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A system like our ideal liberal democracy, which does not place any constraints on critiques of leaders, authorities and institutions; and does not allow any suppression of ideas no matter how dangerous to the system or objectionable to its citizens; and does not permit itself to select who can come in, or stay, based on their acceptance/rejection of fundamental liberal democratic values, has both: (1) guaranteed perpetual generation of conditions of normative threat, and all the activation, polarization, and conflict that that produces, and (2) disallowed all means for protecting itself against that “authoritarian dynamic,” which otherwise might have included allowing: some selectivity in regard to the fundamental values of those who are allowed to come, and to stay; constraints on certain kinds of critiques of leaders, authorities and institutions;

constraints on free speech that exclude racist or intolerant speech; some ability to write moral strictures into public policy to reflect traditional beliefs where the majority “draws the line.” If a liberal democracy were to allow those things, it would no longer be a liberal democracy. But if it does not allow those things, it is extremely difficult to protect itself from fundamental threats to its continued existence

“Both sides of this increasingly polarized divide see the other as trying to extirpate their way of life — and not inaccurately,” Schnurer wrote in “War on the Blue States” in U.S. News and World Report earlier this month:

Blue America spent the last eight years dictating both economic and cultural changes invalidating virtually every aspect of Red America. Liberals see all that as both righteous and benevolent — we’re both promoting better values and willing to help train them to be more like us.

The prototypical Trump voter sees a changing America leaving him behind; part of this is economic, part of it demographic, part cultural. I think liberals tend to see this as a thin cover for racism, a reflection of troglodyte viewpoints, and in any event unwarranted as the world these folks are resisting would be better even for them if only they’d let it, by giving up their benighted religious views, accepting job training in the new technologies, and preferably moving to one or the other coasts or at least the closest major city.

Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard, observes that “believers in liberal democracy have unilaterally disarmed in the defense of the institution” by agreeing in many cases with the premise of the Trump campaign: “that the country is a hopeless swamp.” This left Democrats “defenseless when he proposed to drain it.”

This is a classic political problem of general benefit at the cost of specific individual harm. At a minimum, “we” — as a country but also as a self-styled progressive subset of that country — have given inadequate thought to those harms and how to ameliorate them; but I think you can also make the argument that we have exacerbated them.

Schnurer, himself a liberal, argues that blue America has over the last decade declared war on the “red way of life.”

The political, economic, and cultural triumph nationwide of a set of principles and realities essentially alien to large numbers of Americans is viewed as (a) being imposed upon them, and (b) overturning much of what they take for granted in their lives — and I don’t think they’re wrong about that. I think they’ve risen in angry revolt, and now intend to give back to the “elite” in the same terms that they’ve been given to.

I don’t think there’s much argument that the modern economy is killing off small towns, US-based manufacturing, the interior of the US generally, etc. There is, or could be, an argument as to whether that’s just the necessary functioning of larger economic forces, or whether there are political choices that have produced, or at least aided and abetted, those outcomes

Where, Pinker asks,are the liberals who are willing to say that liberal democracy has worked? That environmental regulations have slashed air pollutants while allowing Americans to drive more miles and burn more fuel? That social transfers have reduced poverty rates fivefold? That globalization has allowed Americans to afford more food, clothing, TVs, cars, and air-conditioners? That international organizations have prevented nuclear war, and reduced the rate of death in warfare by 90 percent? That environmental treaties are healing the hole in the ozone layer?

Pinker continues:Over the longer run, I think the forces of modernity prevail — affluence, education, mobility, communication, and generational replacement. Trumpism, like Brexit and European populism, are old men’s movements: support drops off sharply with age.

The problem is that even if Pinker is right, his analysis does not preclude a sustained period in which the anti-democratic right dominates American politics. There is no telling how long it will be before the movement Trump has mobilized will have run its course. Nor can we anticipate — if and when Trumpism does implode — how extensive the damage will be that Pinker’s “forces of modernity” will have to repair.

