Extraordinary essay by Tom Engelhardt, arguing against the comforting notion that the current madness in the US is just a passing phase and eventually sanity will return. Sample:

In these first years of the 21st century, we may be witnessing a new world being born inside the hollowed-out shell of the American system. As yet, though we live with this reality every day, we evidently just can’t bear to recognize it for what it might be. When we survey the landscape, what we tend to focus on is that shell — the usual elections (in somewhat heightened form), the usual governmental bodies (a little tarnished) with the usual governmental powers (a little diminished or redistributed), including the usual checks and balances (a little out of whack) and the same old Constitution (much praised in its absence), and yes, we know that none of this is working particularly well, or sometimes at all, but it still feels comfortable to view what we have as a reduced, shabbier and more dysfunctional version of the known.

Perhaps, however, it’s increasingly a version of the unknown. We say, for instance, that Congress is “paralyzed,” and that little can be done in a country where politics has become so “polarized,” and we wait for something to shake us loose from that “paralysis,” to return us to a Washington closer to what we remember and recognize. But maybe this is it. Maybe even if the Republicans somehow lost control of the House of Representatives and the Senate, we would still be in a situation something like what we’re now labeling paralysis. Maybe in our new American reality, Congress is actually some kind of glorified, well-lobbied and well-financed version of a peanut gallery.

At one point, he notes that the US had recently launched lethal drone and manned bomber attacks on

what the Pentagon claimed was a graduation ceremony for “low-level” foot soldiers in the Somali terror group al-Shabab. It was proudly announced that more than 150 Somalis had died in this attack. In a country where, in recent years, US drones and special ops forces had carried out a modest number of strikes against individual al-Shabab leaders, this might be thought of as a distinct escalation of Washington’s endless low-level conflict there (with a raid involving US special ops forces following soon after).

He then realises that he has difficulty locating Somalia on a map, which makes him a typical US citizen. “Remind me”, he writes,

Remind me: On just what basis was this modest massacre carried out? After all, the US isn’t at war with Somalia or with al-Shabab. Of course, Congress no longer plays any real role in decisions about American war making. It no longer declares war on any group or country we fight. (Paralysis!) War is now purely a matter of executive power or, in reality, the collective power of the national security state and the White House. The essential explanation offered for the Somali strike, for instance, is that the US had a small set of advisers stationed with African Union forces in that country and it was just faintly possible that those guerrilla graduates might soon prepare to attack some of those forces (and hence US military personnel). It seems that if the US puts advisers in place anywhere on the planet — and any day of any year they are now in scores of countries — that’s excuse enough to validate acts of war based on the “imminent” threat of their attack.

His general point is that the US seems to have morphed into two countries. One — the one we know all about — is a society riven by racism, inequality, legislative paralysis and government by billionaires for billionaires; a state unable to fix its own crippling problems, never mind those of the world.

The other US, however, suffers from none of these deficiencies.

These days, our government (the unparalyzed one) acts regularly on the basis of that informal constitution-in-the-making, committing Somalia-like acts across significant swathes of the planet. In these years, we’ve been marrying the latest in wonder technology, our Hellfire-missile-armed drones, to executive power and slaughtering people we don’t much like in majority Muslim countries with a certain alacrity. By now, it’s simply accepted that any commander-in-chief is also our assassin-in-chief, and that all of this is part of a wartime-that-isn’t-wartime system, spreading the principle of chaos and dissolution to whole areas of the planet, leaving failed states and terror movements in its wake.

Extraordinary, hour-long conversation between him and the Washpo’s Editorial Board. Plausible bedside manner in conversation, but no sign of a deep understanding of anything he might be called upon to address. Speaks in sound-bite, ‘common sense’ generalisations. He’d fix stuff, do deals, get a fairer whack for the good ol’ USA. A bit like George W. Bush, in an odd way — in that he passes the folksy test of a guy the average voter might like to have a beer with. Still a climate-change denier, but clothing that view in a relativist narrative about nuclear weapons posing a bigger threat. Scary and fascinating at the same time.

Nice piece by Bill Emmott who — as a former Editor of the Economist — was twice sued for libel by Berlusconi. Sample:

The reality is that, while Berlusconi certainly has his charm, Trump’s swelling base of support seems to see a certain charm in him, too, even if it is a less seductive version. Moreover, while Berlusconi undoubtedly possesses business acumen, he has, like Trump, cut plenty of corners along the way. The ties of Berlusconi’s close aides and friends to Italy’s various Mafia clans are well documented.

