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Situational Assessment 2017: Trump Edition – Deep Code

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I can’t vouch for Jordan Greenhall – I am unfamiliar with his work – but this piece is definitely worth a read (and a few re-reads). It’s a very detailed theoretical investigation into what’s going on at the moment from a writer that seemed very well-versed in system theory.

While many things have changed in the world in the past two years, 2016 saw what looks like a phase transition in the political domain. While the overall phenomenon is global in scale and includes Brexit and other movements throughout Europe, I want to focus specifically on the victory of the “Trump Insurgency” and drill down into detail on how this state change will play out.

Source: Jordan Greenhall: Situational Assessment 2017: Trump Edition – Deep Code

The Jacksonian Revolt

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This article laying out the Trump outlook on the world and approach to foreign policy could prove to be an important explanation and contextualization of just what’s going on at the moment.

At the moment, Jacksonians are skeptical about the United States’ policy of global engagement and liberal order building—but more from a lack of trust in the people shaping foreign policy than from a desire for a specific alternative vision. They oppose recent trade agreements not because they understand the details and consequences of those extremely complex agreements’ terms but because they have come to believe that the negotiators of those agreements did not necessarily have the United States’ interests at heart. Most Jacksonians are not foreign policy experts and do not ever expect to become experts. For them, leadership is necessarily a matter of trust. If they believe in a leader or a political movement, they are prepared to accept policies that seem counter-intuitive and difficult.

Source: The Jacksonian Revolt: American Populism and the Liberal Order by Walter Russell Mead in Foreign Affairs

Lessig in Medium: Rules for a constitutional crisis

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Lawrence Lessig will always be a hero to digital natives young and old, and even when he has moved to other things (the pervasive corruption of money in politics, among others), he can be counted on for wise words.

Today in Medium he wrote the following:

He has no understanding of his place in the constitutional order. His White House has run amuck, issuing diktats without advice from either the State Department or the Department of Justice. He has no discipline. He has no understanding. And he feels himself constrained by nothing—save the pathologically thin skin that controls him as meth controls an addict. He is constitutionally compromised, and unqualified to be President.

Source: Rules for a constitutional crisis – Medium

The whole piece is worth a read.

ACLU: We’ll See You in Court

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Or, Why Trump’s Executive Order on Refugees Violates the Establishment Clause

This piece originally appeared at Just Security.  According to the Supreme Court, “the clearest command of the Establishment Clause is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another.” But that command is apparently not clear enough for President Donald Trump.  On Friday he signed an executive order on refugees that imposes a selective ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries as well as establishes preferential treatment for refugees seeking asylum who are identified with “minority religions” in their country of origin. In case there was any doubt about the latter provision’s intent, Trump told Christian Broadcast News that it was intended to give priority to “Christians” seeking asylum over “Muslims.” In both respects, the executive order violates the “clearest command of the Establishment Clause.”

Source: We’ll See You in Court: Why Trump’s Executive Order on Refugees Violates the Establishment Clause | American Civil Liberties Union

Arrivals To U.S. Blocked And Detained As Trump’s Immigration Freeze Sets In

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This is a disgusting blanket “solution” that has caught up refugees from ISIS, US-Government employed interpreters who put their and their family’s lives on the line for years, and although it cites 9/11 directly, doesn’t in fact cover the country from which most of those terrorists came, Saudi Arabia.

The only silver lining is that the courts will be busy establishing all sorts of binding precedents on this kind of issue in the coming weeks and months.

One day after President Trump signed executive order halting the admittance of all refugees to the United States, and temporarily freezing immigration from seven mostly Muslim countries, the effects of that freeze are already beginning to be seen at airports both in the U.S. and abroad.

Several Iraqi refugees in Cairo, who had been cleared for resettlement in the U.S., have been blocked from boarding their flight to New York City. And in Iraq, NPR’s Jane Arraf reports that “members of Yazidi minority, one of the biggest victims of ISIS, were prevented from boarding despite having visas.”

Source: Arrivals To U.S. Blocked And Detained As Trump’s Immigration Freeze Sets In : The Two-Way : NPR

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