The principles are simple.
- Establish a regular publishing schedule.
- Keep a folder of ideas for posts.
- Develop those ideas and save them in a drafts folder.
- Schedule posts ahead, thereby building some margin into the workflow.
However, if you want to write about current affairs, ignore everything above. I have several ideas for posts on US tariffs but have never finished a draft. Tariffs on everything! Except for exemptions. Wait! Go! No. Yes! Maybe.
It would be funny if it weren't so serious. Mexican, Canadian, Chinese and American working people are the ones suffering actual harm from this political masturbation. We can argue about the value of tariffs, but such an argument is difficult to anchor as nobody knows what is being applied to whom, when.
Why is the Orange one muttering incoherently about tariffs and performing a bizarre okey-cokey?
I don't know. This lack of knowledge won't prevent me from having an opinion (I know, you're surprised).
Announcing a tariff gets Donald lots of media attention. His phone lights up with Presidents and Prime Ministers trying to speak to him. If they say enough nice things, he can pause implementation until he needs more flattery.
I guess it's possible that some of these leaders may get to a place where frustrated and fatigued, they offer Trump some benefit if he promises to go and be a pain in the arse to someone else.
The cost of this, though, is huge. NOBODY trusts the US any more. All trading partners now see their relationship with the United States as a weakness and a threat. Trump is forcing his largest trading partners to actively seek to trade elsewhere as a first option, and he's doing it without actually imposing the tariffs that he thinks are so awesome. Still, at least the markets are...Oh, wait. They're heading south at a rate of knots.
Screwing up relationships with your key trading partners though, is barely enough to fill an evening on X. What else? You could propose a tussle with Denmark for Greenland or attempt to extort money from a country fighting for its survival against Russia. That'll grab a headline or four. Then, get your sidekick, JD, to insult the French and UK militaries. That'll go well.
Meanwhile, back at home, keep on dismantling the government. Education department? What for? Inoculations? Pah. It's only measles. University funding? Nah. It's a waste of time. Veterans? Smeterans. If you're going to undermine the world order of the last eighty years, best make sure you're smashing up your own institutions too.
Back to workflows. Keeping up with Trump is either too hard or too easy. Hard if you want to post on his latest change of tack, easy if you want to stick to fundamentals. Whatever you write on Monday will be dated by Tuesday, but probably spot on for three hours on Thursday morning.
What fits the workflow is considering the longer-term impact of Trump 2.0. The die is cast now. The entire world sees the USA entirely differently. For example, the whole of Europe is encouraging Germany to build lots of tanks. That was inconceivable ten years ago.
On that note, I'm off to my ideas folder.
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