Share this page!

Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
Twitter logo
9 Oct, 13 tweets, 8 min read
More from the indictment, which is horrifying. They came to the attention of the Feds because one of them became uneasy about the plan to kill cops.
They met at a "Second Amendment rally." They planned to "storm the Capitol building" and take hostages.
June 25: They call Whitmer a "this tyrant bitch" because gyms are closed. Recall Trump's Tweets:

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Claire Berlinski.

Claire Berlinski. Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @ClaireBerlinski

Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
10 Oct
Here are some questions I have about a post-Trump world.
1. I would describe the Trump presidency as a national trauma. The trauma has involved *humiliating loss,* one of the most potent and destructive of human emotions--
--and an emotion, many have observed, that often gives rise to deep clinical depression.

Among those who didn't support him, Trump has attacked our narcissistic pride. Our pride in being Americans; in believing Americans were immune to low-rent, third-world demagoguery;
our pride in believing ourselves, deep down, to be *serious* and *responsible* people; our pride in our system of governance--which wasn't supposed to create results like a Trump Presidency.
Read 11 tweets
Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
9 Oct
Trump has always sounded like this. Remember the crazy conspiracy theories about Obama and calling Hillary "the Devil?" Those weren't signs of desperation, that's his personality. (That's why it's called a personality disorder.)
Yes, it's getting worse--but that's age and stress, and possibly illness. It's not some kind of marked change, not at all. If this didn't bother voters last time around, it probably won't bother them this time around.
What *will* bother them, though, is having lived through four years of a personality-disordered president--and seeing for themselves that this hasn't in the least made America great again--but rather diseased, poor, chaotic, and nearly as nuts as he is.
Read 5 tweets
Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
8 Oct
foreignaffairs.com/articles/unite…

This is critical. I was once a skeptic about the value of soft power, but I am a skeptic no more. Only if we get our own house in order will we prevail.
Our current inability to govern ourselves, our violence, inability to control disease--Covid19, but also all manner of epidemic disease from addiction to suicide to obesity--and our inability to cooperate to achieve great, or even reasonably good things,
has darkened the prestige of our political model, internationally. If our system fails, visibly, to promote human well-being and flourishing, Socialism with Chinese Characteristics will sound better and better--and not just in China. It is a true contest of ideas.
Read 4 tweets
Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
7 Oct
So this is where, @TommyAmenta, I see support for my hypothesis that this isn't political anymore; it's not precisely a religion, but it has more in common with a religion than a political movement as we usually conceive of it. The fundamental thesis of the Trump Presidency--
"I will keep you safe from bad, dangerous, impure foreign things"--has been about as comprehensively repudiated as it could be. Yet it doesn't matter. That "support for the President" number stays stable--42 percent--no matter what happens, no matter what's revealed,
no matter how much personal suffering people are experiencing because the President is bad at his job, no matter how clear it is that nothing he says is true and nothing he does has made America better in any way.
Read 9 tweets
Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
5 Oct
This and something else: Does anyone have friends or family who basically want Trump to be the great president they hoped he would be and have therefore decided never to read the news? Do you hear phrases like, "For my mental health, I just can't watch it anymore?"
Or, "Who can even figure out what's true anymore?"

@peterpomeranzev has written so well about this--the way autocratic demagogues like Trump ensure the zone is flooded with so much crap that ordinary people give up, cynical, and decide, "To hell with politics,"
or, "They're all just as bad as the others,"
or, "Why bother voting, it's obviously all hopelessly corrupt."

I see the effect it's having on people to whom I'm close, and I have no idea how to counter this effect without pushing them in a way that just gets their dander up.
Read 14 tweets
Claire Berlinski. Profile picture
5 Oct
The Global Peace Index is an effort to define and measure peace around the world according to these specific indicators. This is not necessarily the only way to measure "peace," but this report one of the more respected, and for good reason.
Has Trump brought peace to the world? It's a question we can answer, empirically. If he had, we would expect to see an improvement in those indicators. But we don't. You're certainly right to say that peace--according to these indicators--did not increase under Obama.
"Global peacefulness has deteriorated over the past year. This is the fourth time in the last five years that the world has seen a fall in peacefulness," they report. "The world is now considerably less peaceful than it was [in 2006.] nd
the US.
Read 8 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get email notifications when new thread is out from this Author!

Check out other threads from this Author!

Read all threads by @ClaireBerlinski