Thread by @HNIJohnMiller

1) Who’s on the attack? Its a question that’s asked thousands of times every day. Usually its asked as ‘who’s the aggro deck’, when people are playing competitive card games, which is where I learned the concept.

2) Essentially, in a one on one competition, there are two strategies. Offense, and defense. Nice and simple. The offense aggresively goes after their goals, the defense will prevent their opponents from achieving their goals until the defense can achieve its goals.

3) Whoever does best at their strategy, wins.

So what happens when both competitors go into a match intending to be on the offense? What happens when both intend to be on the defense?

4) Then you ask the question: WHO is on the attack? Who of the two offensive players is more aggressive? Who of the two defensive players is more aggressive?

5) Trump vs Pelosi and Schumer on the border wall. What strategies did they both walk in with?

6) Trump is always aggressive in negotiations. He uses Twitter, he makes promises, he declares what he’s after in no uncertain terms.

7) Democrats are aggressive too. They attack their opponents character directly to make them submit. They’re smart, in a pitbull knowing to bite your nutsack kind of way.

8) In a competition between two offensive strategies, correctly identifying who is the more aggressive player and who is the more defensive player is the difference between victory and defeat.

9) Players who incorrectly labels themselves the more aggressive player will overextend themselves and leave themselves vulnerable to a counterattack.

10) Players who incorrectly label themselves the more defensive player will play too cautiously and miss opportunities to seize the initiative and achieve their goals.

11) Trump vs Pelosi/Schumer, or nunchucks as @LarrySchweikart refers to them. Both came in with aggressive strategies. What in the flying fuck happened?

@LarrySchweikart 12) Well, let me introduce you to the third tier of logic. First tier is planning to be offensive or defensive. Second tier is adapting to be aggressive or defensive based on what your opponent is doing.

@LarrySchweikart 13) Third tier, which is where I believe Trump is right now: adapting in an unexpected way to your opponent to bait them into an incorrect adaptation of their strategy in order to win.

@LarrySchweikart 14) Trump, the personification of aggressive negotiation strategies, held his national speech and was... defensive. Understated numbers to head off accusations of overstating threats. Kept his goals simple and clear.

@LarrySchweikart 15) Nunchucks incorrectly identified themselves as the attacker, and went in far too aggressively, accusing Trump of racism when their loyal factchecking propagandists were forced to admit understated the facts and numbers that Pelosi is on record as not carinf about.

@LarrySchweikart 16) They then attempted to backpedal defensively, and bluffed that if the government was reopened they would negotiate on the wall.

@LarrySchweikart 17) Imagine a big long line, ranging from offense on the left, to defense on the right. Mark it a scale of 1 to 10.

@LarrySchweikart 18) We assume Trump is always going to be in the 1-2 range for negotiations, as aggressive as possible.

@LarrySchweikart 19) Knowing this, the Democrats placed themselves at a 3-4 range. Still very aggressive, but less so than Trump, thinking if they held strong he’d burn himself out and his support would evaporate.

@LarrySchweikart 20) Trump proceeded to go into the match with the speeches placing himself at 5, throwing off Nunchucks who attempted to offer a bluff of an olive branch hoping to appear even more moderate.

@LarrySchweikart 21) The defensive player in a match does not sit passively. He instead waits for the opponent to give him opportunities to strike.

@LarrySchweikart 22) A player who incorrectly plays too offensively will accidentally overextend. The Democrats believed Trump would be far more aggressive than he was, and so they in turn played far more aggressively, not realizing their error until they were already overextended.

@LarrySchweikart 23) Again, to reiterate.

First tier: Going into a match planning to be aggressive or defensive.

Second tier: adjusting your strategy to counter your opponent.

Third tier: Baiting your opponent into committing to the wrong strategy.

@LarrySchweikart 24) All Nunchucks had to do was shut up and don’t be dumb. That was it. That was their one job. Had they played defensively and just buttoned up to let Trump rant endlessly about his wall, he would have blown his load and eventually be forced to capitulate.

@LarrySchweikart 25) So they took a far more aggressive strategy thinking that however aggressive they were, it would still be defensive compared to how aggressive Trump would be. They thought until the trap closed on them that they were on the defensive.

@LarrySchweikart 26) In short, they were the defense and would have won had they stuck to that, but they incorrectly identified Trump as offensive, and were baited into playing more offensively as a result.

@LarrySchweikart 27) Trump walking out of the meeting with Pelosi? Pence backing Trump’s side of the story entirely? That’s the counterattack. That’s the defensive strategy exploiting the weakness of an overextended attacker.

@LarrySchweikart 28) In short: relax. Trump won this battle before it even began.

“But noooooo, being passive is baaaaad, we must fight for our ideals!”

Alright. Cool story bro. Let me know what throwing Coulter-esque panic and fear based rants on Twitter has ever actually accomplished.

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