A more precise term could be borrowed from Max Weber, whom Levada had had Gudkov study all those years ago. The term was “acclamation,” a process by which the governed affirm a choice already made for them.21 But Russians were acclaiming not only the candidates chosen for them by the bureaucracy—Putin chief among them—but also themselves, reaching for a sense of belonging, a sense of being with the majority that had been lost with the Soviet Union. What was felt as a void in the early 1990s had gradually been transformed into nostalgia, and now it could be focused on one person. It was
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The bland 'red blooded, everyman-ness' of DJT is part of this. Homer Simpson raised in wealth.
He comes from a space that tends to raise the inadequate and incompetent over Others. Image who would have occupied that role if America was more in love with a superideological, nostalgic image of itself.
Like, Jeff Sessions and Mitch McConnell is our full "Gone with the Wind" part of us. DJT is our Archie Bunker, Homer Simpson, Larry the Cable Guy self.
There is a bloodless and efficient part of this spectrum (analogue to where Putin is at in his space) that I don't think we have quite reached -- and maybe haven't yet seen; oh wait: Steven Miller and Steve Bannon; banal, milk toast, graft-taking bureaucrats of a certain blandness whom a public is willing to project a image of national values onto. We have no Supreme Gentleman as A-list representatives. There seems to be plenty enough scurrying around points of power to be concerned though.
