#this makes no sense without the context of months of incoherent role play

[violet-yimlat]

@morningbloodystar

[stoweboyd]

An End To Predictions, A Call For Revolution

I think it is very hard to make predictions about 2019 because there are so many wildcards. Or, as Buckminster Fuller said,

We have a hard time getting out of the way of something we can’t see coming.

Instead of specific predictions -- like Trump being impeached and convicted, or Google buying Slack -- I will discuss a few trends, more generally.

I have left aside the churning whirlwind of technological advance, such as the rise of AI, and the host of technologies that form what many are calling the fourth industrial revolution. Those are creating a foundational acceleration underlying the world's economies, a disruptive and destabilizing force, acting like a current in deep seas. If you are sailing in the same direction as the current, it is a great help, but if you seek to head a different way the current will slow and deflect your efforts. Most importantly, the current is outside of our control: we have to fight it, sail with it, or stay on land.

Polarization and Populism

There is a deep cultural movement that is leading to tectonic shifts across society, manifesting itself in polarization and populism, on the historic right and left. So across the world we are witnessing the rise of populists, like the far right parties in Europe and Trump's rise in the US, but at the same time we are experiencing a transition away from conventional left-of-center parties contending with conventional right-of-center parties, as demonstrated by the rise of Macron's En Marche in France, and the the surge of interest in social democratic ideas in the US Democratic party, as typified by Bernie Sanders and Alex Ocasio-Cortez.

One way to think of this is a growing disillusionment with the left-versus-right polarity of the post-WWII era, and a shift to an up-versus-down dynamic, where the poor, working class, and middle class -- the precariat -- realize that the game is rigged by the elite against the interests of everyone else.

Far-right politicians will attempt to leverage fear of immigrants and xenophobia to back away from liberal immigration laws and international treaties that regulate the international movement of people. Brexit is in part motivated by these desires, and if Brexit is concluded it will be an outgrowth more of anti-immigrant culltural bias than supposed desires for economic sovereignty and self-determination.

In the US, metropolitan elites continue to think that the 'left-behinds' in flyover county are misguided bumpkins voting against their own best interests, rather than seeing that the neoliberal flat-world free trade regime of the past 30 years played havoc with the heartland's economic health and future, and neither the GOP or the Democrats really paid much attention. Witness Hilary skipping the rust belt states in the final months of the 2016 election, and what that led to.

These are global trends, but they will manifest differently across the world, and in distinctly local fashion in different locales.

I believe Macron has lost his way, and since he has no deep party system to help him he will fail to make the changes that he believed he had a mandate to do. Instead, it turns out that only the metropolitan elite and business sector is with him. Will a reformulated socialist party regain control, or will the far right inherit the ashes of his term? Will a socialist populism arise from the Yellow Vests, or is a far-right populism the likely outcome? Make your bets.

In the US, the GOP is facing the defection of suburban white women and large numbers of college-educated men: are there enough far-right and disenfranchised left-behind Republicans to continue as a meaningful party, once the dust cloud around Trump settles? I don't think so. (Note: Trump will either resign, be impeached and convicted, or wither in madness: he can't possibly be reelected.)

Also note that the separatist movement in Catalonia is a manifestation of populism -- in this case the desire of people living in Catalonia (principally Catalans) to be able to secede from Spain. Their motives are many: desire for economic and legal controls, desire for independence from Spain (a historically fraught reltaionship), and relief from paying more taxes to Spain than they get in return. Does Spain have the right to deny them their right to self-government, simply because they were annexed a long, long time ago? We'll see.

Capitalism and Gigantism

A second deep cultural movement is playing out in the West: a growing distrust of unfettered capitalism and the economic inequality it has engendered over the past 30 years, along with concern with the most obvious economic manifestation of today's capitalism: the rise of gigantic monopolistic corporations, like the tech giants and major multinationals in finance, manufacturing, media, agriculture, pharma and health care, and other industries.

