this is step one - realizing that trump himself has little control over what's happening around him.

but, step two is realizing that, while trump himself may be basically retarded, the state around him is not. i don't mean the whitehouse, i mean the state. frankly, i don't think that steve bannon is that bright, either. and, i don't think that jared kushner is even interested in actually governing. pence may end up president in the end, but he can't walk and chew gum at the same time, either.

there isn't anybody in the actual white house that knows what they're doing; all of the direction is coming, ultimately, from different arms of the actual state. the article presents trump's stupidity as unusual, but it is not: the stupid president is really the norm since the second world war. clinton was really the sole counter-example. trump is a buffoon, but so was obama and dubya and reagan and carter and ford and nixon and johnson and kennedy and eisenhower, too. the elder bush' buffoonery is at best questionable. as a literal rhodes scholar, clinton truly stands alone as the only halfways-intelligent president the country has had in the lifetime of most living people.

but, they all had smart people around them. what is different about trump is that he does not. and, he is going to need to find some smart people to help him.

in the mean time, what that means is recognizing the increased power of the state around him. i should clarify that when anarchists throw this term state around, it means more than the government - it means the collusion between the government and the market, and refers mostly to the upper echelons of capital. so, lockheed martin is the state. robert mercer is the state. the koch brothers are the state. steve mnuchin and goldman sachs are the state. the heritage institute is the state. and, the more you understand how stupid trump is, and how incompetent the people directly around him are, the more you realize how important these state actors are, in their ability to manipulate what he does.

so, step one is realizing that trump is, indeed, hopelessly transparent. he's even transparent when he's trying to bluff; hopelessly, so. but, step two is realizing that this distributes power to the state around him, who are much better poker players and can and must be analysed in order to get your head around the policy that they hand to the president in order for him to sign into law.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/12/15621140/interpret-trump