Good morning. 
Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 87. Sunrise is 6:17 AM and sunset 7:33 PM, for 13h 15m 37s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 57.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1997, Netflix is launched as an internet DVD rental service.
Peter Wehner writes Trumpism Has Entered Its Final Form (‘In today’s Republican Party, Trump is becoming what was once unthinkable—conventional, unexceptional, even something of an establishment figure’):
The GOP base may be identifying less and less with Trump personally—that was inevitable after he left the presidency—but it is not identifying any less with the conspiracist and antidemocratic impulses that defined him over the past five years.
In fact, the opposite is happening.
Not long ago, Trump was viewed as avant-garde, outrageous, and scandalous, America’s enfant terrible. His actions were viewed as so shocking and norm-shattering that he couldn’t be ignored. In today’s Republican Party, however, Trump is becoming what was once unthinkable—conventional, unexceptional, even something of an establishment figure.
In a right-wing movement that is home to a growing assortment of cranks and kooks—Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar and Lauren Boebert, Mo Brooks and Madison Cawthorn, Ron Johnson and Marsha Blackburn, Mike Lindell and Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, Cyber Ninjas and QAnon, anti-vaxxers and insurrectionists—Trump looks rather ordinary. He wants credit for the vaccines that were developed during his administration, which mark a genuine medical milestone, but in some quarters of today’s Republican Party, that makes Trump suspect, too closely aligned with the hated Anthony Fauci, a dumbass.
The dark, destructive place the GOP has found itself in isn’t shocking. For more than half a decade, the Republican base—MAGA world—has been fed a constant diet of outrageous lies and conspiracy theories, not just by Trump but also by his allies in the party and the right-wing media ecosystem. Negative emotions such as fear, rage, and resentment have been constantly stirred up. Over time, transgressive behaviors became chic; “owning the libs” became the name of the game. What mattered was hating the right people.
Indeed. See Man and Movement.
In Whitewater, Trumpism will try but likely fail in the city, but try and succeed in control of the school district. The loss for the district will be considerable: right-wing populist control in the schools will bring speech restrictions on topics of race and health education, and afterward a push for an end to safe spaces for minority students. What seems impossible today will become the populist agenda tomorrow. Populism is an insatiable movement —one successful encroachment against others will only lead to more.