This slops into the growing concerns about climate and ecological change, but is principally grounded in the precarity built into modern economic life: the broken social contract in the relationship between worker and employer, and the disinterest in modern governments to close the gap through either regulation of employers or through taxation and redistribution of wealth.

Note: I think of climate change as being critically important -- another area of broken promises by governments -- but it has to be an aspect of resolution of other issues, principally unfettered capitalism. Regulation, trade agreements, and taxation are all needed here, and immediately. We can't confront 'climate change' without embracing a litany of economic actions, all at once. Yes, I know: we only have a decade.

I expect that a discussion of new laws and regulations will be prominent in 2019, such as the national movements for higher minimum wages, medicare for all, portable benefits for freelancers and contract employees, prohibitions against anti-union tactics, and the banning of forced arbitration for employees in many instances, such as sexual harassment cases.

The surge of unionism in media is one example of counter-capitalist collective action, and I expect it will spread into many other 'white collar' and 'no collar' jobs, as the tide turns toward regulation of business instead of self-regulation.

As just one manifestation, consider the fall from grace of Facebook in 2018, as a consequence of its exploitation of data arising from its services. But this controversy is actually about the duopoly of ad revenues it shares with Google, which is a story of gigantism and the lack of regulatory oversight by the world's governments.

We should anticipate a forceful swinging of the pendulum in the opposite direction, which could even lead to the breakup of large corporations -- like Google, Amazon, Microsoft and counterparts in other non-tech sectors -- into smaller, more focused companies with the intent of decreasing their power, their amassing of capital, and opening the playing field to smaller competitors. Note that in the very near term acquisitions by the giants leading to market consolidation in many industries may continue at the blinding pace we're seen in recent years, but in a year or two -- if regulatory opposition to bigness becomes entrenched as I believe it may -- we may see a major decline in such acquisitions. So predicting the acquisition of Slack by one of the internet giants might make sense now, but may be blocked in 2020.

Moving from 'Normal' Organizations to 'Revolutionary' Organizations

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. | Steven Hawking

Hawking sets context for what I have been calling a 'movement' since 2005 or so, the movement to drive a transition from 'normal' industrial-era organizations that are role-centered, closed, slow-and-tight, hierarchical, and backwards-focused to 'revolutionary' post-industrial-era organizations that are human-centered, open, fast-and-loose, heterarchical, and forwards-focused. Like other movements, this work revolution is defined by the dynamics of opposing forces. On one side, we have those who explicitly or implicitly uphold the principles and cultural foundations of 'normalcy', and who actively or passive-aggressively oppose those, on the other side, who advocate revolutionary change in work culture, practices, and values.

I've picked the terms 'normal' and 'revolutionary' with intention. Specifically, I have borrowed them from Thomas Kuhn's central arguments in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a work that laid out the analogous dynamics in scientific revolutions.

Kuhn argued that there is a cyclic form to science, where the work of a generation of scientist in any given field establishes a paradigm around which research and discourse are centered, like Newtonian physics. It started with various incoherent notions of motion (the pre-paradigm phase), but the central premises of gravity, and Newton's laws of motion led to the development of a second phase, where 'normal' science began, and the dominant paradigm structured the science for a considerable period of time, establishing consensus on terminology, methods, and the sorts of experiments that might lead to increased insights1.

Over time, normal science may lead to anomalies in findings -- unexpected results from experiments, questions that can't be answered -- and these can lead to questioning the old paradigm as its weaknesses are apparent. This can lead to crisis, and that can spark a paradigm shift, like quantum physics as an alternative to Newton's.

The crisis and the shift are not necessarily smooth, and there is often active disagreement and contention between the advocates of the previous, 'normal' paradigm, and the revolutionaries pushing for the new paradigm. This can lead to breaks in the scientific discipline, with huge controversies and great antagonism, since the reputations and livelihoods of the scientists are at stake.

