1/10. The claim that Trump won the election is a big lie.
2/10. A big lie changes reality. To believe it, people must disbelieve their senses, distrust their fellow citizens, and live in a world of faith.
3/10. A big lie demands conspiracy thinking, since all who doubt it are seen as traitors.
4/10. A big lie undoes a society, since it divides citizens into believers and unbelievers.
5/10. A big lie destroys democracy, since people who are convinced that nothing is true but the utterances of their leader ignore voting and its results.
6/10. A big lie must bring violence, as it has.
7/10. A big lie can never be told just by one person. Trump is the originator of this big lie, but it could never have flourished without his allies on Capitol Hill.
8/10. Political futures now depend on this big lie. Senators Hawley and Cruz are running for president on the basis of this big lie.
9/10. There is a cure for the big lie. Our elected representatives should tell the truth, without dissimulation, about the results of the 2020 election.
10/10. Politicians who do not tell the simple truth perpetuate the big lie, further an alternative reality, support conspiracy theories, weaken democracy, and foment violence far worse than that of January 6, 2021.
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1/7. We Americans have a hard time seeing ourselves in the world, and so even when we want to criticize our fascist oligarchs we fail to see the international networks of which they are nodes. politico.com/newsletters/po…
3/7. Trump emerged into international far right networks that backed him, funded him, ran social media campaigns for him, and supplied him with role models.
1/5. I want to try to amplify this point — Vance does not believe that morality is an autonomous sphere of life at all; only fools think that, in his world.
2/5. What he means by the word "morality" is propaganda from some religious institution that justifies the world the way it is, including his own personal power and corruption.
3/5. The whole point of Vance’s notion of God is to justify fascist oligarchy — consider his grotesque invocation of God just the other day in Budapest as a reason why Hungarians must vote for Orbán.
1/5. Orbán pioneered a model whereby oligarchs trade the fascist memes and electoral tricks they use to stay in power. He made Budapest a node between Moscow and Washington of the international far right.
2/5. He is central to Trumpism, more important than almost any American in the movement.
3/5. For Trump and Vance, Orbán must win, because there must only be one inevitable path of history, towards right-wing oligarchy and the end of democracy.
With this settlement the US is worse off in every way than it was before the war; Iran is strengthened by the huge new tolls in the Straits of Hormuz, paid by the whole world. (1/14)
I will lay out the strategic defeat but I want to make clear that it is a symptom of the basic problem of injustice and inequality. (2/14)
Consider — where are those new tolls going? To Iran’s murderous regime. Is it too much to wonder, though, whether a portion reaches the pockets of US negotiators or other Americans? (3/14)
Given Trump’s Easter threats to carry out new war crimes in Iran, we should think one or two steps ahead about a coup attempt connected to the war. And then deter it. (1/17)
Why is Trump so enthusiastic about destroying Iranian civilian infrastructure? It won’t win the war. It is likely for another reason: to provoke an Iranian response that Trump can use for his own purposes. (2/17)
Provocation is not a complex form of politics. Let’s not imagine Trump is not smart enough to have thought of this. He is. And exploiting a wartime incident to try to seize total power is normal tyrannical behavior. It’s on us not to dodge that historical fact. (3/17)