Thread:
Today I finished reading the excellent and also challenging / thought provoking / disturbing book “Hiding in plain sight” by @Sarahkendzior 1/n

Anyone who has the slightest interest in understanding what has happened with USA under the Trump regime should, no must! read this book 2/n

How could Trump and his acolytes take such a grip over US politics and government? Why was there no one who could rein him in and how did the pundits get it all so wrong? 3/n

What @sarahkendzior does in her book (and in her podcast @gaslitnation that she co-produces with @AndreaChalupa ) is to chronicle Trump's history and how it leads up to the “win” in the 2016 election 4/n

It’s clear that for anyone that wanted to see, the warning signs were all there long before the election: Trumps work with and dependance on Russia, his links to organised crime and his authoritarian, misogynistic and racist ideas 5/n

But media and others failed to understand how Trump (who is inspired by “strong men” from Hitler to Putin) played them by telling lies so big that they seemed plausible 6/n

From her St Louis viewpoint @sarahkendzior also makes this a very personal story about the changes in US society that allowed Trump to seize power has affected herself and her generation 7/n

The hurt she lives with and also the experience of being somewhat of a modern day Cassandra when she tried to warn about Trump before the 2016 election is palpable 8/n

But that does not in any way mean that @sarahkendzior has given up or resigned. She writes “If we survive the current era, it will not be due to a savoir from above, but to the refusal of ordinary people to accept elite criminal behaviour as normal” 9/n

And it about the kids, since “Children force you to envision the future, and doing that today is an act of mental violence. But children also force you to fight for the future - to insist that there will be one” 10/n

This is also the same situation we are in regarding #climatechange, we have to fight for a liveable future. So we need to muster our courage and resist autocrats who are also often the same people that are willing to trash the #climate for their personal profit 11/n

It will be a hard struggle for both #democracy and #climate but giving up is not an option. To conclude with a citation from the last paragraph of @sarahkendzior’s book: “Every loss we endure is a reminder of the gifts we still hold” 12/end

PS
The book by Mary Trump is a nice sequel and it also shows the importance of reading, literature and fantasy to resist autocrats
https://www.ft.com/content/4861bcdd-4381-434e-b316-b77e9a71314d