I tend to agree with Ran in his “Trump is a fire” analogy. But I’d like to extend the analogy and see where it goes.
I spent some years of my youth as a wildland firefighter. There, I was taught about the “fire triangle.” Fire needs three things to sustain itself: (i) fuel, (ii) heat, and (iii) oxygen.
Ran says “And I don’t want to make any specific predictions about how far it’s going to burn, because I don’t have a clear sense of how burnable the world is.”
By analogously analyzing the fire triangle factors, I think we can begin to take apart the world that continues to provide heat, fuel, and oxygen for MAGAs.
Thoughts?
If Trump is fire, then oxygen is attention. We’re looking a reality TV star teamed up with all the big social media companies. They know how to play the crowd.
What I suspect is happening is he releases these series of ridiculous EOs while Elon illegally withholds payments and then he can twist the arm of any agency or politician who refuses to comply with his agenda. He’s doing this because he has such a limited margin in congress that he won’t be able to pass much. Then when he needs a fall guy for all these illegal actions, Elon and his big and loud mouth go to jail. Trump has now accumulated corrupt officials and proceeds to line the pockets of him and his oligarch friends.
Good take. Attention is the oxygen i think. The heat? The pent up anger of the populace having endured decades of what is essentially a neoliberal uniparty. The fuel, distrust in literally everything that comes down from on high … be it government, academia, corporations, etc etc.
[Note: I’m not OP, just a random Ran Preieur lurker]
That makes sense to me.
For the fuel analogy I would suggest lack of trust in the current goverment institutions, or maybe the very unreliability of those institutions. I don’t think this movement would have been as successful if existing societal structures were working properly.