Monday 17 April 2017: Move Fast And Break Stuff

A hundred days. Is this what the next four years will look like? Probably. Is that a good thing? Probably not. But who knows. You can say whatever you like now.

Conflating Arrogance With Leadership
We begin with emails. Because where else would you start? A successful, if slightly questionable female candidate runs against a traincrash male candidate and … still loses? Why? Conjecture: He acted like a winner, so we made him one. That is to say, he looked confident. So the electorate decided that not only was he confident, he was also a good leader. ‘He seems like he knows what he’s doing’ isn’t always a solid base for a decision. And the other people that wanted him in office have … different motives.

Mister (So-Called) President
AKA ‘Hear What I Say, Do As I Like’. This Administration’s relationship with the truth is one of the things that make it iconic, in the worst possible way. They seem okay with using half-truth and unverified internet sourcing to make statements of ‘fact’ that sometimes amount to little more than ‘fiction’. A worrying trend, especially if, mostly due to the Russian scandal, you doubted Trumps legitimacy anyway, even before all of this.

White Russian
Links between the Trump administration and Russia were investigated. That investigation is still ongoing, but Michael Flynn, a senior intelligence officer had resigned due to communications with the Russians. Every so often there are leaks or threats of leaks that expose ties to the Russians, but they don’t seem to sink the Administration. Mind, this White House is fuelled by White Anger™, and so this isn’t necessarily surprising. White anger is among the more irrational of angers. Especially amongst mathematicians. Proper maths joke.

I’m President And You’re Not
Being president won’t put Trump above the law or the Internet, and he has tried to be both og those things; and become the subject of intense and angry parody (SNL). At least tweeting about certain companies seems to manipulate share prices directly, and probably put more money into your pocket. But hey, you can’t have a conflict of interest if you were never interested in the first place, right? But who needs to be interested if you’re president.

I Said I Wanted To Create Jobs – But I Didn’t Say How Or When Or If It Would Happen At All
Job creation? Not noticeably. In a similar vein, where’s the wall? I’d expected it to be finished by now. Or is it hard to secure funds? Huh. Who’d have thought it? Negotiating a hundred jobs, one company at a time may seem satisfying but it’s slow. At least the Trump infrastructure projects will create some jobs, just as their environmental reforms destroy the planet and all reason to work at all.

Drunkenly Flying A Plane Into A Building Because The Towels Aren’t Soft
The administration’s been characterised by its aggressive and ill-thought-out responses to issues. The Muslim Bans in March and bombings in Syria seem to be responses that fit this pattern – even if the Syria response seems like a long-overdue action that the administration was praised for. There is an increasing feeling that there is no regard for the will of the people, when those people are not Donald Trump. Then you blame it on someone, or something, else. Or register a complaint because the towels on Air Force One aren’t soft.

My Administration Is A Well-Oiled Ship – Where The Captain Is Holding A Matchstick
The Administration is rumoured to be beset by infighting and powergrabs. This isn’t readily noticeable from the outside, but it also makes sense. A lot. Most of the Trump team have had to deny this specific rumour at some point – which at least means it’s on their minds. Which it probably should be, given that this sort of thing shouldn’t be crippling an administration. But if there’s one thing the Trump administration will be known for, I suspect it will be ‘being crippled by things that shouldn’t be crippling regular Presidents’ (if there is such a thing as a regular President).

Trump’s Triumph of Incompetents
Healthcare reform fail and a number of other reasonably high profile smackdowns (Muslim bans, etc) have limited the Trump Admin’s positive press. And yet they continue to operate and be incompetent, which leads to the question; how is this happening and how bad will it get? I call for a shutdown of all … everything … until we can figure out what the hell is going on!

The first hundred days is typically a template for the rest of the four years. So, oh no. Oh God. This will be a mess.