thread: This week I was in Venezuela, mostly offline. I observed, from Caracas, the finale of the impeachment trial, Romney's last stand, the firing of civil servants. All around me, people nodded wearily: Yes, they said, we've seen this before...

of course Venezuela is not the US, Trump is not a Bolivarian socialist like Chavez, of course everything is different. But it is amazing how familiar Trump's behavior seemed to people who had lived through the decline of their own democracy. All of the elements were there:

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) February 9, 2020

brilliant academics, excellent journalists - they all knew that the dictatorship was expanding, that Chavez's personal power was growing. But they couldn't stop it.

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) February 9, 2020

this is twitter, not an article, so of course the comparison is thin. I'll write more about it in due course. But this is a warning: the fact that many people can identify an assault on democratic institutions isn't the same thing as finding a way to stop it.

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) February 9, 2020