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Mommah's avatar

Extremely impressed with your level of research on this . Thank you .

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xtuartb's avatar

I was not aware of Eisen's book, '|The Playbook'. It appears to be the amplification and perfection of that other notorious playbook of Saul Alinsky. It contextualises that manual of street-fighting and agitation in terms of the greater aim which it always served. It makes that aim explicit, and enables it to be tied back to the interests of its prime movers - it unmasks the Head of the Hydra.

What this allows is a knowing resistance to those 'principals and powers' directly, rather than becoming enmeshed in the innumerable tentacles that are cast forth onto the battlefield, to confuse and exhaust our efforts. It dictates a two-part agenda of effective defence, of decapitation and dismemberment. Co-ordinating these is a matter of planning and strategy, and if these are to succeed, then they must themselves be devolved just as much as the physical devolution itself.

Dismemberment is a matter of street-by-street, community-by-community engagement. Decapitation is something that can only be engaged in by powers beyond those of the individual, or locally-organised citizenry. It must be a pincer movement, from below and above, and it must at some point be closely but flexibly co-ordinated and controlled. I believe this is Trump's true function, to exert leadership in a complex war, and I think this is what he is progressively approaching now. His behaviour is shifting, and I think he is coming to the point where he will start to explicitly command that co-ordinated effort - we will do well to be ready.

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