OP- can you please post your source for those of us who may want to reuse it?

Read Bannon's book. You will start to understand.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Take eyes off the evidence of KGB executing people who leaked info re Trump. Take eyes off Bandon's NSC machinations. Just a guess.

Anyone else besides Erovinkin?

I think the Russian issue is big here. That conversation was not going well. The Republicans were against him. He has many conflicts of interest.

Now people are discussing a very controversial policy instead of going after him.

There are also the two Russian intelligence officers arrested for treason. Granted, they haven't been executed yet. I'm sure they'll receive the fairest of trials courtesy of Putin. So 3 people formally linked to Trump/election/dossier scandal. But nobody cares because everyone is (rightly) upset about the green card grenade.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/3179604851001/?#sp=show-clips

we need to evaluate Trump’s version of patriotism. Trump has promoted himself as the “real” American candidate, the one who will put “America first” (as the old fascist slogan goes) and who cares about the “forgotten Americans.” He has made it clear that he does not care very much about the welfare of Muslims, Mexicans, or other Americans who are not part of his white Christian base. But it is not clear that Trump cares about his white Christian base either, or about the stability and prosperity of America as a whole. Consider this excerpt from an explosive February 2014 interview on Fox News:

“You know what solves it?” he said of America’s sorry state. “When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster. Then you’ll have a [chuckles], you know, you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great.”

Trump does not want to make America great again. He wants to destroy America so that he, alone, can rebuild it and subsume it under his control. As he said in his GOP convention speech, “I alone can fix it.”

https://qz.com/751320/donald-trump-and-his-followers-could-destroy-america-even-if-he-loses/

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Take eyes off the evidence of KGB executing people who leaked info re Trump. Take eyes off Bandon's NSC machinations. Just a guess.

Anyone else besides Erovinkin?

I think the Russian issue is big here. That conversation was not going well. The Republicans were against him. He has many conflicts of interest.

Now people are discussing a very controversial policy instead of going after him.

And Sergei Mikhailov and three other FSB agents were arrested by Putin.

Anonymous wrote:Take eyes off the evidence of KGB executing people who leaked info re Trump. Take eyes off Bandon's NSC machinations. Just a guess.

Anyone else besides Erovinkin?

I think the Russian issue is big here. That conversation was not going well. The Republicans were against him. He has many conflicts of interest.

Now people are discussing a very controversial policy instead of going after him.

Anonymous wrote:This board is like the internet equivalent of Doomsday Preppers on the National Geographic channel.

Preppers are conservatives.

More senate confirmations this week. Don't stop making calls people!

Could this also be a litmus test? See what the maximum pain various groups can tolerate, including red state working class and the wealthy supporters?

This board is like the internet equivalent of Doomsday Preppers on the National Geographic channel.

Anonymous wrote:Take eyes off the evidence of KGB executing people who leaked info re Trump. Take eyes off Bandon's NSC machinations. Just a guess.

ITA.

Take eyes off the evidence of KGB executing people who leaked info re Trump. Take eyes off Bandon's NSC machinations. Just a guess.

Police are responding to a shooting at a mosque in Quebec City. Reports of 5-15 dead.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-city-mosque-gun-shots-1.3957686

Buckle up. Things will get worse before they get better.

It would be a ton easier to rally around a single person.

I am going to go out on a limb, fake events in the middle east and/or south china sea with corresponding "help" from Russia and executive orders to further consolidate power at the White House particularly with Bannon.

Saw this astute analysis of the EO online. This was my first thought... it just seems like the main point is to create discord and distraction. What is actually going on, does anyone have thoughts?

***

What Bannon is doing, most dramatically with last night's ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries-- is creating what is known as a "shock event." Such an event is unexpected and confusing and throws a society into chaos. People scramble to react to the event, usually along some fault line that those responsible for the event can widen by claiming that they alone know how to restore order. When opponents speak out, the authors of the shock event call them enemies. As society reels and tempers run high, those responsible for the shock event perform a sleight of hand to achieve their real goal, a goal they know to be hugely unpopular, but from which everyone has been distracted as they fight over the initial event. There is no longer concerted opposition to the real goal; opposition divides along the partisan lines established by the shock event.

Last night's Executive Order has all the hallmarks of a shock event. It was not reviewed by any governmental agencies or lawyers before it was released, and counterterrorism experts insist they did not ask for it. People charged with enforcing it got no instructions about how to do so. Courts immediately have declared parts of it unconstitutional, but border police in some airports are refusing to stop enforcing it.

Predictably, chaos has followed and tempers are hot.

My point today is this: unless you are the person setting it up, it is in no one's interest to play the shock event game. It is designed explicitly to divide people who might otherwise come together so they cannot stand against something its authors think they won't like. I don't know what Bannon is up to-- although I have some guesses-- but because I know Bannon's ideas well, I am positive that there is not a single person whom I consider a friend on either side of the aisle-- and my friends range pretty widely-- who will benefit from whatever it is. If the shock event strategy works, though, many of you will blame each other, rather than Bannon, for the fallout. And the country will have been tricked into accepting their real goal.

But because shock events destabilize a society, they can also be used positively. We do not have to respond along old fault lines. We could just as easily reorganize into a different pattern that threatens the people who sparked the event. A successful shock event depends on speed and chaos because it requires knee-jerk reactions so that people divide along established lines. This, for example, is how Confederate leaders railroaded the initial southern states out of the Union. If people realize they are being played, though, they can reach across old lines and reorganize to challenge the leaders who are pulling the strings. This was Lincoln's strategy when he joined together Whigs, Democrats, Free-Soilers, anti-Nebraska voters, and nativists into the new Republican Party to stand against the Slave Power. Five years before, such a coalition would have been unimaginable. Members of those groups agreed on very little other than that they wanted all Americans to have equal economic opportunity. Once they began to work together to promote a fair economic system, though, they found much common ground. They ended up rededicating the nation to a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people."

Confederate leaders and Lincoln both knew about the political potential of a shock event. As we are in the midst of one, it seems worth noting that Lincoln seemed to have the better idea about how to use it.