- Joined
- Dec 31, 2018
I don't think NYT and Atlantic columnists are all that important.
The EFF? The pro-Kiwi Farms group?!?
Russia isn't an oligarchy. They only have the power Putin allows them or they accidentally fall out of windows.
China, ironically, is though Xi has been trying to break that and centralize it with pretty much the same "fight against corruption" thing Putin did.
Also, "becoming an oligarchy" is like decades late to the "leftist" framing. It'd make much more sense to theorize that Trump is trying to do the same thing as Xi and Putin by tearing down the oligarchs to centralize power personally (or Elon is doing this through Trump) but that would require Tony to know something about Russia and politics in general. I'm not saying this is true, merely that it's a better and easier to defend theory than the one he chose. You could frame Democrats as attempting to balance among the oligarchs, while dissipating the anger of the lower classes, while Trump is sweeping them away for himself utilizing that lower class anger against them. This is basically how Putin got so popular after Yeltsin who was seen as useless against the oligarchs and the West.
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