catapult themselves to power if they begin to play on fears, on insecurities, if they begin to create the perception of threat under those conditions people tend to gravitate towards their own ethnic religious or racial groups. for reasons that we don t entirely understand but it is more the fact that ethnic entrepreneurs have figured out that this is a really good tool for them to use. so, professor, can there be any long term solutions to the conflict in ukraine without resolving some of those underlying internal ethnic divisions? putin has done so well to exploit those since 2014, and is now trying to use to justify his invasion. so the civil war in ukraine has been going on since 2014, and it had all of the risk factors that we know that tend to lean towards civil war. ukraine at the time wasn t a
fundamentally. it s a wave that s happening across the country and it s pervasive in our communities and it s happening to the average american. they re radicalizing americans is what they re doing and it is so dangerous for our country and for our democracy. you know, eugene, it also is happening within the republican party. i mean there are only two that we talk about because there are only two putting their careers and reputations on the line, liz cheney and adam kinzinger. but as much as trump is sort of the toxic variable, it s all the enabling of his toxic force on american political life and it isn t even just on the republican party. as olivia is describing, it s this pervasive radicalization not to even his voters but anyone who watches right-wing media that you have to adhere to the delusions, to the propaganda. i want to bring something that adam kinzinger said in a new york times interview.
value these things enough? i mean we talk about it in the context of voting rights. we talk about it in the context of whether we want to live in a democracy or not. it feels like the bad guys in all of those fronts are making a lot of strides, eddie. right. this is the third front. they re opening up a third front. we need to understand the attack on so-called critical race theory as working in lock step with the attack on voting rights, as being a component of what was being argued for in the insurrection of january 6th. these things are connected. what we re seeing, whether it is propaganda news or whether it is republican operatives, they re trying to stoke white resentment. they re trying to stoke white fears. you are going to be replaced, not only by demographic shifts but actually in the history books. you are going to be rendered irrelevant by these stories that they re telling your children. they re corrupting the minds of your babies. this is the logic of a kind of fascism,
republican elected officials. it is not where the party is. the party is extremely united. she is so unrepresentative of the republican party that you may as well just put a d next to her name at this point. even though she s deeply conservative, even though she has a completely conservative voting record, that doesn t matter. it is not about ideology. the party is not where she is. now, eddie, i will say what jonathan swann at least doesn t in that clip. the rest of the party is choking on trump s . it isn t true but he is right that is where the party is. there s a distinction to be made between believers and those who don t necessarily believe but who are using the lie for their own selfish gains. i think you put it believers and propagators. i think that s the constituency of the republican party, and it is eroding our democracy. we need to understand how fragile our democracy is, right. in 2014 colleagues at princeton
kinzingers and liz cheneys of the world they re american patriots and deserve to be lauded as such. i m with jonathan swann, there s nothing left of the republican party other than a party that s able to embrace and to elevate an undemocratic, anti-republic theme that somehow we can engage in a fraud on the american people as long as it supports our guy winning an election. it makes the next presidential every election is so important, but it does make the next presidential election so important because is that part of the republican platform and do we now live in a two-party america where only one supports a true democratic republic or not? it is why i fundamentally believe a multi-party democracy is important in america right now but we re a long ways from that. until then we have to recognize that the republican party that celebrates donald trump is an anti-republican, anti-democratic party and they will continue to be so until somebody wrests control of the party from the former