IMPORTANT POLL ON THE POWER OF TRUMP!!!

[Fiendish Thingy]

Just another periodic check on the health of the reality-based community.

22 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	Trump is omnipotent, and the states and people are powerless
	2 (9%)
	Trump is NOT omnipotent, and the states and the people are NOT powerless
	20 (91%)
	ARRGLE BARRGLE Merrick Garland AUGHH!!!
	0 (0%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
Show usernames Disclaimer: This is an Internet poll

[usonian]

1. He is omnipotent until someone stands up to him and stops him. Examples:

Biff is omnipotent until smacked down


A King until scratched (for real, not like that staged William Tell act in Pennsylvania).

Rudyard Kipling: The Man Who Would be King (movie version) (1)

Was that "event" staged?
My wager



(1) Wikipedia: Eerie similarity to Trump.
Hailing Dravot as king as well as god, the locals show him the royal treasury, which is full of gold and jewels that are now all his. Carnehan suggests that they leave with as much loot as they can carry. Dravot, however, is beginning to enjoy the adulation of the locals, settling their disputes and issuing laws, and even dreams of visiting Queen Victoria as an equal. He is also smitten with the beautiful young Roxanne and cancels his pact with Carnehan to avoid women, saying he will marry her to leave the people an heir. When Roxane is reluctantly brought to him, he tries to kiss her, but she, terrified that the touch of a god means death to a mortal, bites his cheek. Seeing him bleed, the people realise he is only human and try to grab the British impostors.

[Fiendish Thingy]

2. He has been stopped, stalled, or dissuaded numerous times

How do you think he got the nickname TACO?

Yes, he occasionally ups the ante, but generally just trolls for effect, like Hegseth’s retweet about women losing the vote distracted everyone from Epstein for most of the weekend.

Not only is he not omnipotent, he is incompetent and surrounded by incompetent sycophants.

The states, and foreign trade partners, and the people push back, and things don’t unfold as either Trump or the DU doomsayers imagined.

This is not an environment where simple linear progression prevails;

It doesn’t go like this:

1. Trump issues orders
2. Orders are carried out
3. Desired affect is achieved

Instead:

1. Trump issues orders
2. Some are carried out
3. The states, courts, people, weather, or other uncontrolled variables intervene/react
4. Chaos ensues, or orders are suspended, or withdrawn, or modified, or appealed
5. Achieving desired results is thwarted, or only partially successful.
6. Other unintended/undesirable consequences occur (like a recession from tariffs and a reduced immigrant labor force)
7. Lather, rinse, repeat

[B.See]

3. How bout a selection for

Trump fancies himself omnipotent, is fast approaching total control, and the people, ALL the people, had better WAKE THE FUCK UP.

[Fiendish Thingy]

4. I think he is closer to total chaos than total control. Nt

[B.See]

5. problem being,

the former is the way he'll achieve the latter.

[Fiendish Thingy]

6. Chaos is not the path to control

It only creates the illusion of control, when it is merely the ability to trigger chaos, which is not the same thing.

Hitler and Stalin had control; Trump not so much.

[B.See]

7. Well, maybe by "chaos" we're speaking of different things:

How Autocrats Weaponize Chaos -Time.com

Trump is a chaos monster because of his impulsivity and willful ignorance of policy and history, but, at the same time, he uses chaos as a potent tool of disruption. Like many dictators and would be autocrats before him, Trump consciously or unconsciously recognizes that confusion and mayhem create a fertile petri dish in which fear and anger thrive—the perfect environment in which a demagogue, practiced in the art of propaganda, can rise to power and persuade followers to support policies that defy common decency and common sense, not to mention their own self interest.

[Fiendish Thingy]

8. Chaos gives him power, but it doesn't give him control

He has the power to send troops to L.A., but that exercise of his power failed to control the population of that city, despite the fear and chaos it sowed.

[newdeal2]

9. Only if no one stands up to him

For example, the universities and big law and Paramount/ABC could and should have sued and kept fighting. Everyone said they would win.

But they picked the path of least resistance which was to settle and pay Trump bribes and admit that they were the ones who were in fact wrong.

[Fiendish Thingy]

10. Harvard is standing up to him

And dozens of lawyers from the firms that caved left those firms, took their clients with them, and started new firms.

Trump is an agent of chaos, sowing fear and disrupting many institutions, but actually controlling very little.

[newdeal2]

11. Last I read they are readying a settlement

Where they pay $500 million to something/someone and probably agree to other conditions in exchange for aid and funding to be restored.

We will see, but that’s not really fighting IMO it’s negotiating.

[Fiendish Thingy]

12. The president of Harvard denies any settlement is being negotiated. Nt