How Democracy Dies January 8, 2018January 7, 2018 David B.: “All I could think of while reading Bill Gates in Time was that his optimism is the Trump voters’ pessimism. Everything he thinks is going well is exactly what they hate about the world. The divide is startling.” Well, maybe not everything. But yes. Meanwhile, from the New Yorker: The Increasing Unfitness of Donald Trump. (Really? Could his unfitness increase?) . . . Future scholars will sift through Trump’s digital proclamations the way we now read the chroniclers of Nero’s Rome—to understand how an unhinged emperor can make a mockery of republican institutions, undo the collective nervous system of a country, and degrade the whole of public life. . . . He was able to destroy Low-Energy Jeb, Little Marco, Lying Ted. He has decimated the State Department and is working hard to destroy trust in the FBI and the press. So here’s the question: Can he destroy democracy? From the New Republic: How A Democracy Dies.