re: #257 The Ghost of a Flea

We’re at a place similar to when the Soviet leadership was all doddering old men terrified of everything—each other, because they were all Stalin Pals, the rest of the world, because things weren’t going according to dogma—and there was a lot of talk about whether they’d set fire to the Cold War just because they couldn’t imagine a world in which (1) they had to concede they were wrong, (2) someone younger replaced them and made different choices.

That’s the background to which Gorbachev was reacting when he opened talks with Reagan.

That’s actually a great analogy. Never thought of it that way but yeah. Basically there’s this fear “things are different now than when I was younger and I’m scared.” And that really I think is the crux of what Trump tapped into and a lot of that was really ugly stuff including yes racism, sexism, etc.