A prince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought to choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves. Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves. Those who rely simply on the lion do not understand what they are about. Therefore a wise lord cannot, nor ought he to, keep faith when such observance may be turned against him, and when the reasons that caused him to pledge it exist no longer. If men were entirely good this precept would not hold, but because they are bad, and will not keep faith with you, you too are not bound to observe it with them. Nor will there ever be wanting to a prince legitimate reasons to excuse this nonobservance. Of this endless modern examples could be given, showing how many treaties and engagements have been made void and of no effect through the faithlessness of princes; and he who has known best how to employ the fox has succeeded best.

-Niccolo Machiavelli, “The Prince”, Chapter XVIII Concerning The Way In Which Princes Should Keep Faith

Interesting discussion. CH gives an excellent outline of the controversy surrounding God-Emperor Trump’s actions in Syria.

He’s dead right about one thing: “tidiness left America sometime after 1965. We live in a Diverse Untidytopia now. And so it’s fair to ask ourselves if Trump is a 4D chess master one move from checkmating our New World Byzantium, or if he’s become a puppet of globalist elites, sucked under by the riptide of an apozalypse even a God Emperor can’t resist.”

21st Century America is extremely divided and factionalized.  Our politics are nearly as convoluted and contradictory as a Middle-Eastern country (Is this at least partially a consequence of our decades long involvement in the region? Did we learn all manner of bad habits through our associations with those societies?). It is hard to get agreement on so many things because there are so many different groups you have to  please and/or avoiding displeasing.

As we conjure up our conspiracy theories we should keep in mind that correlation does not imply causation. In other words if something occurred before an event that does not prove it caused the event. For example, if a white nationalist from Camden, New Jersey visits  Baltimore, Maryland and during that visit six black men are murdered in Baltimore, that does not prove the white nationalist committed those murders. Naturally the powers-that-be in Baltimore might wish they could prove the white nationalist was guilty of the murders, because that would satisfy their confirmation bias that violent white nationalists are THE major threat to the safety of black men, not other black men.

As we try to divine God-Emperor Trump’s intentions let’s also keep in mind the Law of Competing Harms. Meaning that it is considered morally permissible to do something bad in order to keep something worse from happening. For example, say you are on a camping trip with a friend, when your friend gets stung by a bee, has an allergic reaction and goes into anaphylactic shock. Your friend becomes unable to breath and must be rushed a hospital to get the treatment that will save his life. When this happened you were sitting by the campfire drinking whisky, so you are now too drunk to legally drive a car. But you are the only one available to drive your friend to the hospital, so you drive anyway. Because, of course, while it is bad to drive drunk it would be worse to let your friend die from the bee sting.

There is also Ayoob’s Law of Necessary Hypocrisy which states that sometimes the situation dictates that you do something you previously said you shouldn’t or wouldn’t do. The Left is well practiced at this since the charge of hypocrisy never ever sticks to them. They are allowed to adopt whatever position is most advantageous to them at the moment.

Finally we should remember we are all just guessing about what is going on. None of us knows for a fact what really happened or why.  None of us can say for certain where it is leading. However, in the fullness of time more will be revealed.

Trump The 4D Chess Master, Or Trump The Puppet?