The geopolitical where is the world heading thread.

[flipside]

Whatever the real and imagined crimes of Modi may be, let me assure you that they the flame of a candle compared to what Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi did. The stupid travel ban that the US, the UK and some European countries imposed on Modi in the wake of 2002 Gujrat riots and then did a volte face on that ban when he became Prime Minster in 2014 clearly shows how much the West values its principles.

Coming to Indira Gandhi, she made history by becoming the second democratically elected female head of state in history of the world. Indira Gandhi achieved amazing things for India on the world stage and won several foreign policy victories, promoting Kissinger to label her as an "Iron Lady, a nickname that became associated with her tough personality. She also presided over some of India's finest domestic policy decisions.

However, her disdain for the rule of law when things did not go her way was a disaster for democracy in India. She was so power drunk that when the supreme court voided her election to the Lok Sabha on the grounds of electoral malpractice, she refused to honour the court order and declared an illegal Emergency in order to continue on as Prime Minister. Her younger son Sanjay Gandhi, who was largely seen as Indira's political heir, fired many dissenting minsters and officials and appointed loyalists in their place despite not having been elected to any office. More than 100,000 political opponents, journalists and dissenters were imprisoned. During this time, a mass campaign for forced sterilisation was spearheaded by Sanjay in order to curb India's population growth. Sanjay was so insecure that he personally destroyed all copies of a satirical film on his policies. Sanjay also ordered demolitions that destroyed homes under the guise of "urban renewal" that ultimately made more than a million people homeless.

Foreign governments were largely mute on the matter although foreign press was quite vociferous in condemning Indira and Sanjay.

In 1977, after extending the state of emergency twice, Indira Gandhi called for elections believing that the electorate would vindicate her rule. She may have grossly misjudged her popularity by reading what the heavily censored press wrote about her. The INC got trounced in the elections by a coalition of opposition parties called the Janata Dal.

In the wake of the electoral loss, Chief of the Army Staff T.N. Raina (Tappy) was invited for a discussion with Indira and Sanjay. Sanjay reportedly told Raina "There are about 300 districts in the country. One infantry platoon is sufficient to control each district... Thus we can control India by deploying 300 platoons or about 25 infantry battalions; a mere three or four divisions. Our party, supported by paramilitary forces and the police, can deal with other administrative details." Even Indira was shocked with Sanjay's plan and Raina noted to Sanjay that his assumptions were "mathematically correct" but then addressed Indira "The Congress Party has ruled the country constitutionally for 30 years,” said Tappy. “You have held a fair election without any restraints. I am happy that history will record how the Congress under your leadership stepped down from office democratically." Thankfully Indira accepted her electoral loss but on that day India came within a hair's breath of throwing away its democracy.

The Janta Dal government started ruling in 1977 but was a very ineffective government due to political infighting amongst coalition members and fell in 1980, which allowed Indira to sweep back into power in January 1980. Sanjay died in June 1980 in while flying a plane. This prompted his elder brother Rajiv to give up his career as a pilot for Indian Airlines and join politics.

Indira's term this time was characterised by an overreaction to the demand for devolution of power from centre to states by the state of Punjab. She took a very hard line and treated the demands as tantamount to secession. Rajiv would later describe the demands as "not secessionist but negotiable" recognizing the failures of her autocratic style of governance. Indira ended up attacking the holiest site in Sikhism in operation bluestar and Sikhs worldwide erupted in criticism. Indira doubled down with operation woodrose. This eventually led to her assassination on 31st October 1984 by her own Sikh security guards. This triggered anti-Sikh riots that were partly instigated by members of the INC. It is estimated that around 15,000 Sikhs were killed in the riots.

Organisations like ENSAAF, a Sikh rights group, have documented the involvement of senior political leaders, notably from the Congress Party, in orchestrating the violence. These organisations have provided detailed accounts of how the violence was not spontaneous but organised, with state machinery used to facilitate the massacres, including using government buses to transport mobs to Sikh localities. In 2018, after a 34 year legal battle, some INC members were finally sentenced to life imprisonment for their role in the riots.

