Fog of confusion

A few days ago, Robert Reich posted the video above, talking about the current occupant of the White House’s “five tactics to create a fog of confusion and bewilderment”, something Reich argues is done to create a constant state of confusion to deflect and hide from public scrutiny and opposition what the current regime is doing. As usual, the video is well-made, and it’s good in describing the techniques, however, it relies on an important assumption: That the current occupant is a competent actor, doing everything he’s doing deliberately. Is he?

The reality is that we can’t be sure if the current occupant is some sort of evil genius, albeit one affected by severe personality disorders, or the biggest moron ever to presume to act in such an office, merely bumbling his way through. A third possibility is that he might be suffering from the early stages of aged-related dementia, which would also account for his erratic behaviour.

All of those possibilities are, at the moment, equally plausible explanations for his irrational, impulsive, and incompetent actions. Without competent professional examination of the current occupant, we can’t know for sure what’s going on. Of course, if the current occupant was temporarily removed from office under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, such an examination would become compulsory if he tried to resume his office.

The bottom line is, we can’t know whether the current occupant is really in charge of his faculties, much less his regime, so this video may describe group action rather than his own. On the other hand, this video is nevertheless a good description of how the current regime—whoever is doing the work—is creating a constant fog of confusion and bewilderment to hide what they’re doing to the USA.

It doesn’t really matter whether he’s in charge or not because the destruction of the USA, its democracy, and the Western Alliance that’s protected the world since World War 2, is proceeding apace precisely because the general public is distracted by the fog. Understanding the extent to which the current regime is distracting everyone is the first step in fighting back, and that is the task before all true patriots.