What Steve Bannon is doing, most dramatically with the ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries - is creating what is known as a shock event." Such an event is unexpected and confusing. People scramble to react to the event, usually along some fault line that those responsible for the event can widen by claiming that they alone know how to restore order. As society reels and tempers run high, those responsible for the shock event perform a sleight of hand to achieve their real goal, a goal they know to be hugely unpopular, but from which everyone has been distracted as they fight over the initial event. There is no longer concerted opposition to the real goal; opposition divides along the partisan lines established by the shock event. Donald Trump's executive order has all the hallmarks of a shock event. It was not reviewed by any governmental agencies or lawyers before it was released, and counterterrorism experts insist they did not ask for it. People charged with enforcing it got no instructions about how to do so. Courts immediately have declared parts of it unconstitutional, but border police in some airports are refusing to stop enforcing it. Unless you are the person setting it up, it is in no one's interest to play the shock event game. It is designed explicitly to divide people. But because shock events destabilize a society, they can also be used positively. We do not have to respond along old fault lines.