Angelo Codevilla has written a long--too long--and frustrating critique of where We The People stand at this moment in American history:
The United States of America is now a classic oligarchy. The clarity that it has brought to our situation by recognizing this fact is its only virtue.
That Codevilla must have been foaming at the mouth as he typed seems clear from the second sentence of the sub-title: Could someone please tell me what the antecedent for the pronouns "it" and "its" is? I can only conclude that the antecedent must be "Trump's Wake", poorly as that fits. The idea seems to be something like this:
The clarity that [the Trump presidency] has brought to our situation by [revealing that the United States of America is now a classic oligarchy] is [the Trump presidency's] only virtue.
Having plowed through the overlong article, it seems that Codevilla's basic beef--beyond his repeatedly expressed disdain for Trump as a person--is that Trump didn't single handedly reverse the downward trajectory of the American republic into a squalid, kleptocratic and amoral oligarchy. Every disappointment, every failure to achieve a total transformation life, is attributed by Codevilla to Trump and to Trump alone.
Two examples will have to suffice.
