"... When I look at Donald Trump as a person, I see a failed real estate guy from Queens with a lot of natural showman talent, whose obviously poor physical condition is covered by terrible, ill-fitting suits and a lot of makeup. When I listen to him I hear incoherent bluster and self-absorbed whining. None of this makes me experience him as strong. [snip]
"We are at war now, a war that is transparently one of a series of masculinity contests. Our American strongman is strong because he is stronger than the other strongmen. He can abduct Maduro. He can assassinate Khamenei. He is performing relative strength, at huge cost to others.
"It’s another question, of course, as to whether any of this makes the United States stronger. The use of force in this way is obviously illegal in terms of both international and domestic law. Breaking international and domestic institutions will tend to make the United States as a country weaker rather than stronger.
"But the people who support the war in Iran seem to be those who already believed that the president is strong. They accept the performance of strength, even as it is humiliating to them, because it goes against what the president himself had promised them -- no more wars, nor more wars in the Middle East, no more forever wars..." -- Timothy Snyder, in his "Thinking About..." Substack, before discussing the reasons for his followers' belief that the Malignant Fascist is a strongman and why it's based in "the law of transitivity." There's a hockey analogy involved in Snyder's thesis, but we won't spoil it for you -- please read the entire post.
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