If We Say Something Often Enough, We

Democracy Takes Work. That's The Thing We're Really Finding Out, That, You Know, In Many Ways, You Know, The Past Two Decades We've Taken For Granted All Of The Extraordinary Achievements Of The Post-war Generation. You Know, Building This Global Alliance Structure That Has Kept The Peace Across The North Atlantic Since World War Ii. Building All Of These Institutions, Building All This Remarkable Technology. And People Have Privatized. You Know, You Can Now, You Don't Have To Go Outdoors Much, The Whole World Comes To You.

I Keep Telling My American Friends, "if You Think Of Donald Trump As Only Something That Is Happening Inside The United States, You're Missing It." Because There Are Trump-like Events Happening Across The Western World, In Warsaw Pact Countries, In France, Germany, Austria, The Netherlands. As We Speak, The Second-largest Party In The Dutch Legislature - Who's More Level-headed Than The Dutch? - Is Geert Wilders's Party, Which Is A Very Trump-like Party, And They've Got 33 Out Of 150 Seats.

Normally What Happens In A New Presidency Is The President Has A Big Agenda, And Congress Is Full Of People With Human Weaknesses. And So The President Indulges The Human Weaknesses Of Members Of Congress In Order To Pass His Agenda. This Time It's The Other Way Around. Donald Trump Does Not Have Much Of An Agenda. Congress Burns With This Intense Republican Agenda And So Does Congress That Has To Put Up With The Human Weaknesses Of The President In Order To Get A Signature On The Things It Desperately Wants To Pass.

Nobody Ever Won An Election By Spitting At His Political Opponents.

When We Talk About Authoritarianism, We Conjure Up Out-of-date Visions From The 1930s. But We Are No More Likely To Do Authoritarian Government The Way They Did In The 1930s Then We're Likely To Address Or Talk Or Do Any Of Our Other Business In The Way They Did It In The 1930s.