Indexical Banana

Specifically, it seems to come down to: 1) secrecy, deception, and obfuscation of nefarious or self serving aims for as long as possible by running the equivalent of marketing campaigns with bodies of internal and external people who could affect your power

2) the demonization, smearing, and (often) elimination of any credible threat to or criticism of your actions or attempts to bring your motives of amassing power to light /8

3) waiting as long as possible to signal any imminent action and then moving swiftly and devastatingly to accomplish specific outcomes which increase your access to resources (financial, political, or whatever you’re competing over) /9

Ideally #3 is done in secret and/or followed immediately by a disinformation campaign to confuse the facts in service of #1 /10

You can also accomplish #3 by carefully and quietly moving over a period of time but risk increases the longer your actions continue and can be observed; you lose control of the narrative when people can see what you’re doing and draw their own conclusions /12

These seem to be characteristics of strategies rather than specific strategies or tactics—the medium and messaging and channels that you use to accomplish these things vary tremendously depending on who you are and what your arena is but they are consistent /13

And you see this play out in everything from Mean Girls to PTA to International Affairs on a global stage /14

I guess you could say that this just like strategy and tactics 1001 because it sometimes seems SO OBVIOUS to me now that I’m looking for it but I both don’t remember it being so obvious earlier in my life and no one really talks about it /15