.

When "the stock market crashes", what that means is that stocks are selling for cheap which means that whole companies and their assets are available for firesale prices.

That's not even getting into the stuff like short sales that let speculators with deep pockets just absolutely make a killing as the market falls.

Trump's lifestyle of the rich and famous doesn't depend on him having any actual money (and even moreso now that he's in power) - give him a chance and he will light the house he lives in on fire and gamble that he will be the best at selling ash.

Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon also have favored crashing the economy as a part of burning down the old world so they can rebuild all our institutions to their own specifications.

So don't assume this is all *just* cluelessness. He doesn't really understand what the presidency is supposed to be or how businesses work, but he doesn't care. He'll make them work the way he wants to, unless and until someone stops him.

And that, for now, is all I have to say about that.

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