Sublime

The Cuban model resonated. When the Roosevelt administration sought a transoceanic canal to connect its Atlantic trade to its Pacific trade (larger now that the United States had Pacific territories), it eyed the Panama isthmus in Colombia. But it neither bought nor conquered it. Instead, Roosevelt’s government encouraged Panamanian nationalists to

The most common method strongmen use to undermine democracy is to attack its self-correcting mechanisms one by one, often beginning with the courts and the media. The typical strongman either deprives courts of their powers or packs them with his loyalists and seeks to close all independent media outlets while building his own omnipresent propagand

Lee Kuan Yew, the longtime prime minister of Singapore, came to power by latching on to a pro-communist movement, usurping its rhetoric, and seizing control of it. Once in power, he turned on his communist allies, not only discarding them but in some instances jailing them.