On reasons – Jan-Werner Müller in LRB:

“But nobody likes to think of themselves as an opportunist; everyone wants to tell themselves (and the world) a story to justify their change of tune. As a character remarks in Jean Renoir’s movie La Règle du jeu – among other things, a profound study of the moral collapse of the French Third Republic – ‘there is something appalling on this earth, which is that everyone has their reasons.’”

(…)

“ In 2021, Ferguson described Trump as a ‘demagogue and would-be tyrant’. Last month he was dancing to ‘YMCA’ at Mar-a-Lago. A recent interview with the Times gives some insight into how Ferguson and others have learned to stop worrying and love the Donald.”

(…)

“The ‘madman theory’, a term supposedly coined by Richard Nixon, really is a thing in the study of international relations: if you come across as unpredictable, or outright irrational, your foreign adversaries will treat you with caution or make concessions (whereas people on the inside also know that, if matters get out of hand, ‘the system’ will contain you). Scholars disagree as to whether simulating madness truly works. As Daniel Drezner has pointed out, there is little evidence that Trump’s different threats concerning North and South Korea yielded much. But the madman theory comes in handy for anyone wanting to make excuses for a strongman: even the most outlandish behaviour might be a move in a game of six-dimensional chess. In any case, Trump’s willing chessmen are lined up and ready for his opening gambit next week.”

Read the article here.

Absolutely, everybody has their reasons. Sometimes very smart reasons.

The Donald of 2025 is not the Donald of 2017. It’s an improved Donald, it’s a better Big Mac.

More than inflation, the spectacle might be the best reason.

Bread? Forget the bread. Circuses.