I just yesterday learned about this great piece by Andrew Sullivan. Highly recommended. It offers a terrific explanation why the current conventional understanding of effective authoritarians or fascists — that they seize control of the government and use those instruments to advance evil public policies — is wrong. It misses the fact that classic tyrants are often not successful in that way. Their tyrannical souls are, rather, very much like Trump — incessant lies, narcissism, and arbitrary decisions designed to destroy more than to construct. Their success often lies in taking politics down, rather than building it up for some new purpose. Click on Andrew Sullivan above for the link to his illuminating and insightful essay on Trump and Shakespeare’s, Richard III.