A final (I hope) thought about Joe McCarthy. I've had a bit of amiable off line chat about how he compares with the drug abuser with the boil on his butt. It's an entertaining question, the moreso because the answer is unknowable. I'd say the current incarnation is on the whole smarter and more talented: it is amazing how little, on close scrutiny McCarthy had to offer. The big guy is (if you don't mind mean) actually funny. I don't recall McCarthy ever getting so much as a chuckle.
Which naturally pushes on to the next question: Is the big guy another Mussolini? I'd say no again. As I argued earlier, Mussolini's success is perhaps better understood as Italy's failure: a green, raw, untried polity, a straw house to anyone who could huff and puff.
And for all our troubles, we are a much more stable, durable and resilient today. So even if the big guywanted to, etc. But my own guess he doesn't particularly want to: he realizes that it is a whole lot more fun and less work to stand outside yawping and throwing fecal matter than it might be to bear any serious responsibility. Moreover, assuming he cares, my guess is he has access to a lot more bodacious nookie than he would in the prison called the White House. Remember what happened to that other big guy...
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