re: #7 harlequinade

I was just thinking of adding that. Gullf War 2 really snapped the paradigm that we could trust the government on a very basic level. Certainly was the case for me. I gave the administration credit to not be that baldly deceitful, and got stung.

Problem is, lots of people didn’t acquire actual skepticism in the aftermath. Just running to the other pole doesn’t solve the problem…which is how we get so many populists rubbing up to authoritarians who are just of a different ideological stripe.