[joakleaf]

Is MAGA's overarching strategy to just flood the world with bizarre provoking ideas and statements and mix them up with actual and serious issues? That way people don't get a chance to absorb or navigate through the flood of news and distinguish the important from the non-important ones. Instead I suspect most will fall into a state of political apathy.

-- It feels like part one of the plan (if there is one) is to create chaos and confusion.

Maybe this bill doesn't go through, but it is now part of the news cycle.

[hayst4ck]

That was a directly stated goal of their media strategy, I think by Bannon.

This is different though, this is seeing if there is any push back.

Do something -> see if there is a response/pushback -> if no response push harder. It's testing if there are limits on abuses of power to either overcome them, or figure out what they need to overcome/who will resist so they can punish them.

[timeon]

> I think by Bannon

He was calling it "flooding the zone". As he said:

"The Democrats don’t matter, the real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit."

That seems to be also motivation for so many executive orders in such short time.

[chneu]

It's called the Firehose of Falsehoods. Or at least some people call it that.

The idea is to flood the public sphere with so much nonsense and bullshit that nobody can keep up with it. Flood the media, flood the courts, flood everything with crap.

People eventually disengage and can't keep up. It becomes a job to pay attention to what's going on.

The idea, not surprisingly, comes from Russia. Bannon basically uses the same term Russia did for it. Again, not surprising considering the number of known Russian operates who are in Trump's orbit.

[lostmsu]

Is that what you think this bill is all about? I skimmed through it, and it seems to be a parody on controversial mental health issues like ADHD. Do you think the parody succeeded based on the fact that you think that an ADHD-like "illness" description sounds "bizzare" and unserious?

[sam_lowry_]

This is pretty much the strategy Putin and his clique employed with success for years.

[dzhiurgis]

That's my impression with last election too. Using every possible way to smear dems, everything is provokation, tons of bots, threats, etc. Super shady.