Stories are all we have and may the best story win, which is more or less a get-out-of-jail-free card for Trump, Putin, Surkov, Bannon, Bolsonaro, Erdoğan, Xi, Orbàn, Modi.

After forty years of warning us about the dangers of postmodernism, the right now sounds like Jacques Derrida, and in the wake of Trump’s kidnapping of Perspectivism, the left now sounds like Allan Bloom.

Seventy percent of US GDP comes from blue states. It’s no accident that Trump holds all his rallies in red states. He’s an alternative opioid.

Trump is terrified to experience his own suffering, which is what connects him to his followers. He shows them a way to stave off sadness.

Whenever a “journalist” attempts to push back even slightly, Trump holds out his right hand like a stop sign and says, Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me—which means, I was talking (how dare you interrupt me), when all the person is trying to do is ask a question.

There’s something deep in our programming that says, “If a homicidal alpha male shows up and he’s protecting my group, regardless of what his other faults are, I’ve got to follow him.” That’s very primal programming. The demagogues—whether it’s Hitler or Milošević or Trump—manipulate people so that instead of being a German, you’re an Aryan;

The visual has triumphed over the literary, fragmented sound bites have replaced linear thinking, nostalgia has replaced historical consciousness, simulacra are indistinguishable from reality, an aesthetic of pastiche and kitsch has replaced modernism’s striving for purity, and a shared culture of vulgarity papers over intensifying class

If a liar declares, “I am lying,” is the liar telling the truth? —Vittorio Bufacchi (defining “liar’s paradox”)

So long as man remains free, he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship. —Dostoevsky