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Thank you for this excellent recap of the RNC (which I could not stand to watch because my father was a vengeful, insane narcissist just like Trump) ... the view of the hole the MAGA GOP has dug for them... and your appreciation of the power and energy that comes from opening this door to a new chapter in American politics!

This will NOT be 2016 (when Hillary had the "but her emails" fake news story to contend with). This is 2024, when women and Black people know what Trump wants to do! And Kamala is a career prosecutor. I believe she has the skills to take Trump apart in what I see as the "American trial to end all trials"... with the American people as the jury... a trial Trump will not be able to postpone, unless (and I'd love to hear your take on this, Anne) the GOP's threat of lawsuits... Mike Johnson saying "The Democrats can't do this. We're gonna sue!" ... somehow finds is way to the SCOTUS.

But I swear if the SCOTUS were to say "Biden does not have the right to pass the baton to Harris" I think Hubert Humphrey would rise from the grave and say "That's not how things work!"

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Thanks. I don't have a formula for fixing SCOTUS. AS I know from Poland, once a judiciary is damaged it is very hard to recover. And I don't know whether Harris can survive the immense amount of hatred that is about to be sent in her direction. We'll see.

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Thanks so much for replying. And I agree that the MAGA GOP will throw a lot of hatred her way. I believe this election will give women across America the chance to show abusive misogynistic men like Trump what they think of them. 👊🙅🏻‍♀️

And I’ll be voting against “Trump the abuser” too!

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(1) It's not as if Kamala Harris is known for silver-tongued eloquence. The gears grind, the words go round and round, and what comes out is garnished with Thousand Islands dressing and croutons.

(2) After the scandalous coverup of Biden's mental and physical disintegration (in which Harris participated) it would be audacious of the Democrats to make an issue of Trump's age—to put the matter no more pointedly.

(3) Remember that most American voters are not like you. Hulk Hogan may seem a figure of fun, but professional wrestling brings in about three times the $$$ annually than Hollywood. Anyhow, the Democrats are not shy about tapping into celebrity culture. They'd crawl over hot coals to get Taylor Swift's endorsement.

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1) Harris has better or worse days, but even on her very worst days she is not as incoherent or repetitively dishonest as Trump. She has not tried to steal an election either.

2) Coverup? Trump's mental and physical deterioration has been consistently ignored, downplayed, hidden from the public. Did you listen to his speech? Read a transcript and ask yourself if you would hire a person who rambled like that to fix your car.

3) I don't object to celebrities. The point about Hulk Hogan is just that he presents a cartoonish version of masculinity. He is a particular kind of celebrity, symbolizing a particular set of emotions. He was part of the messaging. Which Trump, by rambling for ninety minutes, then undermined. That's all I was saying.

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1. Well, Harris is just a dud—in her way, a comic figure. One can envision a version of her in a novel by Evelyn Waugh. And while she may not have tried to steal an election, she is in the middle of stealing a nomination.

2. Yes, a coverup. You know it’s true. Biden has been in mental and physical decline almost since Inauguration Day 2021. That’s a fact independent of any judgement concerning Trump’s mental fitness. Everybody close to him and in the wider circle of the Democratic Party knew the truth about Biden; secrets like that don’t keep in a town like Washington DC. And they conspired to hide the truth from the American people. Now we’re living with the results of that conspiracy: America has no president, just a stuffed dummy in the front window.

3. All celebrities nowadays are cartoonish. And having cut my literary teeth, so to speak, on such cartoonish depictions of masculinity as Superman, Batman, and Sergeant Rock, I find nothing objectionable in Hulk Hogan’s theatrics. It’s all in good fun.

4. Having been somewhat disagreeable 1-3, let me add that I read and greatly admired both “Gulag.” and “Red Famine.” The latter is indeed a worthy successor to Conquest’s “The Harvest of Sorrow.” Indeed, I cited your book in a 2022 Substack article about the Holodomor and its relevance to V. Putin’s designs on Ukraine.

https://unwokeindianaag.substack.com/p/stalin-and-putin-and-ukraine?utm_source=publication-search

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