Casual Observation

6 Comments

1. 

   donnah on June 24, 2017 at 9:21 pm

   Well, other agencies and spies won’t garner much “intellegence” per se, but they will have a grasp of how weak Trump is when they read his tweets. Intelligence is the last thing they’ll find.

   Trump has damaged any degree of trust or reliability in the office of the president and weakened links to our neighbors and former allies. Canada is looking for alliances elsewhere, and Mexico, too. I’m ashamed of how Trump’s loose lips have ruined friendships around the world. It’s just another example of his lack of critical thinking and experience.

   So his handlers have tried to distract him, like waving a cookie in front of a spoiled baby. But he keeps finding time to blurt out whatever dribbles of thought he comes up with.

   It seems bad news comes in from every front now. His level of fucktivity knows no bondaries.

   • 

     Neon Vincent on June 24, 2017 at 10:56 pm

     

2. 

   hz on June 25, 2017 at 1:38 am

   Gold mine for Twitter, too.  Seems like not even a year ago I was reading all over the place how they had no business model for generating revenue and were on the way out.  That may not have changed, but they have the world’s most productive content creator working for them for free now.

3. 

   aarrgghh on June 25, 2017 at 2:42 am

   kremlinologist tom nichols has had that thought as well: “President Trump’s Tweets Are A Gold Mine For Foreign Intelligence”

   … it occurred to me that I was getting a real-time look at how the president of the United States reacts to stress. More important, it also occurred to me that I was not the only one getting a raw feed of the president’s thoughts and emotions. I realized that any foreign intelligence analyst worth his or her salt was almost certainly taking copious notes.

   … Leadership analysis is a difficult subject. In both academic studies and intelligence work, it is an art more than a science. But it is crucially important in foreign policy, especially during crises: the psyche of national leaders, their emotional reactions and cognitive maps, the idiom of their reactions, all become paramount in the search for information when states are at the brink of conflict.

   … From this perspective, President Trump’s tweets reveal a great deal about the man. They show patterns of even the smallest details of his routine: when he wakes, what he watches, who he trusts in the media. They reveal even more about his emotions: they show how he speaks when he’s angry, who he thinks his audiences are, and what kind of issues take priority in his cognitive processes.

4. 

   LosGatosCA on June 25, 2017 at 1:50 pm

   Morons gonna moron.

   I’m pretty sure Trump’s ridiculous foreign trip did more to undermine his foreign policy credibility than all his tweets together.

   Likewise, the credibility of America with the rest of the world has been greatly diminished not so much by Trump as by the undemocratic election process that has led to two Republican imbeciles becoming president within a span of 16 years.

   America has undermined it’s own world leadership position thanks to the reactionary, racist and bigoted nature of 45% of the population and a complete collapse of the elites (in both parties for different reasons)  in not providing better leadership to avert their minority control.

   Bush/Cheney are war criminals, Trump is a self-admitted sexual assaulter.  What reason does anyone outside the US have to admire or accept US leadership? They have to deal with American military supremacy to be sure, but we’re not invading Europe anytime soon.

   I would regard Germany, France, etc likely interest at this point as containment. Keep the US from launching missiles, but otherwise just humor them while going about their business. Because, sure they might get an Obama once in a while, but the pattern of leadership from the US is now one of a series of deranged, angry pedophile uncle who owns a cabinet of high powered rifles.

   • 

     TarheelDem on June 25, 2017 at 7:07 pm

     Presidents who show they can be played don’t have credibility to be undermined.  There is a de facto alliance of oil in US, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Gulf States.  There is a de facto alliance in favor of Sunni jihadis in Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen.  The Saudis are off their chain with the accession of the Crown Prince and Israel is off its chain in general.

     Yes, W was the one who undermined the US status as sole superpower.  Trump has buried the “superpower” label forever as Russia, China, and India start sensing their economic and political power and the EU sacrifices itself to austerity.

     What is still true is that the US intends to disrupt the Chinese Belt-Road Initiative with proxy wars, even if it has to allow the “Islamic State of Khorasan” to harden itself in Tora-Bora in Afghanistan.  The cult of Mackinder-Spykman in the US national security establishment will not allow the economic integration of Eurasia through deployment of 21st Century transportation and energy generation technologies.

     Germany and France are at a crossroads if the UK successfully concludes BREXIT.  It is not clear how NATO plays in this, given Trump’s lack of understanding of the issues and the split between the White House and the national security establishment on some of the items at issue.