Adam Garfinkle at Quillette:
Reality can sometimes seem even stranger than fiction, and the second Trump administration has done what many people supposed to be six impossible things within the first month of its tenure. The upshot is that we are now living in a post-NATO world where black is white, up is down, friends are foes (and vice versa), and once-unthinkable impossibilities have become our new reality.
The first impossibility accomplished by the new administration saw Donald J. Trump and J.D. Vance win the only two elected offices of the US executive branch with a campaign of wild lies about the November 2020 election and what happened at the Capitol on 6 January 2021. After the inauguration, they turned those lies into loyalty tests required of nominees to plum jobs in the administration, including on the National Security Council staff and the Policy Planning staff at the State Department.
Second, on his first day in office, the president used his pardon power to release a loyal and violence-prone cohort of 1,600 insurrectionists.
Third, the White House won Senate confirmation of manifestly unsuitable nominees to head executive-branch departments and agencies, many of whom are openly hostile to the stolidly apolitical missions of their own offices.
More here.
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