The plan is to have no plan
"There is no genius there, only a damaged human being playing havoc with our lives."
In this space I am parking my short description of the de facto plan the Trump government has for getting the United States out of the public health emergency caused by the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This is my read on what the governments guidance and actions amount to. I will revise the text and add new links as more information flows in. My purpose in posting it is to challenge the American press to be a lot clearer in its descriptions.
The plan is to have no plan, to let daily deaths between one and three thousand become a normal thing, and then to create massive confusion about who is responsible by telling the governors theyre in charge without doing what only the federal government can do, by fighting with the press when it shows up to be briefed, by fixing blame for the virus on China or some other foreign element, and by flooding the zone with shit, Steve Bannons phrase for overwhelming the system with disinformation, distraction, and denial, which boosts what economists call search costs for reliable intelligence.
Stated another way, the plan is to default on public problem solving, and then prevent the public from understanding the consequences of that default. To succeed this will require one of the biggest propaganda and freedom of information fights in U.S. history, the execution of which will, I think, consume the presidents re-election campaign. So much has already been made public that the standard script for a White House cover up (worse than the crime
) wont apply. Instead, everything will ride on the manufacture of confusion. The press wont be able to expose the plot because it will all happen in stark daylight. The facts will be known, and simultaneously they will be inconceivable.
https://pressthink.org/2020/05/the-plan-is-to-have-no-plan/