there's a genre of take that boils down to "the reason trump is providing for his actions doesn't make sense, so there must be another secret reason that DOES make sense." it is always wrong.

April 06, 2026 - 04:13 UTC

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game theory: Trump bombs civilian targets because he thinks it's a super strong move that's only banned because it's too powerful
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One weird trick to win wars, human rights organizations hate it!
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you can say what you want about Snyder’s work, this is a 17 post thread about Trump’s motivations that doesn’t mention Israel once.
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I agree Snyder is seeing a strategy that isn’t there, but I don’t think Israel was part of Trump’s strategic motivation either. That’s because i don’t think there WAS any strategic motivation. This was nothing more complicated than “nothing bad can happen, it can only good happen” as war policy.
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¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Meh, I don't care.
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I specialize in explaining why a stupid person's actions are inexplicable to smart people who can't understand why they'd do that. It's because they're stupider than smart people can comprehend, not secret geniuses. This explanation is literally never wrong.
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Anyone who thinks Trump has grand schemes should have to first provide a prior example where he thought something through.
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only need a 1 post thread to explain Trump: he is a moron who is obsessed with the press
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I agree--although he sometimes mentions Netanyahu as one of the corrupt autocrats who shape what Trump wants and does, he usually focuses on Orban and Putin. Not bringing Netanyahu up here def misses the mark
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It's similar to the Mearsheimer/Spaniel political science guys who have one theory and see everything through that framework even when it doesn't fit that well. His history work might have been good, but he's lost the thread a bit viewing the world through that lens.
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Is it: attacking another country to kick off a power-grab by having (or faking?) A terrorist attack occur......or big dummie believed the hype from israel/pentagon/neo-con talking heads.
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Also the thing I would say about his work is that it's dogshit scholarship that is roundly mocked by actual historians of the things he pretends to be an expert on.
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I mean can’t both be true though
Can’t the strikes be exactly what Israel wants and also a feverish attempt to provoke a domestic attack on American soil
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tim snyder has always been a hack and his "scholarly" work is basically just the most classical form of holocaust revisionism (which always - hey the soviets were really as bad or worse!).

profs/scholars can be idiot cranks too. did this guy rethink the 14th amendment because of ilan wurman?
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Not so much "there just be a plan" but "how are they likely to take advantage of this crisis"
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Pathological narcissist declining into dementia does erratic, irrational and disinhibited things. Time to break out the red string and cork board.
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Trump might be oblivious, but I guarantee you that at least one person on his staff thinks it’s great that we killed all those civilians because “the Democrats will have to spend their next term cleaning up our mess, and that means we can get away with a *lot* of evil bullshit.”
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yeah I like how hard he tried to head this off at the pass with the whole "if you think this is a bad read of Trump that just means you've fallen for his scheme so actually I am even more right" bit
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People think that just because they can craft some rube goldberg scheme that sounds good out of a bunch of nonsense, that it is somehow more realistic than, "These dudes are macho brained dipshits followed by a cult of morons."
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It’s so hard for smart people to just let Trump be a fucking Venus flytrap. That’s all he ever is.
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I think it’s more like the way we talk about evolution, as if each individual creature proactively developed some feature to protect itself from a predator. Obviously that’s not what happened, but we need to acknowledge and name the patterns and processes that happen over and over.
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I don’t think Snyder is at all wrong. I think autocracies happen in this fumbling but recognizable way, and often the people who are ostensibly in power are being manipulated by smarter (and even worse) others.
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This is *exactly* like the "secret good episodes of Sherlock" theory
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He is trying to get a terrorist attack on the homeland for his own aggrandizement.
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Yeah, when he wants to do something, he doesn't like being told there are reasons not to do it ("it won't work" is included there)
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Every one of these self-important idiots believes he is playing 4D chess so they don't have to confront the truth that he is just flipping the game board and ignoring the rules. It can't be that he's a petulant toddler. He must have some grand strategy!
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Yo Peter

who did the 1999 Russian apartment bombings
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Was it Trump? If not, then what the fuck does it have to do with anything?
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you specially mean the Chechnya bombings, and we don't even have the answer to that. Some say Putin; some people think Dick Cheney did 9/11. what of it?