The riots caused a major discontent among Sikh separatists living overseas, particularly in Canada and reinvigorated the Khalistan movement, a separatist movement seeking to create an ethno-relegious homeland for Sikhs in the Punjab region. As a result of the riots, the Babbar Khalsa, a Sikh separatist group, planted a bomb on board Air India flight 182 which was flying from Montréal to Delhi, with a stopover at London on 23 June 1985. Flight 182 was blown up over the mid-Atlantic, killing 307 passengers and 22 crew on board. The separatist group also planned to blow up Air India flight 301, but the bomb exploded at Narita Airport in Tokyo before the flight could be loaded, killing 2 baggage handlers.

Between the two of them, Indira and Sanjay have done more harm to India than whatever the world imagines of Modi and th

What's your system prompt "imagine I am Modi and Modi can only be good as India only is good and great"?

Seriously, your verbosity is off the charts and the content too one-sided and cherry picked.

 

[hrpanjwani]

What's your system prompt "imagine I am Modi and Modi can only be good as India only is good and great"?

Nope, not using AI at all. Just my views.

Seriously, your verbosity is off the charts and the content too one-sided and cherry picked.

I would say this is a very unjust criticism. History can’t be compressed into a tweet length description. I have praised Indira’s achievements and criticised her flaws while providing links so that people can double check things and learn more if they are interested. What more should I do to ensure that misconceptions about India get corrected?

 

[Coriolanus]

Since this thread is getting too full of irrelevant gish gallop, I am going to just say this.

Did anyone notice that, when pressed about presenting a very sanitized (or propagandized) account of the BJP's track record, it seems the counter argument seems to be "well, other people did it too, and some of them were worse!"?

Doesn't really answer the question and it just sounds like a deflection or a whataboutism.

Also, how did Indira Gandhi pop up in the discussion?

 

[Nvoid82]

Do you think we’ll have an international cooperative project on the scale of the ISS in the next 50 years?

 

[hrpanjwani]

Personally, if one wanted to pin the blame primarily on Britain for what happened during Partition, I think the best argument is in the 1917-1919 timeframe. There clearly were political views inside Britain that India should be set on a path on self-determination, based on institutions that they chose themselves instead of trying to force them into British institutions; and that there was a significant political Zeitgeist that wanted to build a future India for all Indians that could have been leveraged. Instead, Britain passed the Rowlatt Acts. In the end this resulted in a situation where the only thing Indian powerstructures could agree on was that they wanted Britain out; and consequently, once Britain was out, those that argued for a unitarian India lost their best argument, and the circumstances meant there was no other argument that was nearly as compelling.

Yup, 1919 illustrates how British thinking about India was significantly muddled. On one hand they introduced the Government of India Act which declared that the objective of the British Government was the gradual introduction of responsible government in India. On the other hand, they passed the Rowlatt Act that was markedly designed to imprison people without trial and judicial review. One immediate aftermath of this was the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

This gross contradiction between reform and repression Infuriated Indian leaders and was a key reason for Gandhi’s launch of the Non-Cooperation movement. Gandhi lost all faith in the goodness of the British government and declared that it would be a "sin" to cooperate with the "satanic" government. He successfully persuaded all Indians to withdraw their labour from any activity that sustained the British government and also economy in India. The impact of the revolt was a total shock to British authorities and within three years led to the revocation of a large number of acts and laws that repressed Indian citizens including the Rowlatt Act.

More importantly, it nationalised the struggle for freedom not just as the project of elite Nationalists but as something that every Indian now desired to see. In a real sense, it completely upturned the foundations of Indian society.

 

[hrpanjwani]

Since this thread is getting too full of irrelevant gish gallop, I am going to just say this.

Did anyone notice that, when pressed about presenting a very sanitized (or propagandized) account of the BJP's track record, it seems the counter argument seems to be "well, other people did it too, and some of them were worse!"?

Doesn't really answer the question and it just sounds like a deflection or a whataboutism.

Can you kindly explain exactly what is the question that you want answered?

I would say calling my attempt to describe the realities of India as whataboutism is deeply unfair. I have not denied that communal violence takes place in India and is often politically motivated.

What I have tried to do is contextualise it with facts about the ineffectiveness of the Indian judiciary making it a difficult problem to solve.

Once again, here are the statistics on religious violence in India.

The India-wide average communal violence fatality rate per year was 0.01 person per 100,000 people per year. The world's average annual death rate from intentional violence, in recent years, has been 7.9 per 100,000 people.

