Yet if states were destroyed, local institutions corrupted, and economic incentives directed towards murder, few of us would behave well. - Timothy Snyder

The politics of inevitability is a self-induced intellectual coma.

Our second basic founding document, the Constitution, is basically a design how to prevent someone becoming a tyrant. It assumes that if we have three parts of the government they will balance each other, but what we saw unfold in the impeachment trial was the opposite. The Congress gave way, and then Justice Roberts also gave way. So that at the end... we have a much, much stronger executive claiming nearly absolute power, which is something that the Founders were precisely trying to prevent.

Fascists rejected reason in the name of will, denying objective truth in favor of a glorious myth articulated by leaders who claimed to give voice to the people.