Regarding Bessent, it's good to look at his record running his own hedge funds rather than the titans he worked for. He is a magnificent sycophant more than financier.
The apt analogy for Trump isn't Jackson, but an Oswald Cobblepot who aspires to be the Joker.
I prefer Tim Snyder's formulation: "History doesn't repeat, and it doesn't rhyme either, but it does expand your notions of the possible". To which I would add: that only holds if you don't react by saying "that could never happen here".
It didn't do any of us who saw this coming any good to have seen it coming, and it won't do us any good now to say that an exothermic reaction generally proceeds until the critical reagents are consumed. (Yes that's an analogy. Argue with it all you want, anyone who feels the need to argue with it. Analogies never sent anyone to hell—to Bedlam perhaps, but not to hell.)
50 years of increasingly unaccountable right wing oligarch big money has rotted the foundation of our republic. A slow motion counter-revolution designed to overturn the New Deal and the Great Society. See Thom Hartmann's new book. Here is the GOP long game, starting with Nixon: 1) Destroy the unions (Reagan), 2) Overturn Fairness Doctrine (Bork, Scalia), 3) Allow media ownership monopolies (Gingrich/Murdoch). Citizens United is the cherry on top. https://billmoyers.com/content/the-powell-memo-a-call-to-arms-for-corporations/
Regarding Bessent, it's good to look at his record running his own hedge funds rather than the titans he worked for. He is a magnificent sycophant more than financier.
The apt analogy for Trump isn't Jackson, but an Oswald Cobblepot who aspires to be the Joker.
I prefer Tim Snyder's formulation: "History doesn't repeat, and it doesn't rhyme either, but it does expand your notions of the possible". To which I would add: that only holds if you don't react by saying "that could never happen here".
Anyway, you might enjoy this review by Jack Dickens of Edward Shawcross's book "The People’s Emperor: The Unlikely Rise and Spectacular Fall of Napoleon III" https://engelsbergideas.com/reviews/the-unlikely-triumph-of-napoleon-iii/
It didn't do any of us who saw this coming any good to have seen it coming, and it won't do us any good now to say that an exothermic reaction generally proceeds until the critical reagents are consumed. (Yes that's an analogy. Argue with it all you want, anyone who feels the need to argue with it. Analogies never sent anyone to hell—to Bedlam perhaps, but not to hell.)
Trump still provides the cruelty to those people his supporters so crave. They will follow him over a cliff or to the poison Koolaid.
But the media, normalizing all the corruption, grandstanding, stupidity, racism, and belligerent theocracy of this group of fascists is appalling.
50 years of increasingly unaccountable right wing oligarch big money has rotted the foundation of our republic. A slow motion counter-revolution designed to overturn the New Deal and the Great Society. See Thom Hartmann's new book. Here is the GOP long game, starting with Nixon: 1) Destroy the unions (Reagan), 2) Overturn Fairness Doctrine (Bork, Scalia), 3) Allow media ownership monopolies (Gingrich/Murdoch). Citizens United is the cherry on top. https://billmoyers.com/content/the-powell-memo-a-call-to-arms-for-corporations/