Donald Trump Jr., made the unfounded claim that Democrats plan to “add millions of fraudulent ballots” to rig the results.

A 1982 consent decree restricted these activities after the party sent teams of gun-toting men to minority neighborhoods during a New Jersey election wearing uniforms saying “Ballot Security Task Force.”

“To be clear: the satellite offices are not polling places and the Pennsylvania Election Code does not create a right for campaign representatives to ‘watch’ at these locations,”

I don’t want to treat our fellow citizens with open contempt, or to confront and berate them

Rather, I am arguing for silence. The Trump loyalists who still cling to conspiracy theories and who remain part of a cult of personality should be deprived of the attention they seek, shunned for their antidemocratic lunacy, and then outvoted at the ballot box.

Perhaps most important, much of our own sense of well-being will be lost if we continue to engage with people who believe that millions of votes were falsified from coast to coast, that the military should move into the swing states and hold new elections, or even that thousands of Chinese troops were bombed into submission on the border of Maine.

No content anchors it; no program or policy comes from it. No motivating ideology stands behind it, unless we think of general grievance and a hatred of cultural and intellectual elites as an “idea.

when views are incoherent and beliefs are rooted in fantasies, compromise is impossible. Further engagement is not only unwarranted, but it can also become counterproductive.

We already understand: Trump tapped into traditions of ethnic and regional grievances and social resentments that are present in every democracy and wedded them to bizarre theories and conspiracies.

If we’ve learned one thing about “Trumpism,” it is that there is no such thing as “Trumpism.”

Ordinary people should tune out the noise. No one needs to think one more minute about why a woman from New York would speed along in her car while ranting into her phone about stolen elections when she ought to have been watching the road.

And the media have a particular obligation to end their fascination with these Trump voters. We don’t need yet another pilgrimage to diners and gas stations to hear from people whose only sources of information are cable-news hosts plumping fantasies about Venezuelan voting machines.

the rest of us no longer need to participate in long chin-pulling exercises about “what they really want” or why they cannot grasp reality.

Poll after poll has shown that Democratic voters said they were far more likely than Republicans this election to use mail-in ballots. GOP voters' preference for in-person voting is likely due at least in part to Trump's unfounded claims of widespread fraud associated with mail-in ballots.

Top states/races to watch: Hello, North Carolina. The state will likely have tight races for president, U.S. Senate and governor. Democrats hold narrow leads in the polling averages for all three contests, giving the party one of its prime opportunities to flip a Senate seat — in addition to potentially giving Biden a big boost. The state is also likely to count relatively quickly with most results — advance votes — expected shortly after polls close on election night.

on average, the rate of black fatalities is 2.4 times that of whites with Covid-19

In states including Michigan, Kansas and Wisconsin and in Washington, D.C., that ratio jumps to five to seven black people dying of Covid-19 complications for every one white death

one interpretation of these disparities that has gained traction is the idea that black people are unduly obese (currently defined as a body mass index greater than 30)

black people are overrepresented in service positions and as essential workers who have greater exposure than those with the luxury of sheltering in place

has served to reinforce an image of black people as wholly swept up in sensuous pleasures like eating and drinking, which supposedly makes our unruly bodies repositories of preventable weight-related illnesses.

When I learned about guidelines suggesting that doctors may use existing health conditions, including obesity, to deny or limit eligibility to lifesaving coronavirus treatments, I couldn’t help thinking of the slavery-era debates I’ve studied about whether or not so-called “constitutionally weak” African-Americans should receive medical care.

The New York Times’ 1619 Project featured essays detailing how the legacy of slavery impacted health and health care for African-Americans and explaining how, since the since the era of slavery, black people’s bodies have been labeled congenitally diseased and undeserving of access to lifesaving treatments.

the legacy of redlining that pushed black people into poor, densely populated communities often with limited access to health care

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 42.2 percent of white Americans and 49.6 percent of African-Americans are obese. Researchers have yet to clarify how a 7 percentage-point disparity in obesity prevalence translates to a 240 percent-700 percent disparity in fatalities.

