You can just take this all the way and thank the innovators and creators of the institution of slavery for doing the most possible to end slavery because they invented the thing that's needed to have something to end.

The last month or so of the 24 election felt like that.

This Nick Bilton to Scott Pelley termination letter is a great artifact for anyone who suffers from imposter syndrome to read.

That dude was 26? And his name was McSwiggin?

There's a carelessness and consequence-free presupposition to how we treat Trump's actions and what we let him get away with. Many people comfortable wishing doom and misery on the people of an Israel or Iran because of their country's actions without grappling with where our actions should lead us.

To give up on this to to fully become the Joker but at the same time, we've had ten years of I'd like to see ol' Donny wriggle out of this one. It's hard to believe in the snap back anymore.

Say what you will about the decadence and irresponsibility of Rome's elites in the late republic, they didn't continue partying on and pretending like nothing was happening after Caesar crossed the Rubicon.

It's like when Emperor Nero entered the Olympics and somehow managed to win every contest he participated in, including the chariot race he didn't even finish! Those awards were posthumously stripped from him. So it must be with every Trump award and everything on earth which carries the name Trump.

The answer is that America now resembles Turkey or Hungary much more closely than it does 2014 America.

Caesar was supposed to have said that the Roman Republic was formless, nothing but a shadow. Yeltsin said of Russia's developing institutions in the 90s that they were titles and offices without substance. Institutions that are either too old or too young seem very brittle. Democracy is fragile.

The family held a vote on whether to allow the abusive father back into the household. Both sons voted yes after being convinced by texts from him which said "maybe mom deserved it." One of the daughters missed the vote but rumor is she was in her room scrolling TikTok. Popular vote dad's back.

You would think that what happened to the "after him, us" people would be counsel for all those consciously or subconsciously repeating the strategy and yet history is so sticky it always needs repeating.

Trump threatening Zuckerberg with prison for life unless he behaved then shipping Andry Romero off to be raped in a Salvadoran gulag played an underrated part in this institutional collapse. Doesn't matter what independent powers you've got if the big guy can disappear you and get away with it.

Kind of a problem when 99.5% of the folks in Washington are empty suits and skirts. Morally empty. Also "The People" don't give a shit either. Not a good combination.

Yes and no. Mostly no. Trump's also broken many laws in secret only to be discovered later and got away with those, too. It reminds me of the argument that it turns out we just need to turn all the old norms into laws to fix this. But now he breaks all the laws too and there's still no consequence.

We have so many institutions and people capitulate who don't technically have to but do anyways. Reasons include that a leader who can ruin your life or disappear you without consequence makes your genuine power to resist still perilous, also most people seemingly just don't want the smoke.

How the democrats agreed to coalesce around calling LITERALLY EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS a diversion is so strange.

Not sure why when Caesar won so many senators over to his cause just by personal obligation, winning a lot, cutting deals with them, or looking like the better bet to ensure their safety after the war. Not hard to foresee enough defectors from a democratic body to make that body unable to function.

One reason why it's too easy to make out antidemocratic actors using democratic systems to destroy them as an inherent flaw. Voters and leaders have choices. Biden, Garland, Schumer, Jeffries make awful decisions. We've had plenty of democratic leaders in history who would have chosen differently.