Trump was a very specific kind of disaster: a chaos agent, who lacked the wit, patience and executive function to recruit the powerful institutions of the US military-industrial complex to fight his corner.

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As the Qanon prophecies fail and the cult-members struggle to resolve their cognitive dissonance, it's a good time to revisit the history of paranoid, conspiratorial political movements in American history - the "paranoid style" that has dominated since the Revolution.

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After all, the very first skirmishes of the US war of independence were based on a conspiracy theory: that the levy on tea was a prelude to a sellout of the colonists to transnational mercantalist interests. US politics have always been conspiratorial.

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I found @zacharykarabell's @politico history of the Know Nothing party especially useful, as it tells the story of what happens when surging, paranoid, fractious political movements

The American Party was a secret 19th century organization founded on a conspiracy theory: that Irish immigrants were secretly planning a takeover of the US on behalf of the Pope.

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Inequality requires narrative stabilizers. When you have too little and someone else has more than they can possibly use, simple logic dictates that you should take what they have.

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The forbearance exercised by the many when it comes to the wealth of the few isn't down to guards or laws - rather, the laws and the guards are effective because of the STORY, the story of why this is fair, even inevitable.

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Think of the story of monarchy and its relationship to the Church: the Church affirms that the monarch (and the aristocracy) was chosen by God ("dieu et mon droit") and the monarchy reciprocates by giving the Church moral and economic power within the kingdom.

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Capitalism replaced the story of divine will with a story of a self-correcting complex system: humans are born and raised with a variety of aptitudes and tastes, and at any moment, historical exigencies dictate that some individuals are better suited than others to do well.

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When it's railroad time, there are people who were born to oversee the laying of track and the coordination of rail networks: markets find those people, allocate capital to them, and allow them to mobilize that capital to produce shared prosperity for all of us.

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Accountancy is more likely to be mocked than celebrated (or condemned), but accountants, far more than poets, are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

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Though "bean counters" are employed by firms, they are notionally bound by a professional code of ethics every bit as serious as the Hippocratic Oath: "count things honestly." Without an accurate accounting of quantities, you can't make good decisions on quality.

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Though accountancy concerns itself with counting things, it is inextricably bound up with the realm of ideas, and accounting conventions (how you account for things) are philosophical matters, not empirical ones.

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It's no coincidence that #ModernMonetaryTheory owes more to accountancy than it does to economics. Economic accounts of the economy have an unfortunate tendency to proceed from first principles, creating models based on pure reason, without checking in on the actual world.

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For example, neoclassical econ's "homo economicus," the rational value-maximizing actor who populated so many models; or economists' insistence on targeting inflation with interest rates; or treating national "debts" like they were household debts.

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(THREAD) Media has yet to do a deep dive on precisely what Trump *said* in his January 6 speech in DC—a speech now called an "incitement to insurrection," and the basis for an article of impeachment coming Monday. This thread unpacks the speech. I hope you'll read on and RETWEET.

1/ First, many don't realize that while the name of the *rally* was "Stop the Steal," Trump spoke flanked by banners that read "Save America March"—Save America being the PAC Trump has used since the election to scam voters out of more than $300 million for "election defense."

2/ It appears, therefore, that the link between Trump, his opposition to Biden's January 6 certification in Congress, and the insurrectionist march on the Capitol is one that comes, incredibly, with a paper trail—as it appears Trump *paid for* the seditious "Save America March."

3/ Seconds into his speech, Trump says, "These people are not going to take it any longer. They're not going to take it any longer...They came from all over our country. I just really want to see what they do." It's an astonishing admission he thinks something is going to happen.

4/ Trump then seems to catch himself, repeating the phrase "I just really want to see" but now adding "how they [media] cover it [the Save America March]." It's hard to know, therefore—perhaps deliberately—whether "what they do" means "what media does" or "what the marchers do."

Situation Update, Jan 2nd – The Big Reveal … How Trump will change history on January 6th

Today’s Situation Update for January 2nd covers the “big reveal” that President Trump has announced for January 6th. On this day, Trump’s team will present information to Congress before

1.they vote on the contested slates of electors from the swing states where massive election fraud occurred.
What will this “big reveal” consist of? We know it’s something that has never been presented previously in a court case, nor to the public. The possibilities are endless:

2. Jeffrey Epstein bombshells? Declassified intelligence on China’s financial payments to the Biden crime family? Smoking gun proof that Dominion machines rigged the election? There are even rumors that two intelligence agencies for other nations have proof of election fraud and

3.are handing it over to Trump. Whatever gets presented, Trump believes it will change the outcome of the vote on Jan 6th. That means it would have to be truly historic, because Democrats aren’t going to vote for Trump in a contested election unless they are absolutely forced to.

4.We’ve even speculated that some members of Congress might resign on the spot after seeing this evidence. Others might face arrest for their complicity in the crimes that have been committed against America.

🇺🇸 Here’s what’s covered in today’s Situation Update highlights:

FIFTEEEN DAYS

You & I would've been arrested 15 days ago if we did what Trump did;

— incited a riot that escalated into a lethal terrorist attack on our nation's Capitol

You & I would have been arrested 15 days ago.

Denial of reality is unacceptable. T is a terrorist threat.

here’s a screenshot of what the @gop deleted and hopes you’ll forget (via https://t.co/qH1DxrwRk8)