to the allure of authoritarianism.

It takes both of them for it to succeed.

Some incredible books have recently been written about it. One of my favorites is Anne Applebaum's Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. Also Benjamin Carter Hett's Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic in how it explains the same grievances that led people to join the Nazi Party are still responsible for provoking modern people to join anti-Democracy parties. Also Timothy Snyder's absolutely remarkable The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America.

The classic on this is still Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism.

Recent books like Sarah Posner's Unholy and Katherine Stewart's The Power Worshippers leave the reader with a foreboding sense that Christian Nationalism will be hard to overcome/defeat, and it is so gratifying to see that high on the Biden/Harris agenda is showing them who is boss, and reminding them that THEY hold the minority view on reproductive rights.

in that plaintive but serious voice, "We don't know if this man posed a threat."

coming from every state.

It makes me nervous how much they are talking about this. Is it such a good idea to send so many NG to one place, and announce it over and over again, when the militia and hate group cells are all over the country? Won't they adjust their plans?

I think they will reassess the situation, adapt to the circumstances, and then strike the lower-risk targets available to them.

brought in law professor John Yoo (author of the "Torture Memo" ) for the specific purpose of attempting to craft Executive Orders that would be much more difficult to reverse, based on Yoo's interpretation of a SCOTUS ruling on the DACA issue.

Yoo basically advertised for the job, I think on Fox news. But I don't know which EOs he is responsible for, or what makes them so difficult to reverse.

This stuff fascinates me.

A couple of months ago a DUer posted an absolutely fascinating article about Q Anon written by (I think) a game developer who broke it down. He concluded that Q Anon self-conditions followers to look for and inevitably find connections between totally unrelated things, and he wrote how at a certain point the game is self-perpetuating because human beings find pleasure (dopamine release) in locating patterns in random coincidences and finding "connections" between two things that are unrelated in any way. People who do this also feel smarter than others, who are missing what is actually going on in the world. So the game is pleasurable, addicting and self-reinforcing.

In some ways, it was a frightening article, because the reader is left to conclude that it will be very hard to stop people from tumbling into deeper and deeper layers of self-delusion. But he really explained how this is possible and why certain people are so susceptible.

I wish I had kept better track of that article. It was truly ingenious.

Exactly. Many of Trump's followers are not inherently political. They are not loyal to the Republican party. So for people like Cruz, Hawley, Rubio,Ron Johnson or anybody else to bank on their support is really a throw of the dice.

The wild card might be Don Jr. or another Trump (Ivanka, Eric?).

I'm extremely dubious that Trump loyalty will extend even to his children. It sounds crazy, but I can see it going to a media figure like Alex Jones or Mark Levin before I could imagine it going to a politician.

is the possibility that the most hardcore MAGAts could break with Trump. There were a couple of fascinating stories right after the insurrection saying that on Parler and other far-right platforms, a lot of the people who went to the Capitol were furious at Trump for leading them into this action without giving them instructions of what to do when they got to the Capitol. Many also thought he really was going with them. They were under the impression there was a plan, but nobody told them what to do.

Some of the far, far right fanatics have grown disillusioned with Trump because he started off well but lost his way in their opinions. (Racists like Richard Spencer and his group, some in the Christian Nationalist movement. Early on, Steve Bannon said similar things, but apparently has come back into the fold.).

There was a key moment during the rise of the Nazis where the SA almost broke in half because Hitler was Chancellor but they thought he wasn't doing anything, wasn't moving forward quickly enough with the agenda. The Night of the Long Knives was in part a response to that fear of a rupture within the party.

These militant types are very independent, nihilistic, cocky and self confident and they may feel they have enough power to go out on their own, coalesce around a new leader. I don't think that deep down they believe in the concept of a "leader" or the idea they need a leader. Trump just came along at the right time and lent them legitimacy.

Trump's purpose may have been served. He's spent, he's exhausted, and possibly useless.

If there are any signs of that happening, I believe Republican politicians would break from Trump in a second. They are already fretting about this recent poll showing Republican support for Trump has dropped about a third in the last few days.

this pandemic because people were isolated (in some cases lost their jobs) and cut off from their normal social circles. There are people who like the feeling of belonging to something, being accepted into a group, feeling that they have secret knowledge of how the world works that nobody else has.

Q Anon conditions people to find connections between unrelated things, and it's a game that is self-perpetuating because there's no end to how the human imagination can connect unrelated elements or coincidences. At one point Q Anon believers thought that suicide bomb in Nashville was a missile strike against Dominion voting machines!