On a hike last week I heard an excellent episode of Radio Open Source, featuring Naomi Klein, David Graeber, and Pankaj Mishra. One of the segments of interest that stuck with me is this remark by Naomi Klein:

We need to examine the way in which politics has been taken over by the logic of corporate branding, which is not something Trump started. Trump was just better at it than anybody else because he is himself a fully commercialized brand. So the table was set for Trump, he just showed up and said, “Well, I know this game better than you jokers, I’m the real thing, I’m a reality TV star and I’m a megabrand. Step aside!”

(If I could, I would link you directly to that segment in situ, that’s something I had working a long time ago, but since audio quotation still isn’t a ubiquitous feature of the web, here’s the compelling minute of audio that contains that quote.)

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