Great Power contentions

[Furunculus]

I heard the exact same rhetoric about Trump when his supporters were trying to convince themselves that he isn't intellectually subnormal.

there really is very little to recommend the argument that Boris is substantially similar in character, capabilities, or outlook.
the trivial, sure, and he does play to that. whether we choose to believe his deliberate artifice is on us.

https://www.theatlantic.com/internat...ohnson/601957/

I'm not British, but I would question how much he is disliked for clownishness.

I don't believe that is representative of the visceral hatred with which some hold him.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...-chaos/619010/

Frank Luntz, an American pollster who was friends with Johnson at Oxford, told me. “People are more patient with him, they are more forgiving of him, because he’s not a typical politician.”

And there’s been a lot to forgive.

Johnson has written about Africans with “watermelon smiles” and described gay men as “tank-topped bumboys.” As foreign secretary, he put a fellow citizen at risk when he mistakenly claimed that she was in Iran to teach journalism, giving Tehran an excuse to charge her with spreading propaganda. As prime minister he has erected a trade barrier within his own country as the price of Brexit—subjecting Northern Ireland to EU regulations while the rest of the country is free to do its own thing.

That nothing ever seems to stick drives his opponents mad. He won the Conservative leadership just weeks after it was reported that an argument with his fiancée, Carrie Symonds, became so heated, neighbors called the police. He won the biggest parliamentary majority in a generation despite breaking promises over when and how he would secure a Brexit deal. Time and again, when controversy has engulfed him, he has emerged unscathed.

Part of his electoral genius lies in his ability to stop his opponents from thinking straight: In their hatred for him, they cannot see why he is popular, nor what to do about it.