'Surreal, disorienting spectacle': Analysis reveals Trump’s plan to overwhelm 'dizzy' opposition

27 February

Steve Bannon, far-right host of the "War Room" vodcast and former White House chief strategist in the first Trump Administration, famously used the phrase "flood the zone with s---" to describe the MAGA movement's game plan. Bannon's argument was that inundating political opponents with nonsense can overwhelm and exhaust them and render them ineffective.

President Donald Trump, during his second term, isn't shy about using the "flood the zone" tactic that Bannon described. Trump is going out of his way to overwhelm his foes — a tactic that Salon's Chauncey DeVega addresses in an article published on February 27.

"The Trumpocene is a surreal, disorienting spectacle that has conquered so much of American culture and politics," DeVega laments. "Donald Trump and his MAGA movement's shock and awe campaign against American democracy and society is moving very fast. It's left the American people, their responsible leaders, the mainstream news media and the so-called resistance spinning and dizzy."

DeVega notes that before Trump's inauguration, he interviewed media critic Dan Froomkin — who predicted the worst.

Froomkin told DeVega, "I don't think we are even vaguely ready for what's coming. I anticipate a full-scale attack on the government by the people who will soon be leading it, and I expect catastrophic results in terms of legions of good people getting fired, justice being weaponized, and life-saving government regulations being effectively abandoned. I worry that civil society isn't up to the task of effectively resisting, but I hope I'm wrong."

DeVega, however, argues that "American democracy is not yet terminal" even through it is faced a dire threat from Trump and the MAGA movement.

"The Democratic Party is finally beginning to act like an opposition party — albeit a weak one that does not know what 'opposition' truly means," DeVega observes. "Still, there are some signs the Democratic Party is finally finding its steel. The Democratic Party's leaders are refusing, at least for now, to cooperate with passing Donald Trump and his Republican Party's budget that will take trillions of the American people's tax dollars away from the neediest and most deserving and give it to the millionaires, billionaires, and other kleptocrats and plutocrats.

DeVega adds, "Challenges to Trump’s unconstitutional and other apparently illegal executive orders and other diktats and commands are being successfully made in the courts. By CNN's count, 80 legal challenges have been filed. The question is now how and if the Trump Administration will abide by the rulings."

Chauncey DeVega's full article for Salon is available at this link.

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