1/ Sometimes I hear folks say optimistically that we will get through the worst of the Republican party's bigoted and anti-democratic instincts once the generation in power dies off. But I don't see that happening. Here is why, with reference to The Wire.
2/ The current Republican oligarchy is like Avon Barksdale's crew. Lawless, of course, but organized, professional, and entrenched. Modes of operating established over time.
3/ But what is coming behind it appears to be not less but more extreme- not just lawless but completely unprincipled, with an underlying belief in only raw strength and lethality. No interest in working in the system, but rather destroying it.
4/ Young people in Donald Trump's thrall must deny not just ideas they oppose but large aspects of reality itself. Persistent efforts to exert false realities on the majority of society will lead inevitably to violence when other tactics fail.
5/ Will there be fewer of them? Yes, they are demographically and intellectually defeated, and many of their ideas are totally aberrant to the majority. But Marlo had a smaller crew, too, that was more loyal and more dangerous. Avon had dark instincts; Marlo was psychotic.
Addendum: npr.org/2019/12/20/790…