It's a revealing insight into your mind, something wholly conspiracy brained and inappropriate for an AG candidate.
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Holy shit, that was Trump?
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You think Trump did that?
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man I don’t know what to tell you if you believe a 79 year old puddingbrained oaf surrounded by incompetent sycophants has the same level of foresight and cunning as a 47 year old KGB agent
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Trump?!
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Mr. Forhan, do you honestly believe Donald J. Trump was responsible for this event? Because if you don’t, you have presented the classic “Waffles/Pancakes” defense and you would be laughed out of Science Court for even thinking about using it.

Like me.
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Brother I’d suggest not doing this with your campaign account
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Hey man can you stop being embarrassing and also from ohio? It's getting old that all of my state's loudest people are all dicks and idiots.
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This is a truly terrible argument. Just absolute bottom of the barrel stuff.
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I don't think the answer to this question would prove something about Trump. The fact that secret actions and hidden motives are possible doesn't mean Trump takes secret actions or has hidden motives. He is not a hidden motive kind of guy.
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me
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The reason for the rise of belief in conspiracy theories generally is that everyone is seeing the US and Israel act irrationally and lot of people have an internalized a framework of mind where a state acting against it's own interests isn't possible
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I 1999 Russian apartment bombed your mom's pussy last night.
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what he perceives as planning and secret strategies is just trump destroying things out of stupidity and malice and later actions are trump exploiting an opportunity
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Sometimes there's a secret reason that also doesn't make sense.
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This piece by @davidjroth.bsky.social remains, in my mind, one of the most important pieces written today:

thebaffler.com/latest/the-president-of-blank-sucking-nullity-roth
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He doesn’t have a plan. He’s not smart enough to know anything. His reason for doing something is best understood by he just wants to at that moment. He understands nothing outside of what it means for him.
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Trump is playing one-dimensional chess.
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Tiger Electronics handheld chess.
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Trump is playing nth-dimensions chess.

Where n<1.
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*wistfully tears in my eyes* why does Hulk smash?
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I was very susceptible to this mode of thinking at the start of 2016. I just couldn't believe the world could be so dumb
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dat type of guy thinks “Occam’s razor” is a magic the gathering card
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I generally go with "he's a dumb lazy asshole" and am still batting a thousand afaict.
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Trump is a genius orchestrating multiple distractions from the Epstein files, which is why *checks notes* he campaigned on making the files public and then awkwardly pulled a 180 alienating several of his strongest supporters in Congress.
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These are not very bright guys... and things got out of hand.
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Genuinely don’t understand why so many folks still don’t want to come to terms with the fact that yes, Donald Trump is indeed that fucking stupid.
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Every one of these people is writing fan fiction to explain why their kid stealing their credit card to buy $200 of Fortnite bucks amounts to something more than just the actions of a dumbass with no impulse control.
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It's similar to why people can't accept that Oswald acted alone. People want to imagine that world-historical events must be the result of proportionally significant human intent.
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Stephen Miller is a devious little fuck, though
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There is an entire class of pundits and political operatives who keep making up fantasy scenarios about Trump's secret plans because they're in denial that they, or people like them (the savvy politics knowers) lost to an idiot
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I keep saying it: Trump doesn't play 5D chess, he plays 1D chess and chews on the pieces. He lies and is corrupt and everything but nothing he does is particularily complex.

So many people here act like a guy who rarely manages to
finish a sentence without drifting off is some genius super villain
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As always, the Simpsons shows the way.

youtu.be/yR1QL7CJltQ?si=X4-FPda1Hbrl872W
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i’m in awe of the type of brain that would watch trump do what he’s been doing for a decade and still try to cram his actions into the rational actor framework
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The fact that he *has* been doing it for over a decade should at least suggest he's operating on some general principles.
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They’re unfamiliar with Occam’s razor.
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They have to convince themselves he’s some brilliant machiavellian manipulator because the alternative is admitting they’ve been losing at chess to a dog for a decade now.
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This. Yes, he has authoritarian impulses, but he’s not disciplined enough to carry it out.

He has been a bully his whole career. He only knows how to bully. Of course he’s going to ratchet up his threats.

But he’s not playing 4D chess.
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