(no subject)

[conuly]

The Trump administration’s NSS announces a dramatic reworking of the foreign policy the U.S. has embraced since World War II.

And that's not the most alarming thing about it.

Comments

[austin_dern]

Possibly soothing some anxiety, though, is that the track record of fascist douchenozzles passing things off to a successor is really, really poor. Things almost always fall apart right after The Guy bites it, since the things that select for The One Man Who Can Save Us all work against having a The Next Man. (The longest survival post-The-Guy I can find offhand is Portugal's New State, which made it a whole six years after Salazar's cerebral hemorrhage.)

And competence and authoritarianism are close to opposites. (Competence requires everyone under you to be comfortable reporting, "yeah, this is broken and can't work"; authoritarianism requires everyone under you reporting, "yeah, our only problem is how sad we are that we can't be even more perfect for you".) I'll put my chips on Vance showing himself to be incompetent if given the chance to do a thing.

[conuly]

So you're saying that they need to pivot to a less fascist form of totalitarianism?

[austin_dern]

It'd suggest better odds for the regime, but I'm not sure fascism has that gear-shift in it either.