Charting the Executive Orders

Sops, self-soothers, and explosive devices

The word “sop” isn’t used very much today, but back in the days when lords sat at their high tables and ate lavish food while the lesser nobles sat below, and the hounds barked and the minstrels sang and the court jesters mocked, a “sop” was a piece of bread or meat thrown to the dogs to keep them quiet. Today, the acronym SOP means “Standard Operating Procedure.” The two meanings collided this week in the avalanche of Executive Orders (EOs) that Trump issued.

The sheer quantity of EOs cascading out of the White House since Monday has been exactly what Trump consigliere Steve Bannon has called “flooding the zone with shit,” that is, putting out so many orders in so many directions that it’s impossible for journalists (or citizens) to keep up with them.

Those of us who are paying attention are overwhelmed. The rest will only begin to find out how Trump has already profoundly changed our nation as the orders come into effect. Some will be blocked. But many will not be challenged because the system cannot respond coherently to such an attack. One thing is clear: We are not in the same country that we were a week ago.

To try to make sense of it, I’m creating a chart that will allow me, and I hope you, to quickly understand four things: what the EOs do on the surface, the intended targets, whom they actually harm or punish (Qui punitur), and who benefits (Cui bono).

In the first column I put the stated purpose of the EO. In the second I put who Trump intends to harm and why. In the third column, I put the people who will actually be harmed. Some harms will be relatively small, but others have the potential to be grenades in American life as we have known it. In the fourth column, I put the people who will benefit—but I’ll distinguish between real benefits, like financial/social benefits and sops, which are further subdivided into two kinds: Sops to Trump’s base and self-soothers, which are sops to Trump’s own wounded self.

My hope is that by using this format, I can quickly understand the action, the motivation, the real victims, and the real beneficiaries (if any) of the executive orders and watch for patterns, particularly in the cui bono category. Which actions benefit whom? Which ones are pacifiers that Trump is sticking into his own mouth? Which ones benefit the ultra-rich? Which ones are sops to his base? Which are explosive devices that will blow up in our faces? Bottom line: Who gets happy and who gets hurt?

I’ll keep posting more EOs every couple of days. Should be done, oh, around 2029. There’s gonna be a shit ton of them.