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It's Very Important To Understand That 21st Century Authoritarian Rule Does Not Look Like 20th Century Authoritarian Rule. You're Not Going To Have People In Parade Ground Formations. You're Not Going To Have A Police State. You're Not Going To People With Decorative Armbands Bullying People On The Sidewalks. And The Leaders Won't Stand At Microphones For Hours Ranting At People. All Of That Is So 80 Years Ago.

Normally What Happens In A New Presidency Is The President Has A Big Agenda, And Congress Is Full Of People With Human Weaknesses. And So The President Indulges The Human Weaknesses Of Members Of Congress In Order To Pass His Agenda. This Time It's The Other Way Around. Donald Trump Does Not Have Much Of An Agenda. Congress Burns With This Intense Republican Agenda And So Does Congress That Has To Put Up With The Human Weaknesses Of The President In Order To Get A Signature On The Things It Desperately Wants To Pass.

We're Not Free Because Other People Are Nice, Maybe Other People Aren't Nice That Day. We're Free Because We Expect The Institutions Of Government To Work Impersonally. That We Expect People In Government To Understand They Don't Work For The President Or The Prime Minister, They Work For The Government. And The Government Is Always There.

The Great Society Went Wrong For Three Major Reasons. First, The Self-organization The Johnson Administration Promoted Turned Out To Be Not The Pooling Of Family And Community Resources Into Shops And Businesses, But Political Pressure For Government Handouts. Second, The Great Society Failed To Anticipate The Perverse Side-effects Of Handing Money Out To People Who Have Done Nothing To Earn It. Third, While The Great Society Was Showering Money On The Poor, The Supreme Court Was With Childlike Glee Smashing To Bits Traditional Methods Of Maintaining Law And Order.

Donald Trump Is Behaving In An Extremely Provocative Way Toward China, Having First Cancelled The Tpp And Alienated America's Friends In The Region. Same Thing That He's Authorizing Much Riskier Gambits Against Isis, Having Alienated Many Of America's Allies And Friends In The Region.