However acute the analysis of the Democratic Party elite, Andrew is still lost in Whataboutistan. Italian has a great expression for this kind of political nihilism: "qualunquismo" (whoeverism). The German Communist Party in 1930-33 followed this strategy and gave us Hitler. Their "the worse the better" argument was let the Nazis take power and people will see how bad they are and then comes the revolution we want. Stalin then learned how flawed this strategy was and followed a popular front strategy in France and Spain. As bad as things are now, the potential for them to worsen is pretty much limitless if a narcissistic megalomaniacal authoritarian seizes power. This is what nihilistic whataboutists and qualunquisti never see. When you short an authoritarian cult and its fuhrer by nihilistically saying "whatever, let it blow!", your potential losses are infinite.
Doubt that Trump is a Nazi? Let him answer that question in his own words: https://medium.com/illumination-curated/nazi-trump-listen-to-trump-himself-answer-the-question-b8e2eefafcf1
Even if you underestimate the danger of Trump's dehumanizing "root out the vermin" Nazi-like rhetoric and say he's not even Mussolini, he's a very dangerous authoritarian Musso-mini, if only due to lack of competence.
Lincoln called America, as flawed as it was, "the last best hope of man on earth." No other empire on this planet has the geography, resources, innovative capacity, institutions, deep and liquid financial markets, rule of law to replace it. Power abhors a vacuum and America's informal voluntary alliance network empire would be replaced not by the shared sovereignty soft power only EU, but by kowtow to the emperor China (the Blackberry of empire) or the neofeudal mafia with a flag kleptocracy of Putin's Russia (the Nokia of empire). The US is the iPhone of empire. And China's busted real estate bubble and Xi's recent make nice visit to SF shows it.
In great power conflict between empires, good vs bad isn't on the menu. Only bad vs worse and the proven worst.
And Andrew is still plagiarizing Colin Woodard's map without giving him credit.
