Made a point over the weekend about “shock and awe” and how one reacts to that when often there doesn’t seem like there’s much you can do. As we see in most of history, the key in many cases is simply holding on. As I tried to convey in that post, “shock and awe” is primarily a psychological operation meant to trigger confusion, paralysis and collapse. But the impact of speed and multiplicity diminishes over time and fairly quickly. So for the literally millions of people on the direct receiving end of what’s happening right now, primarily in the federal workforce, simply holding on is “doing something.” The whole point of this effort is to create lots of faits accompli during that initial phase of disorientation and paralysis. Pretty quickly the impact of that shock and disorientation and paralysis wears off. So simply holding on through that first period is a big thing. The balance of powers and levers available start to shift. And in some cases rapidly. I’m not being pollyannaish about it. The situation still remains grave and with most of the power on one side. But they do become relatively less powerful with each day that passes. Not by much but by some.
