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President Trump and the ‘Shock and Awe’ Doctrine
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/president-trump-shock-awe-doctrine-n714766
"President Donald Trump has blasted out controversial executive orders so quickly, it's been difficult for many to keep up. And some experts say that may be the point.
All presidents work quickly to launch their agendas as they take office. But rarely has one made so many scattershot pronouncements all at once.
"This is definitely bizarre, rapid-fire presidential policy making," says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University. "It really is a 'shock and awe' strategy that every day there's a new, radical initiative, and it doesn't give journalists or the public a chance to get a grip on what just happened."
The sheer volume of changes makes last week's stories surrounding arguments about crowd size or Stephen Bannon's "shut up" to the media — let alone news about Russian hacking or unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud — seem old before they're even published, experts on political communication say.
"It's like firing tons of missiles into the air so that your adversary can't figure out which missile is real and which isn't," says Anthony Pratkanis, a professor of psychology at the University of California Santa Cruz and the author of "Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion."
"You don't know which missiles to hit. Is that a decoy, or is that for real? And that allows things that you might not be aware of to sneak through."
Officials involved in transition planning told the Washington Post that Sen. Jeff Sessions, the attorney general-designate, lobbied for a "shock and awe" approach in the first days of the administration in an attempt to rattle Congress. The military strategy promotes the use of overwhelming speed and disinformation, among other things, to paralyze the opposition.
From that perspective, quibbling over the crowd size at Trump's inauguration makes sense: Presenting "alternative facts" just adds to the sense of confusion.
"One of the most reliable but chilling findings in psychology is the more that people hear something, the more they think it's true, even if it isn't," says psychologist Carol Tavris, co-author with Elliot Aronson of "Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)."
She notes the effectiveness of repetition in Trump's years-long "birther" movement intended to delegitimize President Barack Obama. "This was not normal political opposition. This was engulf and devour, if you want a military strategy," she says.
False statements on the campaign trail capped off by a string of early falsehoods from the Trump Administration helped reintroduce the term "gaslighting" into the popular culture. It refers to a 1944 film in which a murderous husband deliberately confuses and manipulates his wife by dimming the gas lights in their home and denying it's happening, until she doubts her own senses. (An essay called "Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America," published by Teen Vogue in December when Trump was still president-elect, went viral.)
Now add speed and quickfire changes that tax the ability of the political opposition, the media and ordinary citizens to keep up to that baseline sense of confusion. Pratkanis said he saw one protester marching with a white board, to update the sign in real time.
Some have accused Trump of deliberate distraction — sending out tweets about, say, Meryl Streep — instead of focusing on the issues.
"It's like the magician on stage who makes a puff of smoke — your attention is focused on the flash, meanwhile the tiger is taken offstage. That's the basic kind of strategy," Pratkanis says.
Still, if shock and awe is the intent, "it's fair to say the administration is doing a catastrophic job," says Harlan Ullman, one of the architects of the doctrine.
Ullman, author of the forthcoming book "Anatomy of Failure: Why America Loses Wars It Starts" calls shock and awe a commonly misunderstood concept. As his team imagined it, shock and awe was based on operational brilliance of execution, total or superior knowledge, control of the environment and rapidity.
Instead, he said, shock and awe came to be known as Gen. Tommy Franks applied it in the second Iraq war: "Get to Baghdad, destroy the Iraqi army and get out. The result was catastrophe."
By Ullman's metric, Trump is failing at all but speed — and even there, he's facing opposition that has mobilized more quickly than the White House could respond.
Traditionally when a president has moved this quickly, it's because he has won an overwhelming mandate — think Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932 or Ronald Reagan in 1980. In this case, Trump lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes and entered office with a 40 percent approval rating, the lowest of any president, notes the presidential historian Brinkley.
"I think he feels the 100 days of FDR and Ronald Reagan is passe, that in a speeded-up media environment, he wants to be known in history as having his first 100 hours be revolutionary," he said.