Now I would request that you answer this question. So how much better does India need to get before the world finally admits that while the problem in India is real and efforts must be made to solve it, it is also significantly blown out of proportion in media coverage?

 

[hrpanjwani]

Do you think we’ll have an international cooperative project on the scale of the ISS in the next 50 years?

If we manage to crack fusion then that will probably trigger an international collaboration immediately as all countries will want to get their hands in the technology as soon as possible.

I don’t think there is any other scientific idea that has the same potential to unite the world.

 

[sword_9mm]

If we manage to crack fusion then that will probably trigger an international collaboration immediately as all countries will want to get their hands in the technology as soon as possible.

I don’t think there is any other scientific idea that has the same potential to unite the world.

That's optimistic.

Depends on who gets there first (if it's even possible on Earth).

I can see a whole lotta ways it'll be used to subjugate more meat for the oligarchy.

 

[Coriolanus]

Can you kindly explain exactly what is the question that you want answered?

If you are going to give us an unprompted dissertation about why INC and the Nehru-Gandhi family is bad and why the BJP is great, then just acknowledge when someone notes that the BJP and Modi have a bad track record for inciting violence or discrimination against ethnic minorities in India. Don't sanitize the truth and don't deflect.

The BJP stands poised ready to deliver. But no one will let them cross the fish line.

Less of the propaganda-y stuff.

 

[hrpanjwani]

If you are going to give us an unprompted dissertation about why INC and the Nehru-Gandhi family is bad and why the BJP is great, then just acknowledge when someone notes that the BJP and Modi have a bad track record for inciting violence or discrimination against ethnic minorities in India. Don't sanitize the truth and don't deflect.

Ok. Let’s see if we can use technology to help us shape this discussion. I have fed as much data as I could find about communal violence in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh into ChatGPT, asked it to run a statistical analysis and prepare an essay highlighting its findings.

Here we go.


Political Responsibility and Communal Violence in South Asia: A Comparative Analysis

Communal violence in South Asia—particularly in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh—is often attributed to specific political parties in the media and in popular narratives. However, a careful historical and comparative analysis, especially when incorporating decade-by-decade per capita trends, shows that no single party can be held solely responsible. Instead, violence reflects the interaction of political regimes, institutional choices, and long-term social cleavages, with different parties influencing intensity, form, and timing rather than acting as singular causes.

India: Multi-Party Responsibility and Long-Term Decline

In India, communal violence has historically taken the form of Hindu–Muslim riots, with occasional large-scale targeting of other groups. Crucially, the most intense periods of violence occurred before the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Decade-wise per capita trends (India)

• 1970s: ~0.4–0.6 deaths per million/year
  
  
• 1980s: ~0.5–0.8 (peak; Congress era)
  
  
• 1990s: ~0.4–0.7 (transition period)
  
  
• 2000s: ~0.2–0.4 (decline begins)
  
  
• 2010s: ~0.2–0.3
  
  
• 2020s: ~0.1–0.25 (lowest)

During the dominance of the Indian National Congress, India experienced some of its deadliest riots. The 1969 Gujarat riots and 1989 Bhagalpur violence together caused thousands of deaths, while the 1984 anti-Sikh riots alone killed around 3,000 Sikhs. These events coincide with the highest per capita violence levels in the 1980s, demonstrating that severe communal violence predates the BJP’s emergence.

The 1990s, marked by the rise of the BJP and the Babri Masjid demolition, saw continued high levels of violence. However, the per capita rate during this decade was comparable to the 1980s, suggesting continuity rather than a new origin.

The 2002 Gujarat riots represent a major spike under BJP rule. Yet, the broader trend is a decline in violence after 2000, continuing through both Congress-led and BJP-led governments, including the current era under Narendra Modi.

Total deaths are estimated to be around 19,000 - 20,000 with roughly 9,000 Muslims, 6000 Hindus, 4000 Sikhs, 1000 Christian’s and an extremely small number of Jain’s, Parsis, and Buddhists.

This data indicates that in India, responsibility for communal violence is distributed across political periods and religious groups, particularly Hindus and Muslims, with no single party or religion being consistently associated with higher long-term per capita rates. Instead, the key transformation has been from large-scale riots to smaller, localised incidents of vigilante opportunism reflecting improvements in state capacity and changes in social dynamics.


