Amidst all the scare headlines re: Trump as the new Hitler, who appoints this possible raging cabinet member or that, here’s one good sign — if the ban has teeth. But how could it?

Trump administration will ban lobbyists, enact five-year lobbying ban after leaving government. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwrrN0B5KYM

Another interesting development, and this is most likely not anything Trump “caused,” but his ascendancy set off a shock wave in this country of which the ramifications continue to thud in.

Ford CEO Folds? Trump Confirms Carmaker Won’t Move Production to Mexico

Despite all the fear-mongering, I found the following article instructive — about Flynn and Bannon appointments.

Great News on Trump Appointments

So. Have Flynn and Bannon agreed to the lobbying ban?

P.S. I have yet to see any possible redeeming news in today’s appointments of Jeff Sessions and Mike Pompeo. 

Finally, the following post is worth absorbing in its entirety. Both for its epistemological reflections (the many-faceted implications of Trump as master of Twitter), and for Pepe Escobar’s assessment of what might be possible, given Trump’s overwhelming/overturning presence.

Welcome to the Brave, New (Trumpolitica/Trumponimic) World

Excerpt:

What’s certain is that the seesaw across the West between conservatives and social democracy is not a see saw anymore. When in power, everyone was just reproducing slight variations of neoliberalism.

Yet as we have now seen, liberalism has been dealt a serious body blow – even as the so-called progressive Left has utterly failed to «sell» to the masses a serious, history-based critique of neoliberalism.

Meanwhile, civil war – national and global – is now raw, everywhere; social Darwinism run amok. We have an Atlanticist Wall – from Brexit to the Rio Grande – in the process of being erected against the Global South. We have the Declining White Man against minorities that in many cases have become majorities. We have Western elites pitted against «Islam» – an absurdity, because the real enemy is Salafi-jihadism, a derivation of Wahhabism. And ultimately, we have The Ultimate Predator – Man – relentlessly decimating Nature.

In a Gramsci sense, the old order has completely collapsed, but the new order has not yet been born. It might be a new order based on the BRICS – mostly Russia, India and China. The progressive Left must find the conceptual road map to be part of it – and influence it.

Meanwhile, we will be living among the myriad debris originated by the Trumpolitics IED. America invented the politically correct. Trump bombed politically correct. America is proud of corporate media. Trump bombed corporate media. These are already two important victories.

Trump launched an IPO over the White House. Now he’s the CEO. If – and that’s a mighty if – he manages to run it like a sound business, that’s bound to be a good deal not only for the US but to the whole planet.