Trump's Tremendous Trolling

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Trump just riled up a bunch of his opponents with his tweet about "taking away the citizenship" of anyone who burned the flag.

Of course this is absurd: he's not going to do anything like that: he's trolling.

A friend recognized this, and said Trump's trolling is "Not nice."

This is an understanding of politics as a big kindergarten classroom: If you're just nice to Johnny and let him play with your truck, he will let you play with his.

Unfortunately, real politics is nothing like kindergarten: the new prince, as Machiavelli taught us, must consolidate his rule. If he is overly "nice," his foes will see it as a sign of weakness and oppose him all the more fiercely. And as Machiavelli noted, to be "nice" and fail to establish one's rule is really not nice at all, since civil unrest and ultimately civil war result, and they are very not nice.

So Trump trolled those claiming "Trump is not my president," and got just the reaction he wanted: televised shots of Trump's opponents burning the American flag. Across the nation, the image that will stick with people is: those opposed to Trump hate America. (I'm not saying this makes sense, I'm saying that's the emotional impact of the images.)

Machiavelli would have recommended rounding up the protesters and having them executed. By contrast, Trump's technique of tweet-trolling them into political oblivion is nice indeed.


Comments

  1. Josiah Neeley6:52 PM

    "Not nice" is exactly how Trump might describe a tweet he didn't like.

    ReplyDelete

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