Even before Covid-19, black Americans had higher rates of multiple chronic illnesses and a lower life expectancy than white Americans, regardless of weight. This is an indication that our social structures are failing us

the political veteran had been scheduled to moderate the second debate between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden

the president criticised Scully, calling him a "Never Trumper"

Republicans who refused to vote for Mr Trump in the 2016 election

"@Scaramucci should I respond to Trump."

Scully said he had sent the tweet "out of frustration"

after "relentless criticism" regarding his role as moderator, including from President Trump.

Soon after Scully's suspension was announced, Mr Trump responded to the news, heralding his own "good instincts".

Scully has led the network's presidential election coverage for nearly 30 years and has developed a reputation for balanced coverage.

Firing the advisory panel and opting not to pursue a more stringent particulate standard were in keeping with the administration of President Donald Trump’s dim view of environmental regulation. By one tally compiled by The New York Times, 72 regulations on air, water and soil pollution, climate change and ecosystems have been canceled or weakened, with an additional 27 in progress. EPA leadership has sidelined or ignored research by agency scientists, and career staff are censoring their reports to avoid terms like “climate change” out of fear of repercussions from political staff. Many of the changes involve narrowing the scope of science, and scientists, that contribute to policy, experts said.

The pollution comes from cars, power plants, wildfires and anything that burns fossil fuels. When people take a breath, the particles can lodge deep into their lungs and even enter the bloodstream. The pollutant causes health complications that can lead people to die earlier than they would have, and it is linked to conditions such as COPD, asthma and diabetes.

Three weeks ago, the agency finalized another rule allowing certain polluters to follow weaker air emissions standards. Wheeler has said the environmental rollbacks will continue if Trump is reelected.

as the production of food and material goods centralized and rapidly expanded, commerce reached a scale that the country’s existing stores were ill-equipped to handle, according to the historian Susan Strasser, the author of Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market. Manufacturers needed ways to distribute their newly enormous outputs and educate the public on the wonder of all their novel options. Americans, in short, had to be taught how to shop.

In 2019, one in five American workers was employed in retail, food service, or hospitality; even more are now engaged in service work of some kind.

This dynamic is exacerbated by the fact that the United States has more service workers than ever before, doing more types of labor, spread thin across the economy

Retailers won over this growing middle class by convincing its members that they were separate from—and opposed to—industrial workers and their distrust of corporate power,

With these goals in mind, Leach writes, customer service was born. For retailers’ tactics to be successful, consumers—or guests, as department stores of the era took to calling them—needed to feel appreciated and rewarded

From 1870 to 1910, the number of service workers in the United States quintupled. It’s from this morass that “The customer is always right” emerged as the essential precept of American consumerism—service workers weren’t there just to ring up orders

they were there to fuss and fawn, to bolster egos, to reassure wavering buyers, to make dreams come true.

they were also quite intentionally building something far grander: class consciousness. Leach writes that the introduction of shopping was fundamental to forming middle-class identity at a particularly crucial moment, as the technological advances of the Gilded Age helped create the American office worker as we now know it.

Customers might not have been able to afford a household staff to do their bidding like the era’s truly wealthy, but corporate stores offered them a little taste of what that would be like. The middle class began to see itself as the small-time beneficiaries of industrialization’s barons.

For many of these workers, the difficulty of finding non-service employment enables companies to pay low wages and keep their prices artificially low, which consumers generally like as long as they don’t have to think about what makes it possible. In theory, these conditions are supposed to encourage better performance on the part of the worker; in practice, they also encourage cruelty on the part of the consumer.

Previously confined to a few lavish European-owned hotels in America, tipping “aristocratized consumption,

Tipping ratcheted up the level of control that members of the middle class could exercise over the service workers beneath them: Consumers could deny payment—effectively, deny workers their wages—for anything less than complete submission.

