The slope isn't slippery; the frog isn't gradually getting boiled. Within its first hundred days the Trump administration has openly asserted the right/ power to seize and imprison anyone— including political dissidents, including citizens— and deprive them of any legal recourse at all.

5/

Since most of America’s allies today are democracies, they’re also worse at playing the bribery game than adversarial autocrats, who know how to play him. Relationships with autocrats are purely based on transactional deals, not shared values or mutually agreed upon rules, which he doesn’t get.