turning my dumb little web sketch into this gorgeous page”
The 2020 Election has Gifted Bad Actors a Roadmap to Destabilize American Democracy
For the past 4 years, there’s been strong speculation as to whether the 2016 election of Trump was the result of rare and unrepeatable circumstances.
That speculation was dispelled on November 3rd, 2020. We got a very clear signal that 2016 was no one-off. Rather, we now know that Trump had used his first four years in office to great effect.
We’ll likely never know whether Trump and his advisors were sufficiently sophisticated to craft a Plan B so Machiavellian that they make the namesake look like a rank amateur.
Plan B is now perfectly clear. The Trump base is confirmed, accessible, and influenceable. The Democratic base can be relentlessly targeted and their mood measured.
2016 was a test run to prove that millions of Americans could be individually targeted and influenced. Four years ago, the precise number of Americans that were influenced was clearly significant, though somewhat vague. Now we know precisely how many Americans voted for Trump and align with his philosophies on how America should be governed.
Close to 50% of American voters gave their support to Donald Trump. It’s in Trump’s interest, and a part of the Republican Party’s interest, to maintain the fiction that the election was stolen. That’s because the same base, the base that distrusts American democracy, could still be extremely useful to Trump, as well as to the Republican Party, in years to come.
The recent messaging from Trump and his White House team was predicted and plays to this longer-term thinking, the Plan B, that his 70m supporters have to be nurtured and matured.
The unhinged and predictable spectacle of Trump’s press conference early Wednesday morning at the White House was outrageous even to some of his closest allies: here was an unstable authoritarian trying his best, on live television, to undermine one of the oldest democratic systems in existence. “This is a fraud on the American public,” he complained. “This is an embarrassment to our country.” As far as he was concerned, citing no evidence, “we have already won it.” Trump was willing, as always, to imperil the interests and the stability of the country to satisfy his ego and protect his power. On Thursday evening, Trump reprised this malign and pathetic performance, as he took to the White House pressroom to claim, again without proof, that he was being “cheated” by a “corrupt system.” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/16/the-biden-era-begins
And as of a few hours ago, as Joe Biden was confirmed as the 46th President of the United States, Bad Actors will have commenced their strategy to use Trump’s 70m Americans in ways that we can barely imagine.
The tools to implement their Plan B are proven and readily accessible. The 2016 election was powerfully influenced by these tools. The strategy for Plan B is based on a long game. Plan B isn’t a presidential election cycle, it’s much longer.
The data is available to profile Trump’s 70m in granular terms and likewise for the Democratic Party supporters.
And, so while America takes a breather from what is generally thought to be the most bizarre presidential race is US history, the folks who are defining Plan B are hard at work.
And they’ll be particularly hard at work analyzing Democratic Party voters because their next victory will be on the basis of retaining the Trump 70m and recruiting about 10% of the Democratic Party vote.
A bunch of smart people with access to significant funding and the modern-day tools-of-trade that are pervasive in America means that Plan B is clearly achievable.
“United States” may well become an oxymoron.
About the Author:
Greg Twemlow is a Sydney-based Social Enterprise Founder | Startup Mentor | CEO | Writer | Speaker | Host of https://medium.com/consilio