In the 150 years that American consumerism has existed, it has metastasized into almost every way that Americans construct their identities. Today’s brands insert themselves into current events, align themselves with causes, associate patronage of their businesses with virtue and discernment and success.

Most Americans now expect corporations to take a stand on contentious social and political issues; in return, corporations have even co-opted some of the language of actual politics, encouraging consumers to “vote with their dollars” for the companies that market themselves on the values closest to their own.

For Americans in a socially isolating culture, living under an all but broken political system, the consumer realm is the place where many people can most consistently feel as though they are asserting their agency.

Being corrected by a salesperson, forgotten by a bartender, or brushed off by a flight attendant isn’t just an annoyance—for many people, it is an existential threat to their self-understanding.

“The notion that at the restaurant, you’re better than the waiters, it becomes part of the restaurant experience,” and also part of how some patrons understand their place in the world. Compounding this sense of superiority is the fact that so many service workers are from historically marginalized groups—the workforce is disproportionately nonwhite and female.

Because consumer identities are constructed by external forces, Strasser said, they are uniquely vulnerable, and the people who hold them are uniquely insecure

If your self-perception is predicated on how you spend your money, then you have to keep spending it, especially if your overall class status has become precarious, as it has for millions of middle-class people in the past few decades

Although underpaid, poorly treated service workers certainly exist around the world, American expectations on their behavior are particularly extreme and widespread, according to Nancy Wong, a consumer psychologist and the chair of the consumer-science department at the University of Wisconsin. “Business is at fault here,” Wong told me. “This whole industry has profited from exploitation of a class of workers that clearly should not be sustainable.”

Department-store magnates alleviated these concerns by linking department stores to the public good. Retailers started inserting themselves into these communities as much as possible, Leach writes, turning their enormous stores into domains of urban civic life. They hosted free concerts and theatrical performances, offered free child care, displayed fine art, and housed restaurants, tearooms, Turkish baths, medical and dental services, banks, and post offices. They made splashy contributions to local charities and put on holiday parades and fireworks shows. This created the impression that patronizing their stores wouldn’t just be a practical transaction or an individual pleasure, but an act of benevolence toward the orderly society those stores supported.

Modern businesses have invented novel ways to exacerbate conflicts between their customers and their workers.

A big problem at airlines and hotels in particular, Wong said, is what’s called the “customer relationship management” model. CRM programs, the first and most famous of which are frequent-flyer miles, are fabulously profitable; awarding points or miles or bucks encourages people not only to increase the size and frequency of their purchases, but also to confine their spending to one airline or hotel chain or big-box store.

Higher-spending customers access varying levels of luxury and prestige, often in full view of everyone else. Exposure to these consumer inequalities has been found to spark antisocial behavior in those who don’t get to enjoy their perks, the classic example of which is air rage

Workers must do what the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, in her 1983 book, The Managed Heart, identified as “emotional labor.”

Workers must stifle their natural emotional reactions to, in the case of those in the service industry, placate members of the consumer class. These workers are alienated from their own emotional well-being, which can have far-reaching psychological consequences—over the years, research has associated this kind of work with elevated levels of stress hormones, burnout, depression, and increased alcohol consumption.

Admiral Lee Hsi-ming, who was chief of Taiwan’s General Staff from 2017 to 2019, has championed the shift to asymmetric capabilities and has emerged as a Cassandra-like figure in his warnings that Taiwan is not preparing fast enough

You may not be able to stop an invasion, Lee says, but you can stop China from subjugating Taiwan. This entails denying China the ability to control the battle space. The Chinese haven’t fought a war in several decades, and Taiwan has geographic advantages—including ample mountains and few beaches suitable for amphibious operations

the first three section headings: “I. Taiwan Is Part of China—This Is an Indisputable Fact,” “II. Resolute Efforts of the CPC to Realize China’s Complete Reunification,” and “III. 2fChina’s Complete Reunification Is a Process That Cannot Be Halted.”

