Spoiła w całość wiele wniosków które gdzieś tam kołatały się po głowie nigdy nie wyartykułowane, dała odpowiedzi na pytania których nie zdążyłam sobie zadać ale podświadomie potrzebowałam znać na nie odpowiedź.

This book offers a very effective model for understanding the shit that's going on in many parts of the world. The analysis of Trump, Russia, and the Central European autocrats seems to me to be spot on. China perhaps less so.

All models are of course wrong. But some are more useful that the others and this one is quite useful.

I think about this book a lot. It's a brilliant take on the failures of moralistic American liberalism and a really interesting prism to view the rise of authoritarian populists across Eastern Europe.

The chapter on Trump was probably the least convincing. The "imitation as dispossession" framework is an interesting way to read the broader factors that led to Trumpism, but I genuinely don't think it's helpful to analyze him as a rational political actor with a coherent ideology – there are too many counterexamples and inconsistencies. It would be much more useful to think of him as a baboon, or some other species of primate w a double-digit IQ, slinging its shit on a wall, hoping some of it will stick.

This book is largely an analysis of how Trump and co. came to power, but it hits different reading it this year now that "Moral Leader" Biden is running foreign policy. Surely this can't go wrong

Very illuminating (despite the title).

Have you ever read a book and thought: the authors didn’t have to put too much work into it because they were already famous, so they got an easy deal?
This is very much that. Some interesting thoughts, but they could’ve used a few more rounds of edits. The imitation metaphor felt artificial and overstretched, too little convincing structure and coherent arguments, some contradictory statements and a random mix of topics, thoughts, stories - just what famous people can allow themselves to publish and still sell many copies.