At some point, the crisis ends, usually as a result of the establishment of a new paradigm, which eventually becomes 'normal' mainstream science, with new methods, terminology, and established approaches for experimentation.

We are at a time of such a crisis, although it's not in the traditional realm of science, per se. The crisis is in the world of business, and it is really predicated on scientific revolutions in several areas that impinge on business, namely cognitive science, behavioral economics, social psychology, and related fields. (And in the background behind the soft incursion of these revelatory social science findings, we can feel the looming hard technologies of the fourth industrial revolution.)

In the past few decades enormous advances have been made in our understanding of how people perceive the world and their relationships to others, how we reason (or don't), how people 'make decisions', how productive teams 'work', and how cultural norms impact our behavior. However, very little of this science has reached the C-suite. Consider, as only one example, the persistent problems related to diversity and the foundational issues of cognitive bias. However, few in leadership are educated in these issues, and no coherent new paradigm of organizational theory and practice has yet fully emerged.

At present, we are left with the strange dichotomy of entrepreneurial capitalism -- with capital growth and shareholder value as the highest aims -- and the independent considerations of making the world a better place, making the workplace more equitable, just, and less precarious, and attempting to construct the world of work so that people can achieve greater autonomy, meaning, and purpose in their lives, and not just a paycheck. These cross forces define a growing area of tension in the discourse about the future of work, the transformation of the 21st century business, and how to balance the desires of the many sorts of people holding stakes in these companies.

At the same time, we see growing interest in the principle that a revolution is business operations is needed to confront and overcome a long list of 'anomalies' in business and the economic sphere. The combination of increased economic pressures in a sped-up, global marketplace and the desire for greater stability and purpose for everyone at work leads to some broad trends that could stand as a proxy for the 'revolution' in organizational theory and practice:

Human-centered not role-centered. We lose a great deal when we limit people to only thinking about or acting on a limited set of activities in business. A machine press operator can have a brilliant insight that saves the copy millions, and a field sales lead can come back from a meeting with a customer suggestion for a breakthrough new product. But not if they are punished for stepping outside the painted lines on the floor. People can be larger than their job descriptions, if we let them.

Open not closed models of thinking and operations. This means a 'yes, and' mindset, where we consider alternatives rather than rejecting them because they are novel. This means activity rooting out systemic anti-creative and anti-curiosity patterns in business dogma. It means embracing Von Foester's Empirical Imperative: Always act to increase the set of possibilities.

Fast-and-loose not slow-and-tight operations. Agile, flexible, and adaptive methods of organizing, cooperating, and leading are needed. A less bureaucratic management style would increase innovation, and lead to building business operations around experiments rather than only well-established processes.

Heterarchical not hierarchical operations. The bronze age rule of kings, supposedly selected by the gods and legitimized by their personal charisma has led to terrible results, with narcissistic sociopaths all too often calling the shots. The occasional Steve Jobs or Yves Chouinard does not disprove the problems inherent to top-down-only organizations, especially in a time of great change and uncertainty. Organizational structure is another means to the ends that companies are created to effect, and serves as a powerful barrier to change when treated as sacred and inviolable.

Forward-focused, not tradition-bound. We need to adopt a new paradigm for business, one that explicitly breaks with a great deal of what passes for conventional wisdom, organized around new science, new forms of social connection, and leveraging the possibilities in the points made above. And science is not standing still, so we must incorporate new understanding into our work and the operations of business.

This is predicated upon stating -- explicitly -- that a revolution is necessary, and that a long list of practices and principles will need to be identified as problematic and rooted out. This is exactly what I founded Work Futures to do, as a research and educational institute, and in 2019 I intend to push hard to advance that agenda.

This revolution has started, but the we are in the early days of what will eventually -- decades from now, perhaps -- be a wholesale recasting of business. But the world of work cannot be changed independently of the larger world. It is one part of a larger set of changes that envelope and animate it.