Lee points to two possible scenarios. The first is a coercive approach in which China encircles and pressures Taiwan—perhaps even seizing outlying islands and engaging in missile strikes. The second is a full-scale invasion.

Politically, Lee said, the message from China to the U.S. and Taiwan is simple: “I can do whatever I want in Taiwan, and there’s nothing the U.S. can do about it.” This message came across unequivocally in a white paper that Beijing released in August.

as Lee sees it, the pace must quicken. “Taiwan needs a strategic paradigm shift,”

Lee also argues that Taiwan’s civilian population should be organized into a trained Territorial Defense Force, so that any attempted occupation would be met by the broadest possible resistance. “As long as China fails, Taiwan wins the war,”

“The purpose is to make China believe that if you want to invade Taiwan, you will suffer huge losses,” Lee said. “And if you still invade Taiwan, you will not be able to succeed.

Anti-ship missiles, anti-tank weapons, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, drones, long-range artillery, and small arms could wreak havoc on an invading force, and disrupt the supply chains necessary to sustain an occupation.

When Chiang fled to Taiwan—with roughly 2 million Chinese from the mainland—there were some 6 million people already living on an island that was just emerging from 50 years of Japanese rule. Most of the people living on the island when Chiang arrived could claim roots in Taiwan going back hundreds of years. They had their own languages and culture. So too did the island’s many Indigenous groups, such as the Amis, the Atayal, and the Paiwan.

To subjugate the island, Chiang killed and imprisoned tens of thousands over decades—a period known as the White Terror. He set up a military dictatorship under the leadership of his Chinese nationalist Kuomintang Party (KMT) and, from this offshore platform, vowed to reclaim mainland China.

After the election of President Ma Ying-jeou, in 2008, links of trade, investment, and travel helped reduce tensions with China. Ma was from the KMT, and the party’s Chinese heritage and its ties to Taiwan’s business elite eased the way to détente with Beijing.

But many Taiwanese, particularly the young, feared that forging too close a connection could ultimately give Beijing leverage over Taiwan. In 2014, in what became known as “the Sunflower Movement,” named for the flower that served as a symbol of hope, students occupied the Taiwan legislature to oppose a free-trade agreement with China. After a tense standoff, they succeeded in stopping the deal.

Ukraine inspired the Taiwanese society a lot, including how Zelensky told their story,” Chiang said. He was almost matter-of-fact when he told me, “I would say war between China and Taiwan will definitely happen. We want to win.”

But the idea of it here is: There is no need to declare independence, because we are already independent. This country functions like an independent nation, but someone else says it is not.” Recent polling suggests that fewer than 5 percent of people in Taiwan identify as “only Chinese.”

n Chinese and KMT officials 30 years ago, an outcome

at represents anything but consensus. To the Chinese Communist Party, the consensus is that there is one China, and the government in Beijing is the sole legitimate authority. To the KMT, the consensus is that there is one China, but the Republic of China in Taiwan is the legitimate government. To the DPP, there is no consensus, only a fraught political reality to be managed

China proposes a “one country, two systems” regime, in which Taiwan becomes a formal part of China but maintains an autonomous political system. There is one big problem with this proposal: Hong Kong

in 2020, several “national-security laws” were passed giving the authorities broad powers to crush dissent. Activists were rounded up. Independent media were shut down. One country, two systems was dead. The fate of Hong Kong has had a profound impact on Taiwan.

tus quo is really interesting, because in the American context that is what it mean

In our conversation, Tsai talked about what she had learned from Ukraine. One lesson is simply the need for international support—to defend itself or, better, to avoid a war in the first place

Another lesson of Ukraine is the importance of national character. Outside support, Tsai emphasized, depends on qualities only Taiwan can provide. “You need to have good leadership,” she said, “but more important is the people’s determination to defend themselves, and the Ukrainian people showed that.

