excellent. and I think you're on relatively safe ground talking about Palin as she's not directly of the moment, even if she helps to explain it.
it has a fitting symmetry, and it encapsulates/brushes upon a wide swathe of the dark side of international politics in so far in this century
energy, Central Asia, democratic retreat and autocratic advance, right-wing populism, fake news and the death of facts, etc
the transition from post-Cold War neoliberal hegemony thru the breakdown of that order (to the extent it existed) to wherever we are now