The larger societal and economic trends touched on in the previous sections -- Polarization and Populism, Capitalism and Gigantism, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution -- are imparting enormous stress on the human sphere. And, as a result, it is very hard to predict what will happen in 2019. However, I believe that by 2023 a great deal of the revolution -- this transition from the 'normal' to a 'revolutionary' form of business -- will have become more clear, as the new paradigm becomes more well-defined, and as the larger world shifts to internalize new approaches to the tectonic forces at work, at all scales.

I reposted the fourth section of this essay as a piece all by itself: Moving from 'Normal' Organizations to 'Revolutionary' Organizations.

Paraphrased from Wikipedia. ↩︎

[gerryconway]

Here’s a theory proven by history:

Few people who possess any sort of power willingly release that power unless compelled by social norms or legal demands to let it go.

Does anyone disagree with this?

Of course there are exceptions. There are people with power who step aside voluntarily for the good of others. I’m sure you can name one or two. But it’s hard to argue that those exceptions are anything but exceptions.

Power and authority aren’t just intoxicating; for those who come to possess power, being powerful becomes part of their identity, the way they define themselves. The loss of power is for them a loss of identity. There’s a reason King Lear is one of Shakespeare’s most memorable and important plays– it speaks to identity as much as to power. Lear’s madness increases as his personal power decreases. He loses his sense of self, his ability to see the world as it is, and to recognize his place in it.

Power and self are intricately entwined. How many times have you reacted with instinctive resentment to a situation that made you feel powerless? The need to claim and retain power over our daily lives is at the core of our sense of independent identity. For someone who possesses true power that need must be overwhelming.

That’s why I support a Constitutional Amendment limiting election to national office to men and women under the age of 65.

There are obvious reasons why this thought may have come to me at this particular moment in history but it’s actually something I’ve been considering for about a decade, as I’ve watched the eldest cohort of my generation of Baby Boomers ruthlessly cling to power and authority well past the point of reason. When the 2016 election gave us a stark choice between two representatives of a generation that should have ceded power a decade ago, 69 and 70 years old, I shuddered. Forget whether either candidate was qualified of not, forget whether they “deserved” the Presidency for all their prior decades of service, forget the “historical” nature of their nomination, or the anti-establishment fervor that put them in place–

Forget all of that: what kind of society puts its future in the hands of grandparents?

Is it any wonder that the youth vote largely absented itself from the 2016 election? Instead of looking forward both major political parties looked backwards. Instead of embracing a new generation both parties elevated a generation that had its chance to contribute to the future and instead gave us Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. It was a sad sad moment for American politics, and the result was a disaster for the country.

Individuals as a rule are reluctant to cede power. So, I would argue, are generations.

That’s why we need a Constitutional Amendment to prevent another 2016 from ever happening again. And to prevent the constant reelection of Senators and Congressional Representatives who are clearly past their prime– people like John McCain, reelected at 79, incoherent during a Senate hearing at 80. Elected officials like McCain will never willingly relinquish power, and thanks to the electoral power of incumbency, they will rarely be voted out of office. In a country where incumbency is the major predictor of electoral success, only a Constitutional Amendment can protect the people from representatives whose identities are hopelessly entwined with the power and authority of high office.

When I mentioned this idea recently on Twitter I got push back from a friend who accused me of ageism. I can understand how this could be perceived as ageist. Judging the suitability of someone for a job based on their age is, from one viewpoint, inherently ageist.

The argument is, if someone can do a job, then their age should have nothing to do with whether or not they’re hired.

I agree with this completely and without reservation.

I also hold that by definition the age of a member of Congress or a President is directly relevant to their ability to do their job– which, fundamentally, is to represent and defend the interests of the people of the United States.

Can someone whose formative life experiences occurred sixty or more years ago adequately represent someone living today? Can someone who grew up in a world divided between a Capitalist West and a Communist East instinctively understand and respond quickly to the inherent economic contradictions of a Globalist economy? Can a man or woman who doesn’t understand, at a gut level, how info-technology has fundamentally changed modern society hope to legislate or preside over future transformations that will occur even more rapidly in the years ahead? Does someone with a mid-20th Century worldview have the ability to adapt to a new 21st Century social and economic and political paradigm?

