Notable Quote #13

A trifecta from the latest column by Michael Gerson, who continues to have a way with words.

 

“Trump’s diversion into deranged conspiracy thinking while national challenges mount is a fitting end to this sad, shabby chapter in the American story. One imagines the other 43 presidents in Walt Disney World’s Hall of Presidents pointing and laughing at their most embarrassing successor.”

 

“Trump combines the ambitions of a despot with the strategic planning and operational competence of a hamster. He is an evil mastermind without the mastermind part.”

 

“State and federal judges swatted away the meritless lawsuits of Trump and his cronies like so many fat, lumbering horseflies.”

 

Unfortunately, there’s a far more serious aspect to all this:

 

“Would our system have held firm in a closer election against a more talented authoritarian plotter? We have no idea. And the openness of the question should terrify us. Democracies tend to end not by revolt from below, but by erosion from above. They are less vulnerable to revolutionaries than they are to demagogues. While we have not lost our republic, we have glimpsed how it might eventually be lost.”