Hanging over all of this is the role of the United States. As one Taiwanese ex

ert pointedly asked me: “We can make ourselves a porcupine, but what are you going to do?”

Would the U.S. risk the biggest naval battle since World War II to break a Chinese blockade? Would the U.S. attack an invading Chinese force knowing that U.S. military personnel in Japan, Guam, and possibly Hawaii are within range of Chinese rockets? Would the American people really support a war with the world’s most populous country in order to defend Taiwan?

how the U.S. can help prepare Taiwan than on what the U.S. would do in a conflict.

small victories only point up the scale of the challenge. Wu himself has used the term cognitive warfare to describe the comprehensive nature of China’s pressure on Taiwan. “They use missiles, air, ships, disinformation, cyberattacks, and economic coercion,” he told me. As a warning sign, China has banned hundreds of exported products from Taiwan. “They claimed that our mangoes tested positive for COVID,”

. If China takes Taiwan, Wu suggested that the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions could extend to the East China Sea, threatening Japan; to the South China Sea, where China has built militarized islands and claims an entire body of water bordering several nations; to the Indian Ocean, where China is expanding influence and could establish military bases; and to the Pacific Ocean, where China is working to establish security pacts with island nations

I sat there reading message after message, all posted in closed chat rooms, meant to bend Taiwanese minds to Beijing’s worldview. The meanings of buzzwords like cognitive warfare and resilience came into sharper focus. Facing the seemingly bottomless resources of a massive totalitarian state, here were two young people working for free on a Wednesday night, quietly insisting on the notion that there is indeed such a thing as objective reality.

to preserve this, Taiwan has to find some mix of the approaches that I’d heard about: preparing for a war while avoiding it; talking to China without being coerced by it; drawing closer to the U.S. without being reduced to a chess piece on the board of a great game; tending to a young democracy without letting divisions weaken it; asserting a unique identity without becoming an independent country.

And it undercut the first-day assessment by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who praised law enforcement for their "quick response" to the attack, which he said saved lives.

Reports since then reveal a grisly, wrenching scene, where terrified students waited for help as the shooter, armed with an assault rifle, continued his rampage. One student told of laying on top of a classmate, smearing her blood on her so both would appear dead, to save them both. The girl who was injured died at the hospital from her injuries, raising questions about whether she would have survived if the reaction had been quicker.Abbott, a vociferous gun rights proponent who last year signed a law allowing people to own guns without a license or training, was originally scheduled to speak at the NRA convention. Thursday night, his office said the governor would instead head to Uvalde, supplying a video speech to show at the NRA meeting.

Well-known sports figures decried the gun violence and what they called inaction by elected officials to address it. During Thursday evening's baseball game between the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays, both teams abandoned their usual game-update tweets for a series of tweets on gun violence."The devastating events that took place in Uvalde, Buffalo and countless other communities across our nation are tragedies that are intolerable," the Yankees said on the team's official Twitter account, referring to the racist-motivated murder of 10 Black shoppers in Buffalo on May 16.

“I do think there’s an opportunity right now to be able to pass something significant. I’ve seen more Republican interest in coming to the table and talking this time than at any other moment since Sandy Hook,” Murphy said in a Sunday interview with CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” “I really think that we can pass something that saves lives and breaks this logjam that we’ve had for 30 years. … I think we can get something done but we don’t have a lot of time.”

Democrats will need more Republican buy-in, especially from those in leadership. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas is the GOP point-person on the issue and will participate virtually in the talks on Tuesday. Cornyn said he also wants to look at strengthening mental health treatment, which has been a major concern for his party in relation to mass shootings.“One thing I hope does not happen is that the various parties sort of fall back into their typical talking points,” Cornyn told reporters at a press conference from Texas. “I hope we will try to look in a clear-eyed way at what happened, and ask this question: What can we do to fix this problem? And if we can't fix it, what can we do to make it better?”

