Highly recommend this week's New Yorker Radio Hour interview with Stephen Kotkin of Stanford. He's an expert on Russian history, biographer of Stalin, he talks about what Trump is doing, and as I listened I realized we have not filled in how crazy or challenged the leaders of the other huge powers are. Trump apparently is not an outlier. Putin can't keep the war going in Europe indefinitely, their banking system is running on fumes and the people are tired of war (unlike in the US they feel their wars). There's tremendous corruption in the Chinese military, so Xi isn't rushing to try to take over Taiwan. It's easier and safer to just keep threatening. In the US we're shocked by what we've become, so quickly, we're failing to see the context. Kotkin also offers a perspective on the new media, relative to when TV and radio were new, and all the chaos the US has survived. He said something I believe is true, it'll be hard to turn America into a totalitarian state because every freaking American today was raised in a country where we had all the amendments. It'll be hard to get us to STFU. They have a plan in TrumpLand, but that doesn't mean it will work. #