Source: Washington Post
by Marc Fisher
“The more absolute the power, the more it attracts money, repels opposition and obliges even the most cautiously neutral parties to conform to the new order. Trump has relied on the power of fear all his life. In school, he bullied classmates. As a developer, he worked in concert with fearmongers: mob bosses, sleazy pols, power brokers. As a TV character, he constructed his game show around the conceit of a fickle, fearsome boss who would fire people seemingly on a whim. Trump, by instinct and training (from his father and his mentor, New York fixer Roy Cohn), knows that if you ignore the rules and the law, the protections that most people rely on to order their lives will collapse. Into that vacuum seeps fear. That is what we have all watched for nearly a dozen weeks.” (04/09/25)