We are witnessing the consequences of Republican radicalization
Yesterday’s mob insurrection against the US government was a direct consequence of Trumpism, nationalism, conspiracy theories, and zero-sum politics
Friends,
It is exhausting to live through history so often. Doubly hard is writing about it. Regardless of the challenge, I want to address yesterday’s events in Washington, DC, and will do my best to bring a political-psychological and empirical angle to the conversation. This post will be long.*
I see yesterday’s events as a natural product of a lot of underlying trends that the President and his allies have been fomenting for a long time. Trumpism, radicalization, conspiratorial belief, and polarization are all partly to blame. But there is also an institutional explanation for how we got here. I’ll do my best to unpack this.
