At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
--Abraham Lincoln
Ne timeas populares auditum; timent rugitum!
--Fear not the demagogue; fear his roaring crowd
Trump is a distinctively vile human being and a spectacularly malignant political actor...[He] nonetheless [has] considerable charm and the ability to attract a cult following...To grasp his charisma, historicize his ascent, sympathize with his admirers--the sinister truth asserts itself...One outrage succeeds another until we become exhausted and have to work hard to even remember the outrages of a few weeks past...No matter how deranged his behavior is, though, it does not seem to alter his good fortune...Our self-soothing habit of imagining that what has not yet happened cannot happen is the space in which Trump lives."
--Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker Oct. 21,2024
We are slouching toward Bethlehem now, the election just a few weeks away. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, as William Butler Yeats observed.
We will find out if there are more of them or more of us.
They, of course, do not care about that question; they are determined to prevail whether they are the majority or not because, as Mr. Trump has asserted, in his world losing the election is simply not possible, no matter how the votes are counted. He has already declared himself the winner no matter what anyone or what millions may say. He cannot possibly lose because he writes his own reality and his masses have drunk that Kool Aide.
In my office, day after day, I daily interview the vampires, the body/mind snatched, who are indistinguishable from normal, ordinary citizens. It's not the MAGA hatted man who chills your soul; it's the guy who looks normal, until he opens his mouth and answers your question about the most important issue to him with, "Oh, the border."
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| Stockholm Syndrome |
And this guy lives in New Hampshire! So what border is he worried about? There's the border to the north, only about 3 hours drive, and then there's that border down in Texas, 2400 miles and 36 hours drive away.
There's the woman who may laugh about Haitians eating cats in Ohio--but that was just a joke. We take him seriously, not literally.
As the bard has noted, the executioner's face is always well hidden.
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