Tim Snyder is significantly more frightened of Donald Trump & JD Vance than I am. He sees him and his movement as a potential ethno-totarlitarianism on the rise. I see it as a very cheap grift of the deplorably gullible and frightened—with Trump as a cut-rate reality-TV demented semi-clone of Andrew Jackson, interested in the performative image of cruelty for cruelty's sake rather than actually wreaking cruelty at scale. Not that he couldn't trash the country. But there is, I think, more _ruin_ in our nation, at least, than Snyder recognizes. But maybe I am Pollyanna here. Cassandras are useful, even when wrong _ex post_: -
A lady in Springfield, Ohio lost her cat and found it, and Trump and Vance have made this the centerpiece of their campaign. This might seem mysterious or just stupid. But Trump and Vance are intelligent and talented politicians, and their actions make sense within their political theory.
Though alien to most Americans, the worldview is important to und…
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