Pakistan: State Policy and Sectarian Escalation

Pakistan presents a different pattern, where communal violence is primarily sectarian (Sunni–Shia) and targeted rather than riot-based. Here, decade-wise per capita data shows a clear rise and fall linked to regime types and state policies.

Decade-wise per capita trends (Pakistan)

• 1970s: ~0.2–0.4
  
  
• 1980s: ~0.8–1.5 (sharp rise)
  
  
• 1990s: ~1.5–3
  
  
• 2000s: ~3–6 (peak)
  
  
• 2010s: ~4–7 early → ~2–3 late
  
  
• 2020s: ~1–2 (decline)

The turning point occurred during the rule of Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s, when Islamization policies institutionalized sectarian divisions. This corresponds with the initial sharp rise in per capita violence.

In the 1990s, under civilian leaders such as Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, violence intensified further as militant groups expanded amid weak governance. The peak occurred in the 2000s under Pervez Musharraf, when per capita death rates reached their highest levels due to militant activity and regional conflicts.

A decline in the late 2010s followed major military operations, indicating that state capacity and security policy—not party ideology alone—drive violence levels.

Total deaths are estimated at 27000-28000 with around 15,000 Shias, 8000 Sunnis, 2000 Ahmadiyyas, 1500 Christians, 1000 Hindus and 200 from other religions

Thus, in Pakistan, responsibility lies less with specific parties and more with institutional decisions and regime strategies, particularly those that enabled sectarian militancy.


Bangladesh: Political Competition and Cyclical Violence

Bangladesh’s pattern is characterised by majority-to-minority violence, primarily targeting Hindus, often during periods of political instability.

Decade-wise per capita trends (Bangladesh)

• 1970s: extremely high (war-related; not comparable)
  
  
• 1980s: ~0.3–0.6
  
  
• 1990s: ~0.5–0.9
  
  
• 2000s: ~0.6–1.0 (peak)
  
  
• 2010s: ~0.4–0.8
  
  
• 2020s: ~0.3–0.7

Following the Bangladesh Liberation War, violence stabilized but remained persistent. The highest sustained levels occurred in the 1990s and 2000s during intense political rivalry between Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia.

Notably, spikes in violence often coincided with elections or regime transitions, suggesting that communal tensions were instrumentalized within political competition. In recent years, under prolonged rule by the Awami League, large-scale violence has decreased somewhat, but localised incidents persist.

Total deaths are estimated at 3200-3500 with around 4000 Hindus, 800 Muslims, 300 Buddhists and 100 Christians.

This indicates that in Bangladesh, responsibility is shared across competing political parties, with violence closely tied to political instability rather than a single governing ideology.


Comparative Insights

A cross-country comparison highlights how different political systems shape communal violence:

Country	Peak decade	Peak deaths per million/year	Key driver
India	1980s–1990s	~0.5–0.8	Large riots, weak state control
Pakistan	2000s–2010s	~4–7	Sectarian militancy
Bangladesh	1990s–2000s	~0.6–1.0	Political competition

• India shows a declining trend across regimes, with responsibility spread across parties.
  
  
• Pakistan shows a sharp rise linked to state policy, especially under military rule.
  
  
• Bangladesh shows cyclical violence tied to elections, implicating multiple parties over time.

Conclusion

The addition of decade-by-decade per capita data strengthens a key conclusion: communal violence in South Asia cannot be attributed to a single political party in any of these countries. In India, both the Indian National Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party have governed during periods of violence, but the overall trajectory is downward. In Pakistan, the decisive factor has been state-led Islamization and militant proliferation, not party competition. In Bangladesh, violence reflects ongoing political rivalry and electoral dynamics, rather than the actions of one party alone.

Ultimately, communal violence is best understood as a structural and institutional phenomenon, shaped by history, governance, and political incentives across decades—not the product of any single political actor.

 

[VividVerism]

Ok. Let’s see if we can use technology to help us shape this discussion. I have fed as much data as I could find about communal violence in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh into ChatGPT, asked it to run a statistical analysis and prepare an essay highlighting its findings.

Here we go.

Why?

Why would you do that?

