I'm extremely disappointed.
I have her books "Gulag", "The Crushing of Eastern Europe" and "Red Famine" at home, and I cherish them. Most who openly disparage communism and socialist authoritarianism in the systemic and methodological way she does are more or less "based", or at the very least keen to the ways and rhetoric the political left use to try to subert our fragile democracies to meet their nefarious ends. If the whole ordeal of the insanity showcased by the mainstream media's poltiical pundits during Donald Trump's presidency didn't give you pause, then surely the year of 2020, with its intense retardation and violence perpetuated by the political left, certainly should have, especially for someone like Anne Applebaum; but no, of course not, because Current Year™. I haven't reaed her "Twilight of Democracy", but judging from what those unsatisfied with the book have to say, it's easy to understand just what kind of diatribe it is that she's published in it. She sets out to understand the appeal of authoritarian rhetoric in our time, using Donald Trump as the shining example of a tyrant, yet she completely neglects to understand the actual view and worries of the average Trump-voter, and never seems to even try to dissect the authoritarianism of the political left. For example, their open and documented usage of government agencies to stifle and suppress their political opponents, is either non-existent, a justifiable non-issue or a non-sequitur away from serious discussion. Apparently she's cited in the book saying "so-called cancel culture", and is otherwise dismissive of the entire phenomenon's existence. Instead, let's focus on how Donald Trump is literally Cheeto Hitler who is actually using the same tactics that was used by the Axis of Evil and communist dictatorships! Donald Trump and his ilk lie all the time, but let's not even acknowledge the entirety of the Russian Hoax.
These are examples of hypocricies at the top of my head. If you really take a deep dive into the dishonest propaganda by the usual suspects, you could fill an entire library. Keep in mind that I'm not an ardent defender of Donald Trump himself, but of the actual and real grievances of the people that made him elected. Perhaps it's not truly a problem of the right vs left, given that the Republicans lie all the time themselves, as polticians are wont to do, but rather various authoritarian fiends with common interests who're playing us all like a fiddle, and who have now resorted to using woke talking points to divide and conquer? Certainly someone like Applebaum, of all people, should see the painfully obvious signs for this in the very uneven reporting of journalists, that are otherwise so apparent to so many of the rest of us? But no, apparently not. It's all so very tiresome.
Am I insane? How can she completely neglect the offences by the political left during the recent decades (in my country) and at the very least the recent decade in America? With her credentials? With the kind of subject matter she has written excellent books on? How is it even possible? Does she genuinely not understand her glaring mishaps in engaging in the milquetoast slacktivism of the anti-intellectual and anti-scientific woke left? Does she not understand how she makes herself guilty of the banality of evil in conveniently ignoring the actual reasons for the political divide of our time? How is this possible, with her otherwise sound understanding of the history of this very subject matter? What in the actual fuck is going on?
I expected this from a corpulent retard like Robert, but not from from the likes of her. Perhaps I've been wrong in my assessment of Applebaum from the very beginning. My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.