Excellent thread, which prompted some thought of my own.
This thread has three parts:
1. Everything everywhere all at once.
2. Collective abandonment of public responsibility has created a great age of elite impunity.
3. Does any of this matter?
Some thoughts on what Trump has done in Venezuela and what it might mean for US national security. Caveat: not a Latin America scholar so this is focused on US policy. Clearly huge consequences for Venezuela that others can address.
First, despite the buildup, I didn't think Trump would do it.
1/
Jan 4, 2026 15:001. Everything everywhere all at once.
Nowadays, huge events seem to take place on a weekly basis, and their speed and frequency makes them seem increasingly mundane.
I wonder if scholars and thinkers need to adjust their models of public opinion/behavior to reflect this reality.
2(a): Collective abandonment of public responsibility empowers elite impunity:
Trump isn’t a magic genie. He’s an unpopular president who gets to do a lot of unpopular stuff because the public isn’t engaged enough to adequately restrain him. A similar dynamic exists with Silicon Valley.
2(b): So far, that disengagement favors maga, but it could potentially also give Democrats much greater latitude than normal if they regain power.
Post-maga reconstruction, if it happens, could be surprisingly deep and rapid because the re-builders may have as much freedom as the wrecking balls.
2(c): But without deeper public engagement, it could also be just as ephemeral as the maga movement that preceded it.
2(d): Democrats probably would face greater internal (party identity) and external (American culture leans right) constraints than the GOP, but they might still have a great deal of autonomy.
2(e): The public used to offload its public responsibilities to institutions, but those have been seriously weakened, although they certainly still exist (notably, the legal system has been a real constraint on maga’s would be authoritarianism).
3. Does any of this matter?
I’ve never read his books, but here’s ChatGPT’s summary of Fernan Braudel’s multi-layered theory of history.
