I think the timing was 100% driven by the release of Virginia Giuffre's book. They started on 10/20 to make sure the demolition dominated the headlines for days, and perhaps even weeks.
But the act of destruction was always going to be in the mix. Only the timing was dictated by the need for a big distraction.
47 is hellbent on sabotage of everything that represents the values of global citizenship -- values like human-rights, rule of law, religious freedom, self-governance, and economic justice, and the thinking underlying those values, among them rationality, compassion as a moral imperative, and scientific inquiry.
He is destroying every lever of power we have to promote values of global citizenship at home and abroad. He and his regime are systematically destroying every mechanism by which the will of the American people is accurately measured and implemented. He is abusing the raw power of the American presidency to extort and coerce and to wreak havoc and exact vengeance on any person or nation he perceives as a competitor or opponent.
I suspect the whole notion of America as a beacon of hope -- a "shining city on a hill" -- turns his stomach. And the White House is a powerful symbol of that "shining city." Of course destroying it is in the mix. It is the symbol of that which he hates.
I don't know what psychology is driving this (beyond being a malignant narcissistic psychopath), but I think it has to do with the NY-DC corridor powerbrokers who never really invited him in -- with many of them ridiculing him as trashy, greedy, and uncouth. Perhaps many of those who rejected him embraced the values of global citizenship, and thus those values became the object of his hatred.
Who the fuck knows.
All I know is that destroying the physical structure of the White House seems completely consistent with all his other sabotage.
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