Read on Twitter
Giant sub-tweet here, but: The self-reflection triggered by considering how you’ll be viewed in history books only manifests if you actually read the earlier history books.
Outsider candidates have nothing invested in the system or society that delivered them power, and there’s no custodianship that dissuades them from burning it all down.
Professional politicians are infuriating and necessarily compromised, but at least they all jointly believe in something. We’re watching a nihilist in a death-throes tanty and it clearly can’t end well.
Forgive me Twitter: I don't have a column and so a couple of decades of repressed study of public policy and investigations into misused political and corporate power is all bubbling out here.
Why Trump supporters are so invested in him, I do not know. He didn't give a fuck about them prior to 2015, and he likely won't even be able to make them out individually from the windows of his Trump Tower penthouse in NYC from 2021 either.
In politics the worst are those who lack all conviction. Especially if they weaponise passionate intensity.
Trump has shown the guard-rails of convention and common norms don't matter if participants don't comprehend them. It may exciting to see business as usual upended, but you should be horrified at the prospect of it being bankrupted.
Institutions only matter if people believe in them. If they're broken they must be remade to work better, because inviting earth-salters into the tent is civic suicide.
Thus ends the sermon for today.
