Thread by @LarryGlickman

This is an original and powerful interpretation of some recent trends, but I find Douthat's political analysis here to be tendentious and misleading. 1/
nyti.ms/2UDjIWu

The "both sides" analysis here is, as opposed to the rest of the piece, thoroughly conventional and flattens huge political differences that matter. /2

As an aside, I would also note that to speak of "the technocratic management of stagnation that defined the Obama era," is to deny that in 2008 the Bush economy lost 296K jobs and in 2009 hemorrhaged another 421K. /3

Obama's stimulus plan, which helped rescue the economy (and which was not nearly as big as it should have been), did not receive a single GOP vote in the House./4
nytimes.com/2009/01/29/us/…

Like a lot of commentators, Douthat calls Trump a "populist" and the leader of "anti-establishment" forces, without defining what these mean. /5

Yet Trump's economic policies--huge tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, global warming denial, trying to take away health care and food stamps from the poor--are pretty much GOP "elite" orthodoxy. /6

The following statement may be narrowly true about process, but ignores some major differences: "Trump’s first term has actually been much like Obama’s second, with failed legislation and contested executive orders..." /7

Douthat's statement that "There is a virtual Trump presidency whose depredations terrify liberals," suggests that that Trump's authoritarian tendencies have been theatrical rather than real. But there is much evidence to the contrary, starting with the Muslim ban. /8

And Douthat's poopooing of domestic terrorism, which has been almost exclusively of the white nationalist variety, is not convincing (at least to me). Charlottesville and the recent march of Neo-Nazis in DC (who had a police escort) suggests something more worrying. /9

For a political columnist, Douthat is strangely uninterested in the tangible impact of policy (which is hardly mentioned). It is only by ignoring this that he can call Trump a "populist," since Trump's actions have generally aided the rich and harmed the poor. /10

For poor & vulnerable people, the Trump era has not been a time of "virtual" politics or "reality TV." His presidency is tangibly trying to gut the ACA, cut Medicaid, fight unionization & minimum wage increases, give corporations carte blanche to pollute, & put kids in cages./11

"Close Twitter, log off Facebook, turn off cable television, and what do you see in the Trump-era United States?" I see a president with authoritarian tendencies, nearly unanimously enabled by his party, who is carrying out class warfare, while personally enriching himself. /12

It is telling that in an essay on decadence, Douthat doesn't refer to "corruption" a single time. Yet the Trump administration's multidimensional corruption might be the defining and most worrisome quality of his presidency. /13

Finally, it's strange, albeit common, to call Trump an "anti-establishment" president not only because he has given financial and corporate elites exactly what they want in terms of tax cuts, deregulation and much else besides but also because the GOP backs him nearly 100%. /14