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Latest / Systemic Error Podcast

Trump’s ‘lost cause’ is a threat to democracy

Trump Wants a Birthday Parade for a Discredited PresidencyThe Story in BriefDonald Trump is trying to turn America’s 250th birthday into a tribute to himself, while filling Washington with self-honoring symbols and calling it patriotism. The source piece ties that impulse to the Lost Cause tradition: a political strategy of laundering betrayal into grandeur, and making illegitimate power look historical instead of criminal.Who Actually Has PowerThis is not a story about vanity in the abstract. It is about a president using the machinery of the federal government to stage a personal pageant…

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