These numbskulls pose a threat precisely because they’re so stupid it’s hard for anyone to take them seriously — but they’re also smart enough to use that to their advantage. And those of us who thought we were smart turned out to be the stupid ones: We naïvely thought that everyone had enough brain cells to dismiss absurd conspiracies out of hand. We overestimated their intelligence. But they didn’t overestimate ours.
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Donald Trump appeared to say many of the right things in his too-little, too-late reversal after inciting his followers to storm the Capitol. But he didn’t say the only words that mattered, the only words he almost never says. … . Instead, he did what he always does: He threw his supporters under the bus.
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If you’ve ever had your home burglarized (I have), you know what that feels like. You feel vulnerable and traumatized and sick to your stomach. You feel like the one place where you’re supposed to feel safe has been compromised: your house. Now the People’s House has been compromised, has been invaded. And all our enemies — the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians — saw exactly how easy it was.
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Trump had built his name into one of the nation’s most recognizable brands, and he knew how to market the hell out of even lousy products. He’d learned a lot from televangelists and snake oil salesmen. Democrats, by contrast, don’t seem to have learned much at all. Whether they’re attempting to brand themselves or demonize their opponents, it never seems to turn out too well.
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Trump wasn’t running against Hillary Clinton this time, but against a relatively likeable, mild-mannered gentleman named Joe Biden. On top of that, the vast majority of Trump voters said they were voting for him, not against Biden. Trump got worse, and his supporters became more devoted to him. To the rest of us, this seems absurd, bordering on insane. The question is, why?
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(“The Snake”) tells the story of a woman who rescues a freezing snake and is rewarded for her trouble with a fatal, poisonous bit. Trump uses it to depict immigrants as “snakes,” but when viewed in a different light, it’s the perfect allegory for Trump himself.
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