Josh Marshall has an astute take on the ongoing violence in Israel and how it actually plays into Netanyahu's desire to hold on to power and evade criminal charges for corruption. Trump's desperate desire to stay in the White House was equal parts narcissistic wound and the knowledge that he broke a shit ton of laws. The idea of a peaceful transfer of power in Brazil, the Philippines, Hungary or Poland is remote; in Russia, it is inconceivable.
The old structures of the Cold War are gone. Some have recast the global conflict of the post-Al Qaeda years as Liberal Democracy v Authoritarianism. More helpful would be a clear camp between corrupt kleptocrats - Putin and Trump certainly, but there are a host of others, including regimes as disparate as Venezuela's, Iran's and Netanyahu's - and countries that follow some rule of law.
That is the fundamental schism in the world in 2021. "Populism" is simply a tactic used to cover for the kleptocrats.
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