I watched a fair amount of the first Trump impeachment hearing. While Congress stood still, there were a lot of people in the room who were 1) earning at least $100,000 a year or 2) interning to later earn $100,000+ a year. And to intern, one needs a rich family to support getting this "experience." Needless to say, there is a big imbalance between the people and their governors.

The Biden/Harris transfer of power was within the rules (as far as I can tell). But it was unprecedented to happen in this way. But even in normal times, we could argue that democracy is less than stellar. BTW, I have an article on the drafting board about how democracy is on a grey scale, not an on/off switch.

From my side of the TV screen, I could see that Mr. Biden was losing cognition for the past 2 years. So I was wondering why the people in the back rooms were not doing something about that. Probably similar forces are happening that have been keeping Mr. Trump as the head of the Republican Party: parties are reluctant to abandon leaders who can win elections. And it was a risk to bring someone else into the race--at least until the debate of June 27.

Thanks for the TDG promo. I was not expecting that.

I was reading a Medium article about how there is going to be a big upheaval in democracy. I responded that, from what I can see, the people are not interested in any upheaval.

I like your definition of "fascism." Centralized control, which can happen with either the political right or political left. The political left do not see themselves as potential fascists, even though there is a greyscale and we are, to some degree, already on that path.