May 24, 2020
I politely suggest— the best way to understand this blog (and get a laugh out of it, i/o getting angry at me) would be to click on the movie title The Great Dictator and watch Charlie Chaplin do his best to humiliate Adolph Hitler. Then, when you stop laughing, read the rest of this blog.
After watching Trump’s campaign for the office of the Presidency and his first three and a half years in that office, I am more certain than ever that Donald J. Trump has a serious ‘Little Hitler’ complex. And, if it wasn’t for Mitch McConnell being the head of Trump’s brain-dead, but dreaded, SS troops in the Republican Senate, Donald would have been long gone from the American political scene—years ago.
I may be incredibly naive because I can’t possibly understand how and why Donald J. Trump is allowed to ‘get away with’ the things he does and says. From his January, 2019 statement, ”I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and not lose any voters!”(did that mean that no-one on Fifth Avenue could possibly have voted for him, or that he was truly invincible???) to his present claim that he is personally, totally “Above the law”, he acts more like a two-bit dictator than the President of what used-to-be considered a democracy-in-progress. His ‘role models’ are strong-man-killers like Putin of Russia, Erdogan of Turkey and Un of North Korea. He praises the actions of Bolsonaro of Brazil and Duterte of the Phillipines –another pair of notorious killers. Anyone in his government who criticizes his actions (or fails to praise his every proclamation) loses his or her job. Maybe the difference between a two-bit dictator and a real one is that in a ‘two-bit’ dictatorship people lose their jobs, but in a real dictatorship people lose their heads? Sorry folks, I think we are getting much to close for comfort to some form of an attempted dictatorship while watching Donald J. Trump spinning out of control in his present paranoia as his ‘great economy’ tumbles down Humpty Dumpty’s fake wall of support built on our level of government and personal debt.
Frankly, I doubt that Trump has the brains or organizational skills to pull off a real dictatorship in our un-united States but we could come very close to having a Fascist government if Donald is allowed to stay around long enough. There is a frightening similarity between Hitler’s ‘Brown shirts’ and the typical hoodlum bunch at Trump rallies. Of course there is a great dissimilarity between the 1940’s and the two thousand late teens. Hitler’s hatred of Europe’s Jews is now replaced by Trump’s hatred of our black and brown minorities –that could possibly soon become our majorities. In a country founded by and made up of immigrants, immigrants are now the main target of our President’s hatred. Did anyone really doubt that Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make American Great Again!” was really a cry to “Make America White Again!” The only way I can understand or explain Trump’s election victory is to accept the idea that enough of our electorate shared Trump’s vision of identity politics to overlook his personal defects and vote for him—when another totally flawed candidate was the only alternative. I offer as evidence of that seemingly simplistic theory the characteristics of Trump’s most loyal supporters in the Republican hierarchy: Caucasian, white-supremacists, racists, bigots, southern evangelicals, economically privileged, ultra-conservative, males. Our most endangered and most threatened species in America. All you need to do to describe the typical lower class Trump supporter is to take the term ‘economically privileged’ out of that list of characteristics and put ‘without a college degree’ in its’ place.
Donald Trump shares (at least) one other major character defect with Adolph Hitler. That is, his obsession with the concept that he alone knows the correct course of action in any time of trial or crisis. Just as if Hitler had only listened to the advice of his staff members, he might have won the war, Trump, if he had listened to his medical staff, might have saved thousands of lives that were lost to the Corona virus and significantly lessened the economic impact it had on Trump’s economy. And, like Hitler, Trump considers himself an absolute genius –when, in reality, he is a total fool. Hitler suffered and Trump suffers from an excessive amount of ego—and both the German and United States populations suffered enormously because of it. And last, I suspect both Hitler and Trump also shared a death wish. Hitler to his secret bunker with Eva Braun while the Allies rained hell-fire on Berlin and Trump will probably go to Mar-a-Lago and continue taking his hydroxychloroquine, as his Republican party support disintegrates—but I doubt that his wife, Melania, will go with him. She seems to have a mind of her own.
Has Donald Trump been good for America? I believe the answer is, “Hell No!” Will the American electorate have learned anything from his reign of terror? My answer is, “Probably not!” What is going to happen next? The only answer I can give now is, “I wish I knew!” The corollary question is: Have either the DNC or the RNC learned anything to help correct the mess in our electoral process the two party system and the Electoral College has created? I am certain the answer to that question is, “Most definitely not!” If you don’t believe we are now living in very dangerous times you either have not looked at your 401K lately, or you have your head in the sand. As one of my favorite politically astute song writers, Bob Dylan, wrote and sang, “The times they are a’changing!” Boy, are they ever! All that has to happen now to lead to total chaos, is to have Donald go into the hospital with a serious case of cardiac arrest, due to his taking of his espoused preventative for the virus. Donald continues to travel and expose himself without a mask. Does he also have a ‘Superman’ complex, or is he just trying stupidly to prove his invincibility? Stay tuned!
I believe there is only one ‘thing’ that Trump will do, if he stays alive and in office until the election. He will do anything and everything the Supreme Court will allow to prevent voters from casting ballots in the November 3rd election. I suspect he will even try to destroy the Post Office if the possibility of mail-in balloting is used to protect the electorate from the corona virus.
Hubris asked me if I had ever seen a ‘cornered’ rat. When I said that I had never seen a rat in those conditions, he said, “Look at Donald Trump—and you will know what I mean. Trump is looking just like the rat he really is. He sees himself losing the coming election by big numbers and he is going to do everything possible to get out of his bad corner. Let’s get over thinking about a soon-to-be-dead rat and go for our Friday evening ride!” I saddled up and shouted, “Hi Ho Hubris, Aawaay!” Until next week—Adios, and stay Safe Amigos!
Lou
Copyright, May 22, 2020, Louis J. Christen