Trumpism
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Clint Watts on Putin’s Disinformation Objectives
As we noted two days before the presidential election in our article describing Russian influence operations, Russia certainly seeks to promote Western candidates sympathetic to their worldview and foreign-policy objectives. But winning a single election is not their end goal. Russian Active Measures hope to topple democracies through the pursuit of five complementary objectives: Undermine citizen
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The Ascendant Dark Right (Updated)
The rubes noticed that liberal Democrats, distressed by the notion that Indiana would allow bakeries to practice open discrimination against LGBTQ couples, threatened boycotts against the state, mobilizing the considerable economic power that comes with an alliance of New York and Hollywood and Silicon Valley to punish retrograde Gov. Mike Pence, but had no such
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Whither Bannonism?
The Trump budget is an even more devastating assault on Bannon-style populism. It eliminates or cuts organizations like the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative that are important to people from Tennessee and West Virginia up through Ohio and Michigan. It cuts job-training and road-building programs. It does almost nothing to help
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Who Emerges from the Chaos?
The great fear among Trump-fearers is that he will deal with this elite opposition by effectively crushing it — purging the deep state, taming the media, remaking the judiciary as his pawn, and routing or co-opting the Democrats. This is the scenario where a surging populism, its progress balked through normal channels, turns authoritarian and
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Steve Bannon Watch
Last week I wrote a piece entitled "Steve Bannon, Minister of Propaganda not Policy" in which I observed that he had been mostly invisible until Trump gave his inaugural speech, which clearly had Bannon's fingerprints all over it. But the bigger point I was trying to make was that if we take seriously the old political adage
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Believing
I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe–I believe what I believe is right.–George Bush "He believes what he believes" Sean Spicer regarding Donald Trump's demonstrably false assertion that between three and five million fraudulent votes were cast against him in the general election in November. Poor Sean
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Steve Bannon: Minister of Propaganda, not Policy (Updated)
In a post last November I wrote a piece entitled "What Kind of America Does Steve Bannon Want?" I wrote about how his view of America seems to be very much at odds with the view held by the Republican establishment, i.e., the world dominated by the Koch Brothers, American Heritage, their creatures in the
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Thoughts on Inauguration Day
So it's done. The clown prince sits in his throne and delusion now reigns supreme. But this is not an aberration; it's a dark apotheosis, the culmination of trends in America that go back to WWII and then accelerated after Nixon. It's a culmination in the sense that it brings to its absurd telos the delusional logic of the
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Trump v. Deep State
For years now I've argued here that in several important respects it doesn't matter whom we elect president. Politicians come and go and with them their appointees, but the Deep State bureaucrats remain entrenched. And while there's something scary and undemocratic about that, it's also stabilizing and perhaps a cause for optimism in destabilizing times like these. Now that Trump
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Destruction of Norms = Destruction of Normal Politics
Trump's election has confirmed my worst fears that too many Americans are either ignorant of or contemptuous of what is required for a Democracy to work in a complex, pluralistic society. But the destruction of norms in our political sphere didn't just start with Trump, and that's why he should not be looked at as an aberration. He is