Why would you think that is in any way helpful?

Why do you think we don't already suspect we've been arguing with ChatGPT all along?

This is not useful. Anyone here can get ChatGPT's output on these things if they want it. How about linking a real analysis by a real expert in the field? There is enough AI slop out there to wade through. Don't add more, especially not completely unprompted.

 

[Coriolanus]

unprompted

To be fair, it was prompted.

 

[VividVerism]

To be fair, it was prompted.

Indeed. LLMAO.

 

[Shavano]

Do you think we’ll have an international cooperative project on the scale of the ISS in the next 50 years?

50 years is a long time. But no.

Also @hrpanjwani please stop. We'd like to have discussion that isn't all about why India is better than Pakistan and it's Britain's fault, or whatever it is you're on about in your giant walls of text. You could start a new thread, I guess, for those interested. I'm not, and you're cluttering up this thread with a fuckton of stuff nobody here asked for.

 

[Lt_Storm]

The only evidence I can point to is the population exchange between Greece and Turkey which seems to have been reasonably successful in achieving its political goals. Scholars are divided on the outcome, with some describing it as a legalized form of mutual ethnic cleansing, while others have defended it, stating that despite its negative aspects, the exchange had an overall positive outcome since it successfully prevented potential future genocides.

And, yet, if was still violent, especially given that it was done in response to then-current war, genocide, and mass murder (specifically, the Armenian genocide, which was, in many ways, the prototype for defining genocide), so the violence necessary to make the population transfer happen was already present. Worse, it isn't like this prevented further sectarian violence against Greek people in Turkey.

Moreover, to quote a couple observations from the Wikipedia article:

Many immigrants died of epidemic illnesses during the voyage and brutal waiting for boats for transportation. The death rate during the immigration was four times higher than the birth rate.

...

For both communities, the population exchange had traumatic psychological effects. Professor Ayse Lahur Kirtunc, a Cretan Muslim expelled to Turkey stated in an interview: "It's late for us to be preserving our recollections; The essence of them, the first essence, has vanished already. Those first migrants took away their memories; the memories that ought to have been recorded without delay. Eighty years have passed, and the memories are warring with another, ripe for distortion. But the core of every migrant's statement remains the same. Birth in one place, growing old in another place. And feeling a stranger in the two places".

So here we see that the event was hardly victimless, many thousand died in the exchange itself. Indeed a close look at the history of the event rentals that it was quite violent. Moreover, even today there is consequent hostility between Greece and Turkey. So, I would hardly rate that as a success.

 

[herko]

Ok. Let’s see if we can use technology to help us shape this discussion. I have fed as much data as I could find about communal violence in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh into ChatGPT, asked it to run a statistical analysis and prepare an essay highlighting its findings.

/// OFFICIAL MODERATION NOTICE ///

---

Hell no.

Others already addressed it, but I want to drive it home. AI is a useful tool for some things, but you're writing for a highly technically literate audience. Everyone here can paste stuff into ChatGPT/Claude/Copilot/Gemini/etc. If we're interested in reading it, which we are generally not. Bring your own analysis and opinions, or jokes, or don't participate.

What you did here is basically waste everyone's eyeballs and attention with a wall of text no one asked for. Can you stand by ChatGPT's analysis? Do you know why it's correct? Do you know what its weak points are? What, if anything did it hallucinate? Why is its statistical analysis valid? At least, why would it be interesting?!

If you know the answers to these questions, use them to write your own freaking text, or don't bother. No one here cares about someone else's LLM output. It's not welcome. Do not do this.

 

[Slothur the Hasty]

So trying to bring this thread back to what it was intended for.

So Hungary hopefully will change the stalemate in Europe with the recent election. I guess that means that Ukraine will get their 90 billion euros. I am not so up to date on how different this new party in Hungary is - i guess it is better, but yet in some cases the same?

I am reading a lot of general news where fuel and energy is going to be a real issue soon. Someone mentioned it took about 40 days for a tanker to reach Europe, so that means scarcity will be coming around the corner pretty soon.
For Asia, and i think perhaps Australia, things are not easy.

So where are we headed guys? Got news, information, events or happenings that we need to know about?

 

[concernUrsus]

So trying to bring this thread back to what it was intended for.