But none of this is particularly important, in terms of its implications for the United States today. What is important is that both Trump and Berlusconi are ruthless and willing to resort to any means to achieve their (self-serving) ends.

Given this, underestimating Trump would be a huge mistake; he will always prove stronger, more slippery, and more enduring than expected. The only way to avoid Berlusconi-level disaster – or worse – is to continue criticizing him, exposing his lies, and holding him to account for his words and actions, regardless of the insults or threats he throws at those who do.

Too many Italians shrugged their shoulders at Berlusconi’s lies and failings, figuring that he would soon go away, having done little harm. But he did not go away, and he did plenty of harm. The US cannot afford to make the same mistake. The price of liberty, Americans are fond of saying, is eternal vigilance. In confronting Trump, there can be no discount.

Yep.

Here’s the answer, from a fascinating interview with Dr. Robert Jones, the CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, who has done a lot of detailed, fine-grained polling:

In a nutshell, I think these voters are best understood not as values voters, not even as Tea Party voters, but as nostalgia voters, these voters that are looking back to — they’re culturally and economically disaffected voters that are anxious to hold on to a white conservative Christian culture that’s passing from the scene. I think that’s the core of who his supporters are. I think it’s highly doubtful that there are enough of those voters out there to get him across the finish line no matter who the Democratic nominee is in the general election. But there may be enough of them, and it looks like there are, to get him across the finish line to be the Republican nominee.

Lots of detail in the interview. Worth reading in full.

An alternative view is that they are people who are in revolt against the ‘Establishment’. But what is that, exactly? Here’s Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s take on it:

David Remnick, writing in the New Yorker:

Trump is no longer hustling golf courses, fake “universities,” or reality TV. He means to command the United States armed forces and control its nuclear codes. He intends to propose legislation, conduct America’s global affairs, preside over its national-intelligence apparatus, and make the innumerable moral and political decisions required of a President. This is not a Seth Rogen movie; this is as real as mud. Having all but swept the early Republican primaries and caucuses, Trump—who re-tweets conspiracy theories and invites the affections of white-supremacist groups, and has established himself as the adept inheritor of a long tradition of nativism, discrimination, and authoritarianism—is getting ever closer to becoming the nominee of what Republicans like to call “the party of Abraham Lincoln.” No American demagogue––not Huey Long, not Joseph McCarthy, not George Wallace––has ever achieved such proximity to national power.

Yep. Trump is all of a piece with the wave of authoritarians and xenophobes who have swept to power in Russia, Poland and Hungary and who loiter at the gates of power in France.

It may be that Trump would lose when the process moves beyond the primaries and the nomination and on to the general election. But it suddenly begins to look a lot scarier. As Tom Friedman observed the other day, a fraudulent “move to the centre” is not beyond Trump’s ingenious, manipulative mind.

It’s easy to ‘explain’ Trump’s ascendancy in terms of the politics of outrage — the rage of people who have been screwed by globalisation and blame the deterioration in their lives on that and on immigration. But, Remnick argues, the story goes back further than that. “The G.O.P. establishment may be in a state of meltdown”, he writes,

but this process of exploiting the darkest American undercurrents began with Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy and, more lately, has included the birther movement and the Obama Derangement Syndrome. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who compete hard for the most extreme positions in conservatism, decry the viciousness and the vacuousness of Trump, but they started out by deferring to him––and now they ape his vulgarity in a last-ditch effort to keep pace. Insults. Bigotry. Nationally televised assurances of adequate genital dimensions. This is the political moment in which we live. The Republican Party, having spent years courting the basest impulses in American political culture, now sees the writing on the wall. It reads “Donald Trump,” in very big letters.

If this farce pans out as I fear, then the US (and, by implication, the rest of us) could find ourselves in a very strange place. It’s still possible, for example, that Hillary Clinton could be indicted for her amazingly reckless use of a private email server. In which case, what happens? My guess that it might eventually come down to a last minute run by Michael Bloomberg as an independent. I hold no candle for him, but he has held serious public office. And he’s not crazy.

Says it all, really.