@nprofile1q... There's a bit in Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution where he goes through Tsar Nicholas's diary entries during a critical period, to show how totally (and comically) out of touch he was.
Trotsky comments that the fact that the Russian aristocracy couldn't get rid of someone so obviously incompetent goes to show how much the aristocracy had declined.
That puzzled me, until it occurred to me how many ways aristocracies have historically dealt with monarchs -- from having some grey eminence actually run things, to removing the monarch by various means.
You can look at several "heroic" moments in US history, where politicians went far outside established norms of law and procedure, and tidied up long after the fact.
So I think what's most significant about Trump and company is that despite their incredible incompetence that's been undermining both soft and hard power of the US, they've not been removed.
Trotsky comments that the fact that the Russian aristocracy couldn't get rid of someone so obviously incompetent goes to show how much the aristocracy had declined.
That puzzled me, until it occurred to me how many ways aristocracies have historically dealt with monarchs -- from having some grey eminence actually run things, to removing the monarch by various means.
You can look at several "heroic" moments in US history, where politicians went far outside established norms of law and procedure, and tidied up long after the fact.
So I think what's most significant about Trump and company is that despite their incredible incompetence that's been undermining both soft and hard power of the US, they've not been removed.