So Hungary hopefully will change the stalemate in Europe with the recent election. I guess that means that Ukraine will get their 90 billion euros. I am not so up to date on how different this new party in Hungary is - i guess it is better, but yet in some cases the same?

I am reading a lot of general news where fuel and energy is going to be a real issue soon. Someone mentioned it took about 40 days for a tanker to reach Europe, so that means scarcity will be coming around the corner pretty soon.
For Asia, and i think perhaps Australia, things are not easy.

So where are we headed guys? Got news, information, events or happenings that we need to know about?

There were/are articles on gas/oil rationing in some of the Asia countries. So it is already bad there. China is supposed to have a more divered supply chains and more reserve, but oil are generally only good for ~3 months. Food food price will like raise as well due to fertiliser. It is going to take awhile to have the effect (the crops are currently being planted).

https://theconversation.com/some-co...-hit-hardest-by-the-crisis-in-the-gulf-279888

https://time.com/article/2026/04/05/strait-of-hormuz-fuel-rationing-oil/

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0q98w57k25o

I do wonder if Europe will be forced to negoiate with Russia as Russia is a major energy provider.

PS: additional sources

View: https://youtu.be/Qluw88Pd0Gs?si=dwaE3slTsdozFP4R

 

[Slothur the Hasty]

I do wonder if Europe will be forced to negoiate with Russia as Russia is a major energy provider.

The cynic in me is wondering if Trump planned this and wants Europe to be dependent on Russia.

Algeria is becoming a bit of a savior here, but i also notice that Europe will be more dependent on the US as well.

https://www.euronews.com/business/2...e-the-old-continent-from-the-strait-of-hormuz

 

[Thegn]

The cynic in me is wondering if Trump planned this and wants Europe to be dependent on Russia.

Algeria is becoming a bit of a savior here, but i also notice that Europe will be more dependent on the US as well.

https://www.euronews.com/business/2...e-the-old-continent-from-the-strait-of-hormuz

a/Trump/Putin. If you think that Trump is capable of thinking beyond the next three words that come out of his mouth… I’m sure someone bent his ear in any case.

 

[Slothur the Hasty]

a/Trump/Putin. If you think that Trump is capable of thinking beyond the next three words that come out of his mouth… I’m sure someone bent his ear in any case.

I think there is a red thread in all of this considering the coal restart in the US, then Venezuela, now Iran, so the US is becoming unhinged due to wanting to control resources in some way and to make its "allies" dependent on the US. The person who is whispering into his ear though has yet to be identified. Trump has the smallest ...something.... in the world, so he needs to be in the limelight and to be seen as the most glorious leader the world has ever seen, and that probably makes him easy to control.

If this narrative is correct remains though to be seen, but before the next winter arrives in Europe, there will be more of the same with regard to energy, although I have not quite yet figured out what those event or decisions might be yet.

I am reading that England is considering drilling more, same with Norway although Norway is a bit quiet in the boat for the moment. Algeria is now the savior in a way as they get to almost pick up the slack at least for the southern parts of Europe.

China is the big dragon though for the US, so i am expecting more news about resources in countries China is busy - Africa perhaps, if that is oil or other resources i guess we will see, but booting China out of Venezuelan oil seems to have been one of the goals.

AI, tech stacks and datacenters too has something to do with this, probably that they need energy, and likely US energy to boot.

Edit: Broke my own rule, never mention Trump and dicks in the same sentence for obvious reasons. (fucking pedo)

 

[flipside]

I think we‘ll be seeing major activity in the „club of western middle powers“ - Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea and the EU in the next few years. I wonder if at some point an alternative to Nato or a new supranational project could emerge (not as close knit as the EU, but more permanent than just single issue alliances). This could also include some Brics countries like Brazil, Chile (Mercosur could be just the start) or South Africa, if they should finally tire of China and Russia and rid themselves of their alt-right governments.

The time of US hegemony is coming to an end and its old allies are looking to to divest from an unreliable actor. It will be hard to stop this trend once Trump is gone.

 

[Shavano]

a/Trump/Putin. If you think that Trump is capable of thinking beyond the next three words that come out of his mouth… I’m sure someone bent his ear in any case.

I think someone in the White House is capable of thinking beyond Trump's next three words.