Thread by @emeriticus

1) I agree with this one tweet in the thread 2) I don't see why it's either-or. Trump initially, and unwittingly, touched the chord of a mythmaking when he told Americans he would "Make America Great Again," rebuild America, and gut the consensus. It was powerful, successful 1/

https://twitter.com/DouthatNYT/status/1337392548059418624

Trump's failure was in his governance--which was undisciplined, inconsistent, and transactional. Whenever this got brought up, Trump supporters would point to myths to justify bad governance, i.e., "Trust the Plan" 2/

But myths alone are not sufficient. You cannot point to paltry policy accomplishments and tell people over and over the best is yet to come and they have to keep trusting the plan and if they don't they're a Democrat or a shill or worse 3/

MAGA was the myth of America First policies. When those policies did not manifest, all that was left was this distorted MAGA myth that incorporated elements of zombie conservatism (tax cuts, prison reform, etc) that seems to have alienated some WWC and moderate voters 4/

Myths and politics go together. The existence of the left and the right's utter inability to defeat their myths with "facts and logic" is testament to this. And when the left is in power, they use the state to confer power unto themselves and their constituents 5/

Successful governance is imperative--using the power of the state to give yourself power dividends by rewarding supporters, which is something to be learned from Trump's governance mistakes 6/

I wrote a little bit about the power of myths in politics recently and point people to Georges Sorel on this. But again, myths have to come with rewards for those who believe in them 7/ chroniclesmagazine.org/what-i-learned…

If you respond to this with "fake news" or some variant of that, you're proving my point about the reliance on myths and not actual policy 8/