"It's like the football player who starts throwing Hail Mary passes on the first down," Brinkley added. "It's exciting and he might make a touchdown or two, but there's a reason most professional coaches don't do that. In the long run it's a good way to lose the game"
"President Donald Trump has blasted out controversial executive orders so quickly, it's been difficult for many to keep up. And some experts say that may be the point.
All presidents work quickly to launch their agendas as they take office. But rarely has one made so many scattershot pronouncements all at once.
"This is definitely bizarre, rapid-fire presidential policy making," says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University. "It really is a 'shock and awe' strategy that every day there's a new, radical initiative, and it doesn't give journalists or the public a chance to get a grip on what just happened."
The sheer volume of changes makes last week's stories surrounding arguments about crowd size or Stephen Bannon's "shut up" to the media — let alone news about Russian hacking or unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud — seem old before they're even published, experts on political communication say.
"It's like firing tons of missiles into the air so that your adversary can't figure out which missile is real and which isn't," says Anthony Pratkanis, a professor of psychology at the University of California Santa Cruz and the author of "Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion."
"You don't know which missiles to hit. Is that a decoy, or is that for real? And that allows things that you might not be aware of to sneak through."
Officials involved in transition planning told the Washington Post that Sen. Jeff Sessions, the attorney general-designate, lobbied for a "shock and awe" approach in the first days of the administration in an attempt to rattle Congress. The military strategy promotes the use of overwhelming speed and disinformation, among other things, to paralyze the opposition.
From that perspective, quibbling over the crowd size at Trump's inauguration makes sense: Presenting "alternative facts" just adds to the sense of confusion.
"One of the most reliable but chilling findings in psychology is the more that people hear something, the more they think it's true, even if it isn't," says psychologist Carol Tavris, co-author with Elliot Aronson of "Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)."
She notes the effectiveness of repetition in Trump's years-long "birther" movement intended to delegitimize President Barack Obama. "This was not normal political opposition. This was engulf and devour, if you want a military strategy," she says.
False statements on the campaign trail capped off by a string of early falsehoods from the Trump Administration helped reintroduce the term "gaslighting" into the popular culture. It refers to a 1944 film in which a murderous husband deliberately confuses and manipulates his wife by dimming the gas lights in their home and denying it's happening, until she doubts her own senses. (An essay called "Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America," published by Teen Vogue in December when Trump was still president-elect, went viral.)
Now add speed and quickfire changes that tax the ability of the political opposition, the media and ordinary citizens to keep up to that baseline sense of confusion. Pratkanis said he saw one protester marching with a white board, to update the sign in real time.
Some have accused Trump of deliberate distraction — sending out tweets about, say, Meryl Streep — instead of focusing on the issues.
"It's like the magician on stage who makes a puff of smoke — your attention is focused on the flash, meanwhile the tiger is taken offstage. That's the basic kind of strategy," Pratkanis says.
Still, if shock and awe is the intent, "it's fair to say the administration is doing a catastrophic job," says Harlan Ullman, one of the architects of the doctrine.
Ullman, author of the forthcoming book "Anatomy of Failure: Why America Loses Wars It Starts" calls shock and awe a commonly misunderstood concept. As his team imagined it, shock and awe was based on operational brilliance of execution, total or superior knowledge, control of the environment and rapidity.
Instead, he said, shock and awe came to be known as Gen. Tommy Franks applied it in the second Iraq war: "Get to Baghdad, destroy the Iraqi army and get out. The result was catastrophe."
By Ullman's metric, Trump is failing at all but speed — and even there, he's facing opposition that has mobilized more quickly than the White House could respond.
Traditionally when a president has moved this quickly, it's because he has won an overwhelming mandate — think Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932 or Ronald Reagan in 1980. In this case, Trump lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes and entered office with a 40 percent approval rating, the lowest of any president, notes the presidential historian Brinkley.
