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Fractals are supposed to be interesting. But they're also repetitive, and the Trump presidency fractal is boring. Every new episode encompassed all the terrible features of the whole presidency, reproduced in smaller form, which then encompass the same. 1/
For example, Four Seasons Total Landscaping is the nano version of the whole election theft clown show which is the micro version of Giuliani's inept corruption which is the mezzo version of the whole administration's inept corruption. 2/
To wit:
The last month has centered on Trump telling outrageous lies day after day, attacking Republicans who won't repeat them and thereby compromise themselves and become dependent parts of his organization unable to stand up to him later. 3/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/authoritarianism-post-truth-politics/
The last month has centered on Trump telling outrageous lies day after day, attacking Republicans who won't repeat them and thereby compromise themselves and become dependent parts of his organization unable to stand up to him later. 3/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/authoritarianism-post-truth-politics/
While his lies are not actually going to change the election outcome and therefore some on the right affect the belief that they're a passing distraction, they're changing beliefs, delegitimizing elections, and worsening the country. 4/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-weight-of-the-words/
These lies have been in the service of subverting an election, and have exposed just how few Republicans are really committed to the institution of electoral democracy. 5/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/democracy-for-republicans/
And in particular how many Republicans are basically comfortable ignoring votes cast by Black people and are willing to disenfranchise plurality- or majority-Black cities rather than see their votes get counted equally. 6/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/black-liberty-matters/
The election theft has run into resistance Trump apparently didn't expect because state-level GOP pols aren't as thoroughly compromised by him as federal-level GOP pols are, and the states remain important political actors in federal elections. 7/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/federalism-jurisdiction-resistance/
But the institutional Republican Party as such has been too hollowed out to be able to assert its own institutional interest as separate from Trump's, even when his flunkies stir up a GA boycott that could cost the party the Senate majority. 8/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-party-declines/
The disdain for both the party as an institution and for impartial electoral rules fit with the habits shaped by a lifetime in a privately-held family business that was basically in the business of marketing the family name. So does the ineptitude.
9/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/government-laws-not-son-laws/
9/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/government-laws-not-son-laws/
This attempt to rewrite election rules after the fact so that the rule of law does not constrain Trump and he is unremovable from office...
10/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-metastasizing-crisis-executive-authority-and-the-crumbling-of-the-separation-of-powers/
10/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-metastasizing-crisis-executive-authority-and-the-crumbling-of-the-separation-of-powers/
is casually ignored by all too many Republicans and conservatives who think that any advances for the economic center-left are socialism and, just as such, pose such a danger of tyranny that nothing that stands in their way can possibly be wrong.
11/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-shortcut-to-serfdom/
11/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-shortcut-to-serfdom/
Those engaged in this shameful exercise should, but won't, but should, bear the reputational consequences of it for decades to come. 12/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/honoring-the-dishonorable-part-2-the-dishonorable-living/
(And, in the meantime on the other side of the aisle, the Democratic Party that actually won more votes is internally divided about whether Black Lives Matter protests and too much wokism are costing them support.)
13/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/defense-liberty-cant-without-identity-politics/
13/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/defense-liberty-cant-without-identity-politics/
There's a depressing sameness to it all. What we joke about as "the writers getting lazy" is partly this: over and over, the new instances of each awful part of this presidency recreates in detail each of the things that have been awful about it overall.
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