Age isn’t just a factor in the suitability of an applicant for the job of political leader is a transformative society– it’s a determining factor. In order to lead a society you must  be a part of it. Societies aren’t just a function of place; they’re a function of time. They exist in a historical context. The lessons and political skills applicable to 1890 were not applicable to 1930. The social context of 1930 provided few lessons to the politicians of 1970.

The political and social solutions of 1980 have nothing to teach us in 2020.

When I hear progressives of my generation offer the same solutions to the problems of 2017 that they promoted in 1992 (just as conservatives offer the same solutions from the 1980s) I sigh. The truth is, Baby Boomer progressives and conservatives have no idea how to solve the problems facing Generation X and Millennials. If we were capable of humility (a trait my generation sorely lacks) we’d admit it. But we can’t admit it, any more than we can willingly relinquish the power and authority our generation has assumed over the American polity.

Experience deceives us. Age blinds us to changing realities. To quote Arthur C. Clarke, in a different but relevant context, “If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”

A generation only know what it has experienced (and then, only what it experienced in its youth). My parents’ generation was haunted by a fear of financial insecurity; my generation is obsessed with culture wars. My parents’ generation failed to adapt to the explosive economic growth of the 1960s; the economic and political crisises of the 1970s were a direct result of applying Depression-era thinking to Global era economics. My generation continues to fight the culture wars of the 1960s, at a time when, for most Generation Xers and Millennials, those wars are increasingly bizarre and irrelevant.

I don’t know how to solve the problems faced by today’s middle-aged men and women, today’s twenty- and thirty-somethings. Nobody my age does. We know what’s possible, but we don’t know what’s impossible. That’s why we shouldn’t have the arrogance to put ourselves forward for the most important leadership roles. We should be available to advise but not to decide.

Unfortunately, no one–especially not an entire generation–willingly relinquishes power. (Again, with few rare exceptions.) It must be torn from their grasp, either through the perpetuation of social norms, or by legal limitations.

Until Franklin Roosevelt, it was a social norm for Presidents to serve two terms. Roosevelt broke that norm, so a legal remedy reinstated it (the 22nd Amendment) because society as a whole believed the norm was worth preserving.

Before Ronald Reagan, only one President in the history of the Republic was elected over the age of 65– William H. Harrison, 68, who died a month after being sworn into office. The median age of all Presidents assuming office is 55; other than Reagan, Trump and the quickly-dead Harrison, the oldest President to assume office, at age 65, was James Buchanan, who, before Trump, was generally considered to be the worst President in history. (He bequeathed us the Civil War.) Our experience with elderly Presidents is not auspicious. A case can be made that they usually represent the collapse of the previous political order– Buchanan did, Reagan did, Trump certainly seems to. (Harrison’s election, too, foretold the collapse of the Whig party and the subsequent rise of the new, anti-slavery Republican party.) Electing elderly statesmen is, to me, a sign of political exhaustion.

Just as Roosevelt’s breaking of the two-term norm resulted in an Amendment restoring that norm, Reagan’s election broke the norm of electing candidates representative of society’s center of middle-aged Americans, and should have resulted in an Amendment limiting election to candidates under 65 (or, even better, 60). If such an Amendment had been in place we would never have been confronted by the choice of two 70-year olds in 2016, or the prospect of many 70+ contenders in the primaries for 2020.

Is the world a better place when it’s run by people who live in the past or those who live in the present? I believe age is a signifier for leadership. Below a certain age, you have too little experience to temper judgment. Above a certain age, you have too much. And beyond the practicality, there’s the moral issue. Every generation has its chance to create the future. A generation that refuses to step aside loses its moral standing. If it won’t have the decency to follow norms, then it should be forced to follow a law.