"I think he feels the 100 days of FDR and Ronald Reagan is passe, that in a speeded-up media environment, he wants to be known in history as having his first 100 hours be revolutionary," he said.
"It's like the football player who starts throwing Hail Mary passes on the first down," Brinkley added. "It's exciting and he might make a touchdown or two, but there's a reason most professional coaches don't do that. In the long run it's a good way to lose the game"
I like his twitter account being open. It lets you know what the guy is thinking... none of it appears to be very solid thinking mind you, but there is no running from it once its out there.
I don't think anyone is threatened by extinction, nor do I believe that because someone agrees with Trump that they're a white supremacist, racist, misognyst, homophobe, zenophobe or any of Hillary's "deplorables"... after all, we did spend 8 years having a lot of things pushed down our throats that many of us didn't agree with and no one bothered to care whether we liked it or not. There was an agenda and it was going to be carried out no matter how many people were against it.
That said, during the campaign, Trump bashed Obama for not being transparent during his time as President. He promised that his policies would be put forth before anything was done and that the people would have a chance to examine and comment on them, like we didn't get during the Obama administration. It's not happening now and I don't see it happening down the road.
I think the "shock and awe" theory may be completely valid. I see a lot of people in my area that are totally sorry they voted for Trump, at this point. It's partially due to his own behavior, partially due to the people he's bringing into the cabinet and partially due to the policies he's implementing without taking into consideration what the people really want. His disapproval rating stands at 53%, which is a new low for any newly elected President.
For 8 years, Obama only represented a portion of the people... Trump promised to unite the country and be the President of everyone, not just selected groups. He has done absolutely nothing to accomplish that most important promise, but has only managed to divide the country more than it already was.
Last, but not least - someone needs to shut down his Twitter account...
That said, during the campaign, Trump bashed Obama for not being transparent during his time as President. He promised that his policies would be put forth before anything was done and that the people would have a chance to examine and comment on them, like we didn't get during the Obama administration. It's not happening now and I don't see it happening down the road.
I think the "shock and awe" theory may be completely valid. I see a lot of people in my area that are totally sorry they voted for Trump, at this point. It's partially due to his own behavior, partially due to the people he's bringing into the cabinet and partially due to the policies he's implementing without taking into consideration what the people really want. His disapproval rating stands at 53%, which is a new low for any newly elected President.
For 8 years, Obama only represented a portion of the people... Trump promised to unite the country and be the President of everyone, not just selected groups. He has done absolutely nothing to accomplish that most important promise, but has only managed to divide the country more than it already was.
Last, but not least - someone needs to shut down his Twitter account...
1 Comments
Thank you Barb, for that honest and clear comment.
"a white supremacist but maybe I'm mistaken."
That's laughable as a matter of fact you are, you don't know anything about me or the races of my family, when you try to label me a racist over my political beliefs your argument loses all credibility.
Have a great day
That's laughable as a matter of fact you are, you don't know anything about me or the races of my family, when you try to label me a racist over my political beliefs your argument loses all credibility.
Have a great day
1 Comments
hrsepwrguy.... the white supremacist cry is all they have. (Well, its usually accompanied with misogynist, homophobe, xenophobe and anything else they can throw around in an attempt to make themselves appear to be better people. They do believe that, by the way. Its all they've got to hold on to.
Ya it's kinda cool huh, I'm loving it, so tell me, how does it feel to have policies that you don't agree with rammed down your throat through executive orders, I bet your hating it, just like I did.
3 Comments
Did anyone threaten to send your neighbors, good people packing because of the color of their skin ? Love Trumps Hate !
Maybe if you had ancestors that were threatened by extinction due to someone as crazy as Trump, you wouldn't be so delighted. But then again, maybe not. I certainly didn't take you to be a white supremacist but maybe I'm mistaken.
"White Supremacist".... On what grounds are you going to make an outrageous claim like that? And when did Trump say he was going to throw your neighbors out of this country because of the color of their skin?
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