Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter two years ago, those who despise his evolving mix of predatory trolling, stunted emotional development and right-wing extremism have been hoping for an alternative. There was “Post”; Meta got into the act with “Threads”; another entity of at first uncertain origins actually got its start with one of Twitter’s former CEOs, Jack Dorsey. That was Bluesky. There was also Mastodon, a sort of Linux of social media networks. Part of the problem there was that you may not be familiar enough with Linux to understand the analogy. And if you do, you’re part of a potential community not nearly big enough to sustain a mass adoption social media platform. Each in succession thoroughly failed to dislodge or even make much of a dent in Twitter’s disordered and Frankensteinian dominance. It’s the power of network effects. Everyone can want to leave (or at least a big chunk of users can want that) and yet everyone is simultaneously trapped. It’s a collective action problem.

A perennial feature of Trumpism is that Trump is constantly launching threats and shiny objects of all sorts. Some of those he’ll follow through on; most he won’t. They all put opponents back on their heels. And that is, of course, the point. Trump lets it all ride and acts on what seems to serve his interests in the moment. Or maybe he doesn’t. That’s also the point. He’s the actor; his opponents are the reactors.

That spurs a knock-on feature of Trumpism. His opponents are among the biggest proponents of the seriousness of his threats. We’ll come back to that.

Polls have come out in the days since the election showing clear majorities favoring Trump’s “mass deportation” plans. Or at least they seem to. One I saw over the weekend asked if respondents supported Trump’s plan start “a national program to find and deport all immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.” 57% of respondents to a CBS/YouGov poll said they supported that. But let’s note that this is already U.S. government policy. There is a question of what’s prioritized, just what lengths the government goes to to find people. But the question in the poll described what is actually current policy. When asked how he plans to start “mass deportation,” incoming “Border Czar” Tom Homan says they’ll focus first on criminals and terrorist undocumented immigrants. Well, that is especially current U.S. policy.