My generation’s time in the sun is done. Let’s make sure future generations don’t make the same mistake of overstaying their welcome that we have.

[mdye]

He doesn’t want to be president, he just wants to play one on TV

The Donald Trump Show is getting stale, old, and frankly a little bit boring.

Donald Trump’s big speech before Congress on Tuesday night was the epitome of the show. There was the gross hypocrisy of “the time for trivial fights is behind us,” the campy propagandism of creating a Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement office, the prepared remarks in all caps calling to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.

Trump knows a thing or two about publicity stunts.

Shorn of context, to witness a President of the United States deliver a speech so devoid of the customary humility or sense of America’s role in the world would be shocking. Just as it would ordinarily be shocking to see a president attacking the media as “enemies of the American people” or denouncing a “so-called judge” or any of the other dozen or so bizarre things that Trump does in a given week.

His campaign was, fascinating from state to finish — if at times horrifying — because of the litany of similar novelties. His business -- brand licensing and real estate — succeeded by the same attention-seeking. His reality TV career is the same story.

But Trump is no longer a novelty candidate, a branding magnate, or a B-List TV show host. He’s now the President of the United States. He’s the subject of constant, obsessive media attention. And like any over-exposed celebrity, he’s getting tiresome.

If you take any one moment from the Trump Show out of context, it’s striking. But together, Tump’s antics are now banal. He says, tweets, and does weird things. He gets attention. He pisses people off while thrilling others. Tonight, he even managed to attract attention and garner praise for slightly dialing it down. But speeches are supposed to be tools to help do the work of actually being president — learning about the issues, making decisions about tradeoffs, and collaborating to get things done.

Amidst the non-stop and increasingly tedious theatricality, Trump is only ever performing the role of the president, he’s never doing the job.

The Trump Show never stops

On the campaign trail, a politician gives speeches to energize supporters and to persuade the persuadable. The point of campaigning, for most politicians, is to try to win so they can govern.

When you take office, you continue to make speeches. But — especially if you are the president — the speeches then become handmaidens of governance. You give speeches to help put issues on the public agenda, to elevate a particular perspective in Congress, and to say something meaningful about priorities and tradeoffs.

Trump has, it’s clear, no interest in governing. He only just discovered yesterday that health care policy is complicated. He claims to be deliberately leaving political appointments unfilled as some kind of gesture of small government zeal, but in reality because he seems too lazy to come up with a properly vetted roster. He clearly had a blast campaigning, but had no expectation that he would actually win. That allowed him to campaign in an unusually irresponsible manner — tossing off incoherent or impossible promises with no consideration of how difficult, or downright impossible, it would be to deliver on them.

The surreal campaign that resulted from this — the Trump Show — was a thing to behold. But having won, Trump now faces the humdrum task of turning his nonsense into something workable. But while there are certainly people plugging away at this — Reince Priebus, Gary Cohn, Steve Bannon, Mick Mulvaney, and various cabinet secretaries — Trump is clearly still focused on the show. Given the chance to reboot and explain what he wants to do, Trump simply gives another campaign rally speech.

Congress needs some presidential leadership

There are a whole bunch of issues pending in Congress where it would be useful for the President of the United States to weigh-in and attempt to shape the debate.

One such issue is the Affordable Care Act, where Republicans would broadly speaking like to rescind its tax increases on the rich and pay for them by cutting spending on providing insurance to the poor and the middle class. Some Republicans have gotten leery about the practical implications of this approach, and are now talking about restraining their ambitions somewhat — leaving the Medicaid expansion in place, for example, or giving states the option to retain the ACA framework. Others are adhering dogmatically to the view that the spending must all go.

Some indication from Trump about what he is willing to accept and what he thinks should be done would be useful. Instead, he gave us — as he invariably does when he discusses the topic — vague platitudes about how “we should help Americans purchase their own coverage” with no word on how generous that help should be or how it should be paid for.

On tax reform, things are much the same. He claims that his “team is developing historic tax reform” but told us nothing of the tradeoffs it might entail or when a full plan might be available.

