What the Hell is Tucker Carlson Doing in Hungary?
Literally: Why go there?
I have a hard time knowing how much I should worry about authoritarianism. On the one hand, one of our two major parties backed a guy with obvious authoritarian tendencies, and that guy tried to stage a coup. On the other hand, the coup was really goddamned goofy. I know what Trump did was awful, I know there was horrible violence at the capitol, but it’s hard to be completely straight-faced about an event that featured a guy dressed like Hagar the Horrible if he was auditioning for the Village People.
Different pundits are different amounts of worried about the authoritarian threat. Ross Douthat seems to be a smidgen concerned, Jonathan Chait is quite concerned, and Jeet Heer has shat his pants. Having an election overturned remains a high-impact/low probability event; several things have to happen before it could come to pass. Of course, it’s weird that we’re even talking about this. Assessing the threat is like assessing the threat of being eaten by a shark: It would be very bad, but it’s pretty unlikely, though exactly how likely depends on your behavior. And I understand that an authoritarian turn is a shark attack-like event, though I do feel that we’re metaphorically swimming in the ocean wearing meat pants right now.