Moscow, which in 2016 banned the Mejlis, a body representing Crimean Tatars, rejected the report's findings. It says a March 2014 referendum legitimised its "incorporation" of Crimea.The Crimea battalion performed reconnaissance against Russian forces around Yasnohorodka, a village 25km west of Kyiv, and later in nearby Motyzhyn, Akayev said."The residents here were initially very scared when they saw us because they didn't know who we were. We had to shout 'we are Ukrainian'... then people started slowly coming out of their homes and they gave us tea."

"We wanted to buy this place, to build a Crimean Tatar school and a mosque here... It didn’t come to anything, and then this happened," Akayev said, gesturing at the building’s charred remains which he said was the result of Russian shelling."I (still) dream about this project, but really I just want to return home to Crimea."

Last year he went to the UK for a month and ended up staying nearly eight, finding an antidote to American’s poison.

“I still haven’t fully recovered from my stroke, and what goes on in this country, I couldn’t talk about it. I got in the middle of it. Tucker Carlson [a host on Fox News] was killing me every fucking night.”

also invited UK journalists to disseminate a warning: don’t let British politics become as polarised and debased as the American system.

“You still like each other, you still respect each other, you still value public debate: your democracy is still functioning,”

“Ours has seized up and I don’t know how to get ours flowing again. Be thankful that you don’t have our poison … I’m very afraid of the American system being hopelessly damaged.”

“If I didn’t die, I’m not afraid any more, so you will hear me criticise people I never would have criticised two years ago. What are they going to do to me? It can’t be any worse than what I’ve been through and, when you become more fearless, it makes life easier to navigate.”

“I know that you guys are critical of the UK in recent times for being too American in your elections. You’re not. We are becoming more and more superficial. You are still substantial.”

Later he plays a video clip of one of his US focus groups descending into angry shouting and recriminations, a glimpse of a society that seems to be falling apart. He comments: “The worst of the worst. This is my warning to you. This is shit. This is a disaster and it will come to you if you let it happen.”

Today, after the catharsis of his stroke, Luntz finds plenty of blame to go around. He casts a harsh light on the media, social media and his own younger self. In an infamous 2003 memo, for example, he advised George W Bush’s Republican party to abandon the phrase “global warming” in favour of “climate change” because it is “less frightening”

“Biden does not understand the hopes and dreams of the average American,” says the messaging expert, who remains on the centre-right. “He does not empathise with them. His team is ideological rather than emotional and so he’s missing all this. It’s how people feel even more than how they think; feeling is a deeper emotion and Biden is not connecting to them at all.

Luntz argues that he overpromised. “He created unrealistic expectations. He’s a very arrogant human being and very flawed and the combination of flaws and arrogance is a really unhealthy cocktail.”

Wasn’t Biden supposed to be Mr Empathy? “There’s nothing about him that screams empathy. There’s everything about him that screams someone who’s already made up their mind.”

He identifies six issues that will determine voters’ choices: crime, immigration, shortages, prices, education and the January 6 insurrection. “Democrats have a huge problem on five out of the six.”

“Boris Johnson has written more books than Donald Trump has read. Boris is the real Trump. He understands the hopes and dreams of the public. He gets the historic context. He can wax poetically about 2,000 years ago, 200 years ago and two years ago. Trump could not do that.

The Great Rethink. It is a study of America voters’ attitudes and disillusionment with their leaders. “The only thing we agree on is that politicians suck,” Luntz says. “If you’re American, this is a very depressing time right now.”

nother offers some words to use (I am your voice, accountability, fact-based) and words to lose (agenda, I’m listening, transparency).

Luntz argues that even in a polarised society such as America, every parent asks the same question: will my child/grandchild be happy

Perhaps rather optimistically, he urges politicians to focus on children as “the great unifier”

“If you want to bring people together, you do it over their children. You guys are divided on just about everything; this crushes that divide. This brings people together and it’s not been done before.