He talked, extensively, about trade as he always does. But he talked about it vaguely, as he always does. He said future deals would be “fair” without saying anything about what they would look like or they would be achieved. The infrastructure portion of the speech described to particular plan, and the reference to a more “merit-based” system for legal immigration likewise offered no details.

Nobody who’s watched anything Trump has said over the past six months learned anything new. In part because it’s rarely clear whether even Trump cares about the details of what he says.

You can’t parse a president who doesn’t sweat the details

In a normal address of this sort, the role of a policy reporter is to serve as a kind of a translator. Having spent days, weeks, and months following policy debates in Washington, we are able to catch the quick references in the president’s speech and understand them in fuller context. In that spirit, for example, I might note that Trumps’ reference to creating “a level playing field for American companies and workers” appears to be a move toward endorsing a controversial corporate income tax reform that big exporters like but retail chains hate.

The problem is, to draw that conclusion would require us to believe that the speech went through a traditional drafting process. That the Treasury Secretary and the National Economic Council director and the legislative liaison staff all briefed the president on the meaning of the line, and that he therefore made a coherent, deliberate effort to embrace this House plan.

I feel like I can actually hear the editing battles between Bannon and Priebus in this speech. The tonality really veers around.

— Nick Confessore (@nickconfessore) March 1, 2017

But here’s another theory. The speech seems to largely be the product of tensions between Reince Priebus’ traditional Republican Party ideology and Steve Bannon’s populist nationalism. Priebus is close to Ryan, who likes the controversial tax reform. But one interpretation of the tax reform idea is that it’s protectionist trade policy, which Bannon likes. So the two of them may have put the line in the speech even though Senate Republicans and the Trump administration economic team seem to think it’s a bad idea.

The premise of taking a close look at these speeches to read the tea leaves, in short, is that the president actually understands the policy issues facing him and cares about the words he’s speaking. With Trump that’s far from true. He doesn’t like to read briefing books or make hard choices. His words about clean air or infrastructure or anything else are completely meaningless until we see real plans. And there’s no real indication that we ever will. The show is an increasingly meaningless spectacle.

The real story is what’s happening in America

None of this is to say that the Trump administration, as a phenomenon, isn’t important. American politics and government are always important because they directly impact the lives of millions of people.

The Trump show doesn’t matter. What matters is that thousands of ICE agents in cities across America now feel that they have been “unchained” to start enforcing immigration law in a more random, more terrifying manner. Beyond the details of Trump’s executive orders, reports of Customs and Border Patrol agents at airports stepping-up their level of aggression in detaining and questioning harmless foreigners have been ubiquitous. Jewish Community Centers around the country are experiencing an unprecedented surge of bomb threats. The new Attorney General is openly dismissive of Justice Department inquiries into racism and abuses at police departments nationwide — meaning that misconduct issues are likely to become more severe.

At the same time, Trump’s victory has caused mobilization on the American left that is faster and more powerful than anything I’ve seen in my lifetime. From the millions who participated in Womens’ March events on Inauguration weekend, to the rapid-fire mobilization of people and lawyers to counter the first iteration of Trump’s travel ban people are active.

This resistance to Trump is flooding congressional town hall meetings, and has thrown the GOP’s health care strategy into disarray — taking the larger legislative agenda with it. Despite considerably lingering tensions between supporters of Hillary Clinton and supporters of Bernie Sanders, Democrats are, on a practical level, working together against Trump — exemplified by Keith Ellison taking Tom Perez as his guest to the speech.

The real-world consequences of Trump’s governance matters enormously, and so does the pushback that Trump is getting. The struggles between the forces Trump has empowered and emboldened and those he was frightened and energized will determine the future course of the country. But the Trump Show itself — the series of tweets, speeches, interviews, and provocations undertaken by the President of the United States in lieu of governing — is tedious and irrelevant. It’s time to start learning how to tune it out.