There is no central authority for news and information. Choice on the Internet and in TV programming, and the gathering of narrow ‘birds-of-a-feather’ groups around Facebook pages and Twitter feeds has created a cacophony that lacks a central ‘Athenian square’ where ideas are argued, facts are compared and opinions validated or discounted. Despite the great array of articulate criticism of Trump on conservative web sites such as Ricochet<\/a> and The Federalist<\/a>, no Trump supporters are reading it. <\/p>\n i.e., with apologies to WB Yeats, the centre cannot hold<\/a>. <\/p>\n Not only is there no central authority in the world of political discourse, but the GOP has shown itself to be less than the sum of its parts, a weak collection of underwhelming operatives with little idea of how to proceed and absolutely no personal moral courage. <\/p>\n Scott Adams (Dilbert) has studied deal-making, perusasion and even hypnosis and written some interesting blog posts about it. Back in September he identified Trump as “the best persuader I have ever seen. On a scale from 1 to 10, if Steve Jobs was a 10, Trump is a 15.” <\/p>\n His analysis of Trump’s Super Tuesday <\/a> is insightful and his reading list on persuasion<\/a> is also worth checking out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Theory 1 – no central authority There is no central authority for news and information. Choice on the Internet and in TV programming, and the gathering of narrow ‘birds-of-a-feather’ groups around Facebook pages and Twitter…<\/p>\nTheory 2 – the gamed moist robot theory<\/h1>\n