PS: Thanks for the comment, Malaise Index. I don't want my State to join Russia or China or anyone but hopefully some other States that have detached themselves from the Potomac Regime.. somehow. It won't be easy to break up along county lines this time, much less States, though.

PS Just saw a clowny headline of a Russian official saying that US states who wish to join with them are welcome?
All sides will be co-opted and there is no opposition party or candidate in the auction and divvying up of the corpse of America.
The DS apparatchik quislings will make sure there is no America ever again.

PS: Thanks for the great treatise on machine politics, Anonymous. I had never thought of the mass immigration/ethnic angle before. I'll see if I can't find time to read that short book.

I really like your parody saying too.

PS: Biden is a great example, Alarmist, reminding me of one of those old Soviets, Andropov, etc, but those guys had better handlers. I'm sure the current administration wishes they could have the kind of control to scare the bejesus out of anyone making Dementia Joe remarks and "Flatten the Perv" signs. That's kinda what they're shooting for I guess ..

OTOH, there's Donald Trump. No matter what else I think of him, he's got way more energy than people 25 years younger. It's too bad he dissipates it all via tweets and bullshitting.

I knew David Cole had changed his name once, Mr. Hail, for reasons to do with his Hollywood detractors or something, but I didn't know all that. He is a bit strange. That doesn't give me any reason to disbelieve the article in question, but maybe he doesn't know those insiders as well as he implies.

I'd hate to see that Nimrod as a candidate, Mr. Blanc. I'd had enough of her hearing about her traitorous behavior about the Rebel Flag in S. Carolina - why on earth did Trump appoint her for ANYTHING? I hate to bring up Human Resources, but did Trump need an HR Dept? (Maybe run by Steven Miller - that'd have worked!) I would hope DeSantis would beat her hands-down, though. Who knows? New Jersey would get the Hindu vote? Was there even a Hindu vote at all in 1992? Maybe just that one guy, Apu, and his pot-bellied wife...

PS:

"Why does the USA cling to a gerontocracy that is full a decade older than the one that destroyed the USSR? Seriously, what is wrong with Americans?"

Serious answer: To understand what has gone wrong in the US, you have to read one very short and entertaining book: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=plunkitt+of+tammany+hall

The US is run by professional politicians who regard their job as a source of income, no more. The professional politicians depend on a political organization, Tammany Hall in Plunkitt's case. The organization also considers itself as a source of income for its members, no more than that, and has as is purpose assembling a minimum cost coalition of paid or rewarded in kind voters that constitute perhaps 40% of the electorate. This coalition can be assembled by any means from offering vengeance to offering moral superiority to simply offering cash as welfare, civil rights jobs, or straightforward patronage jobs.
The professionals can win against any non-professional politicians. See chapter "Reformers is Mayflies".
The political organizations, ordinarily called "machines", were an epiphenomenon of Gilded Age immigration and factory based mass production. Plunkitt points out, and I agree, that Gilded Age immigrants ordinarily had no experience in self government, and would have been a threat to US stability had the urban political machines (and the mass labor unions) not integrated them into the American government.

However, the New Deal displaced previous philosophies of government, and WW II gave the New Deal's descendants control of the industrialized world. To rephrase, by 1946 the Free World was run by US professional politicians who did not believe in "the popular will" or "the Voice of the People" or much of anything except money.

To quote one parody:
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the pople some of the time, and that's enough for a permanent working majority."

The professional politicians believe in money, but were composed of ethnic ethnic groups. While the original New Deal was prejudiced only against Anglo-Saxons, the various ethnic groups (and the Solid South) fought for dominance within the New Deal (now the "Democratic Party) after WW II. By 1970, the Jewish ethnicity had become dominant, hence the "Jewish triumphalist" one often encounters in comment sections. I'm fairly sure that the Jewish coalition lost its dominance during Obama's second term, as Jews ave since been de-facto classified as "White" under the 1964 Civil Rights Act ( https://www.takimag.com/article/hollywoods-jews-get-their-wandering-papers/ , https://www.takimag.com/article/hollywood-apartheid-is-ready-for-its-close-up/ ).

And that's what we have today: a government democratic in form, but not spirit, one considered as a con by its professional members. What we thought government was, it isn't. It's disillusioning, I know, but it fits the observable facts.

And it is a gerontocracy because it is the structure of the organization that has power, not the people in it. That includes the public "leaders", who could be animatronics if the public would accept animatronics. The organization is distributed, and works to maintain a working majority in ny way it can. If a single ethnic group dominates, there can be pronounced ethnic tinges (e.g. JFK's prosecution of Italian and Jewish organized criminals right before his mysterious death), but even today power can transfer from one ethnic group to another (as above's transfer from Jewish to Black dominant ethnicity) if that is needed to maintain a working majority.

Or, to put it into another medium, that of popular song:
"Everything we had is gone, as you can see.
That's what you get for loving me. "
https://mojim.com/usy100635x181x69.htm
Popularized by Peter, Paul, and Mary, 1960s.

And please read Plunkett. It's short, entertaining, and is still used as a college text for those majoring in US politics.

PS I wouldn’t count out the donor class and their flunkies in the Repub establishment. I don’t imagine they’re happy about having their toy taken away from them. I don’t think they’re so clueless that they’d try Jeb! again, but I think there’s a good chance that they’ll push Nimrata Randhawa hard. She could give Trump and DeSantis a real run, and if Trump is in jail or in court in late 2023 and early 2024, DeSantis could gave a very hard time with her.

PS

addendum: not just new "personas," but the man now known as David Cole has used at least three different aliases since the 1990s.

PS

I am suspicious of David Cole for his several periods of doing something big, claiming to be a victim of a targeted conspiracy, disappearing, and then reinventing himself with a new persona.

He always ends up influential and well-connected in each stage of the political persona he creates, always telling one group of promising outsiders exactly what it wants to hear. "Not to worry! the current one is his real persona," the current group that likes what they hear say. Right.

He's "older than his age" by now, if we take his descriptions of his hard-partying and alcoholism at face value, but he could still do the same persona-switch a time or two again.

On the other hand, someone I respect, Robert Stark, has in recent years worked with him on a documentary and wouldn't agree that Cole is as chameleon-like as the record suggests.

PS
I have the impression Alarmist, that whatever works in the focus groups they present their slogans to, is set to go.
(The gap between the TV set and the reality is something that does not matter much).

PS

“The Hispanics love me ... they’re BEAUTIFUL people.”

Why does the USA cling to a gerontocracy that is full a decade older than the one that destroyed the USSR? Seriously, what is wrong with Americans?