re: #134 Alyosha

I will own at the outset that I am going to invoke Hitler.
Reading about him in Kershaw’s bio, I was struck by two things.
One, that he peopled his ministries with members of his Old Guard as a reward.
Two, that because they all owed their loyalty to him, and because the bureaucracy had become so compromised with these yes-man transplants, departments began to overlap and personal frictions developed.
If anything, the Third Reich was a deviation from the idea of German efficiency.
Add to this the suggestions that Trump seems most swayed by the last person with whom he has spoken and undoubtedly a tendency to approve of a ‘law of the jungle’ type dynamic within his spheres of control (The Apprentice, need I say more?) and I think that gross inefficiency is a given at this point.

I remember folktales about Goering’s logistics trying to supply the Stalingrad perimeter by air. One precious Junkers cargo supposedly consisted largely of condoms.

We hear that Trump is not a reader, but a couple years ago it was said Mein Kampf was on his nightstand.