I don't like that hypothesis. Building my own (bear with me): I doubt Obama Himself served as primary author on "his own" tax plan, and probably neither did either Bush, or really, any president, because they supposedly have capable teams of people they've selected to allocate those tasks to. Then they sign the thing, to great fanfare. That's more or less how it's always worked until mid-to-late January of this lovely year, right? His staff, then, is either A) refusing to do it, B) can't do it, C) busy with something else, or (the classic) D) some combination of A), B), & C). Doesn't matter too much, we file this event under "unknowable", the 212,387th entry into a logbook that officially began recording about 100 days ago. The document sounds suspiciously like a sketch Trump might've given Tax Team Alpha six months ago. One page. One. This might be a particularly loud message to Trump from his staff. (sigh... #212,388) Now remove any semblance of uncertainty from what I just said, interpret it strictly along party lines, and run my soundbytes on primetime so we can make it reality ASAP. If Cadell were around, he might argue that this is what it looks like when a species' collective consciousness begins to awaken. My own approach to anthro would prolly be centered around some mangled wedding of informational treatment with network theory and neural networks, applied to memetics, culture, history, economics, dick pics, etc., etc. Blah blah blah internet blah changing the game (you just lost for the first time in years, btw). Very very trivial stuff, naturally, and left as an exercise to the reader. CHAPTER 2: HOW TO FUCKING WRECK THE HUBSKI COMMENTS SECTIONSNo, what we’re looking at here isn’t policy; it’s pieces of paper whose goal is to soothe the big man’s temper tantrums. Unfortunately, we may all pay the price of his therapy.
Counter-hypothesis: We have a president who - has never governed - has never shown interest in governing - has no close friends or associates with any interest or experience in governing Who is also - strongly supported by people with no understanding of governing - primarily understood by his supporters through soundbites and tweets - entirely driven by money and fame We have something called the "six foot rule" in Hollywood. It's used by set decorators and propmasters. If something looks real from six feet away, it's good enough to be in-frame on a wide or a master or a 2-shot. You need a hero prop for closeups but for most stuff, crude approximations work. This is the way most of Hollywood works - from six feet away, it looks like corporations and bureaucracies and functional org charts and all the rest. It's only when you get up in it you see the chumminess and nepotism and passion that drives most things but we're good at faking it. If you were the on-camera talent - and disinterested talent at that - on a show arranged around you to make you look like a powerful, decisive businessman with global reach and world influence... ...you might get the impression that a one-page tax plan is all you need. After all, they'll shot it in master, they'll shoot it in close-up, they'll shoot some reaction shots, and then they'll edit it into a 10-second beat and go to commercial. Donald Trump is not being president. He's playing president. And of course - you get weekends off and after every important beat you retire to the green room. Meanwhile you're surrounded by people who make it work because you get one shot at it and once it's done, it's done. He didn't build a cabinet. He invited guest stars to his tv show. And the fact that they have no idea what they're doing either reinforces the fact that he's the smartest person in the room. And while the rest of us stare, jaws agape, horrified by the craven greed and incompetence, his supporters don't care. Because, you see, they don't know the difference between "being president" and "playing president" either.