At What Point Does Surprise Cease to Be a Surprise? (🇺🇸 US-UK🇬🇧 Edition)

At What Point Does Surprise Cease to Be a Surprise?For nearly a decade, Donald Trump has behaved much as Donald Trump always behaves. Yet each new conflict with the press, each attack on critics, and each institutional clash is greeted as though it were an unexpected development.Why?In this week’s essay, I explore the curious habit of being surprised by the predictable. If a volcano erupts after years of warning signs, is the eruption really the story—or is the surprise? Somewhere along the way, Washington appears to have transformed astonishment from a reaction into a profession.At what point does surprise cease being a response and become a business model?— Dunneagin📖 To read the text of this essay and explore the catalog, visit Civics Unhinged on Paragraph.☕ Reader editions and collected volumes—including Volumes 1, 2, 3, and The Liar’s Guide to Autocracy—are available on the Fourthwall bookshelf.Reader and listener correspondence is always welcome at [email protected]. Questions, observations, or a note on how you first stumbled into the chronicle are particularly appreciated.— Civics Unhinged | F.P. Dunneagin Get full access to ~ Civics Unhinged: Dispatches From Trumpistan ~ at dunneagin.substack.com/subscribe