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The Dictator’s Playbook
Why Trump’s next move, the elimination of independent judges, is as inevitable and therefore as predictable as everything else he’s doing
Whereas Charles Dodgson, writing under the nom de plume Lewis Carroll, created Tweedledum and Tweedledee as a comedy relief counterpoint to some of Alice’s more disturbing adventures, real life has given us their modern-day equivalent in Trump and Musk. Both are the unloved and in fact rather despised sons of wealthy men. Both owe what success they’ve had entirely to the fact they were born into wealth and the many privileges that confers. Both are emotional cripples and both have spent their lives desperately attempting to compensate for their ineradicable personal inadequacies. Both are vermin and both want others to think they’re clever because obviously they’re both stupid. In Musk’s case it’s just regular human stupidity; in Trump’s case he is literally the most mindless creature ever to have been elected to any public office at any time in recorded history.
And so they make a natural couple. The difference is that TweedleMusk is TweedleTrump’s unwitting stooge, disposable at a moment’s notice. Trump, conversely, can squat in the White House until some obesity-related disease kills him or until Vance summons up the courage to do the job more…