Trump Plays Chess, Everybody Else Plays Checkers

Trump demands that CNN hand their windfall from the debate’s advertising to veterans.

I give him extra points for saying, “I refuse to brag,” right before shamelessly bragging. I think he even included the first “and” in that sentence as a purposefully awkward grammatical structure, to trigger the ACC’s error-monitoring function, and draw people’s attention to it. I find it hard to believe his editor didn’t see that the sentence would have flowed better without the “and.” I know I read the sentence three times, to see if I read it wrong. If that was purposeful, Donald just made me into a zombie, doing his will. I repeatedly read the funniest sentence in the letter, which emphasizes that he refuses to brag, but he is awesome, and I did it again and again. You can’t control someone else’s behavior and brain function better unless you have them dancing like a chicken.

He even includes “100%” next to “Donald J Trump,” in quotes no less, and associates that with “a 4000% increase” and “going even higher.” Nothing subliminal there, please move along, and don’t ask yourself if you have any negative feelings now for the phrase, “Donald Trump’s small percentage is going down lower,” compared to, “Donald Trump’s huge percentage is going up higher.”

To a normal K-strategists, the goal in a debate is to know the subject better than your opposition, and explain your position better. To an r-strategist, the goal is to portray your enemy as someone who, whether they are right or not, nobody would associate with under any circumstances.

When those two individuals meet, the K-strategist can attain his objectives and be right, but the r-strategist ends up being the one who has amassed the support of the observers, and the K-strategist looks like a personally revolting loser who everybody hates, and nobody would vote for.

The individual who is really dangerous is the K-strategist who sees the r-strategist’s strategy, learns their techniques better than them, and then executes a hybrid strategy where they are both right, and they socially out-group their opposition.

Here, it is clear what will happen in the CNN debate. CNN will give the moderators orders to take out Trump. He will be treated unfairly, he will get questions nobody could answer, and then they will try to spin his awful experience as a sign he was unfit for office.

Instead, Trump preemptively takes the initiative. He highlights that he is paying for his own campaign for the good of the country, he is so popular he is the only reason that CNN is enjoying that windfall, and he calls on CNN to give the money to veterans – for fairness. In doing so, he implies that if he was in their position it is what he would do on his own, without even being asked to by someone else.

Now, if CNN attacks him, he will both dredge back up all the points he made above and he will couch CNN’s attack as an attack on him, for supporting veteran causes. Moreover, he will make it look like CNN is the greedy pig who is screwing veterans. The only reason they will be lashing out at him is for trying to help them be better Americans.

This is what we have lost with the GOP establishment, the uni-party, and all its inherent corruption. There are few places as r-selected as the field of political strategists, where billions of dollars in free resources are funneled in through billionaires and party leaders. In such an r-selected environment, is it any wonder that being brash and hurting other’s feelings is the quickest way to destroy your own career? It is no surprise that it devolved from an arena where one succeeded by destroying one’s enemies, to one where you can never be too careful in avoiding hurting anyone else’s feelings – even the opposition’s.

Now, at this moment in time, we are being given a glimpse of what could have been. This is what a brilliant political strategist will look like in the political world, applying their craft in real time. Donald Trump is now bulletproof in the next debate. CNN will be looking to avoid any hint of treating him badly, lest he decide to make them out to be greedy, anti-veteran scumbags who hate America. (Note, these types of social games hit the r-strategist much harder emotionally than they do us. Rabbits hear these subconscious forces as they silently emerge in the political sphere, as if they were sirens blaring in the night. These are “dogwhistles.”)

With the establishment, we get a sort of incestuous cabal of tools, rubes, and imbeciles, instead of this brilliance. All of them got where they were not through demonstrations of political brilliance, but through social connections and their willingness to embrace the corrupt hierarchy, do what they are told subserviently, and spread the money they receive in the right directions, as ordered.

We get Karl Rove, who blows hundreds of millions of dollars on nothing but failure, but because he funnels large parts of that money in the right directions, he is right back next year, without so much as a raised eyebrow over his record of failure. It is heartbreaking, when you consider what might have been, had a Donald Trump or Roger Stone been given that windfall. Every enemy contact a victory – it is almost unimaginable.

On the bright side, Democrats have the same problem. They are using the same idiots they have used for years because until now, they didn’t need to hire anyone better to beat the idiots on the Republican side. As a result Hillary is going down despite Trumpian levels of name recognition, Sanders gets his mike stolen at his own rallies and has to skulk off in embarrassment, and nobody even knows who any of the other candidates are.

Meanwhile we have Donald, who has strategically placed each word, phrase, and typo in his press releases to hypnotically control how they are read, what people associate subconsciously with what, and how they feel about everything, as he uses those press releases to lay the terrain for upcoming battles nobody has even thought about yet. Chess vs checkers.

What will remain to be seen is if this sparks a meritocratic revolution in the field of political strategists. I’m doubtful, though if Donald is elected, eight years is a long time to repopulate the ranks of the GOP Establishment with his own people – something he would almost have to do for his own political survival.

GOPocalyse cometh™