"My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."
This was said by Grover Norquist, a thought leader amongst Republicans in the early 2010's. I've always thought that China or Russia would appreciate being able to drown us in a bathtub as well.
He has much more conplete control of fhe Republican Party and, fhrough that, much less practical constraint in both policy and personnel this time, so this Administration reflects his will and intentions much more purely than did his first.
Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity, and all that.
Like, I've no doubt that Putin is very happy that he was elected, and the FSB and GRU probably put their finger on the scale to at least some extent, but it's probably more a case of a convenient idiot than a Manchurian candidate.
> Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity, and all that.
that only applies when you have a flat prior. stupidity should be random - one action moves the needle one way, another action moves it back and you have an average of zero. when every action moves the needle the same way and somebody benefits from it, there's something going on.
I wish people would apply Hanlon's razor more critically. Because the way people apply it allows evil people to act dumb and get away with it all the time. Guess what: evil people don't come out and say "I'm evil!" They don't wear super villain costumes, and they don't look like evil monsters. They look like everyone else, and they say all the right things like everyone else. Evil people rely on plausible deniability and Hanlon's razor to get away with their deeds. At every turn they are called out, they will say "I didn't mean to, I'm really a good person honestly! You're overreacting! I was just joking!" At some point you have to put on your critical thinking skills and stop allowing people to lie to you.
Oh, to be clear (I was the Hanlon’s Razor invoker), I would consider Trump to be, well, evil, but in the amoral monster sense rather than the evil mastermind sense. He is a _profoundly_ bad person, but my view would be that it’s down to a failure to see people as people, rather than an active plan to hurt people (Some of his sponsors/handlers, of course, are type 2 evil, but if nothing else, Trump lacks the _visionary_ aspect that’s required for that.) If he thought it would benefit him, or if the right people whispered in his ear, he’d be a faux-humanitarian; he simply _doesn’t care_ (and, likely, doesn’t really understand the difference.)
