What do the free nations of the world think of what has so quickly happened in America?

[JHB]

15. Not 2015. Stop focusing on Trump and look at his support system: it goes much farther back

This ball started rolling back in the 70s, when Conservative/RWers launched outfits like the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, when they began courting the religious right, when they started using focus groups to identify hot-button issues they could use to break up the Democrats' New Deal coalition, when they started outrage campaigns about "liberal bias" in the press.

Project 2025 is the wish list of these people. Trump didn't come up with that. Trump hasn't spent the past several decades pressuring Republican presidents to put RWer-approved judges on the federal courts. Trump didn't spend decades building a RW media bubble that addicted people to foam and bile and get them to mistrust other sources. Trump didn't spend decades calling Democrats "the enemy."

Trump took advantage of what had been built, and the builders took advantage of him as a vehicle to finally carry it out. But it took a half-century of preparing the ground for things to get to where they are now. An earthquake may seem short, but the pressure-building that makes it happen occurs over a much longer span of time.