now all i need to do to fully understand this caitlin essay is to learn what larping is/are;

Trump supporters are George W Bush supporters LARPing as Ron Paul supporters.

Virulent Iran hawk Brian Hook has reportedly been chosen by Donald Trump to help staff the State Department of the incoming administration, just in case you were still holding out hope that this time might be different and Trump really would end the wars and fight the deep state.

Readers might remember Hook as the swamp creature who in 2017 was seen in a leaked State Department memo lecturing Rex Tillerson on the US government’s policy of using human rights as a cynical tool to undermine enemies and reinforce alliances. This is done, Hook explained, by ignoring human rights abuses when they are perpetrated by US allies while emphasizing them at every opportunity in the nations of enemy governments in order to “impose costs, apply counter-pressure, and regain the initiative from them strategically.”

“The ‘realist’ view is that America’s allies should be supported rather than badgered, for both practical and principled reasons, and that while the United States should certainly stand as moral example, our diplomacy with other countries should focus primarily on their foreign policy behavior rather than on their domestic practices as such,” Hook wrote in the memo, saying that “In the case of US allies such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines, the Administration is fully justified in emphasizing good relations for a variety of important reasons, including counter-terrorism, and in honestly facing up to the difficult tradeoffs with regard to human rights.”..........more.....