(01-03-2017, 09:07 PM)Danilynn Wrote: I wish California would leave, just so Eric can have his hippie utopia and the rest of us can see it burn.
January 20 will be the most fabulous birthday I have had in forever watching my President Trump be inaugurated, unlike my birthday in 2009, and 2013. those were awful get drunk sort of birthdays watching that lame duck on his way out, get sworn in.
Somebody else had an idea of how to make his country great again. He too was an angry demagogue, and he knew how to appeal to the basest instincts in people while pretending that those instincts were healthy and normal. That is the most dangerous leader possible.
From my favorite horror movie (it's not usually considered a horror movie, but all the elements are there -- freakish characters, bad things happening to good people, and we all know what is likely to happen to the only likeable characters in the movie -- the German Jews -- after Hitler destroys liberty in the Weimar Republic).
I have a love-hate relationship with the German (extending to German-speaking lands in Austria and Switzerland) part of my ancestry because of the Nazis, an indelible part of the German historical tradition. Yes, I love Goethe and Beethoven, but one no more needs be German to love those two than one needs be Japanese to appreciate Hokusai and Kurosawa. I don't have such a love-hate relationship with the British part of my heritage. Sure, they have made some mistakes as colonial rulers, but they have never herded people into fake showers that prove to be gas chambers or mowed people down for their religious origin. Shakespeare and Hitchcock are wonderful, and the British legal system is a solid basis for democracy. Just look at the political (if not economic) success that India is. India will be the world's most powerful democracy as of January 20 because the USA will no longer be a democracy.
I would not have the same misgivings it the President to be inaugurated not so demagogic and bigoted-- like Jeb Bush, John Kasich, or Mitt Romney. I see signs of someone who will act like a dictator. Donald Trump is a shallow, vindictive fellow who would be a career criminal if he were brought up poor (juvenile delinquent who becomes a gangster); had he been middle class he might have become the sort of real-estate hustler who cuts deals that you don't really like (count your fingers after you shake hands with him, for you might have one fewer finger, so to speak). He is the sort of leader that America rejected by choosing to be a republic instead of bringing over a monarch -- the king who can start an inquisition against his own citizens if he dislikes part of them or starts a war if he gets an offensive response from another monarch.
Yes, the Establishment has failed, and when it fails, demagogues readily exploit the one great weakness of a democracy. We will all pay a price for that failure -- that includes you. You will see it later than I do, but you may be hurt far more. I am old and have Asperger's Syndrome, so being poor in an America that values only wealth and the sybaritic indulgence that it allows, death can solve my problems. Your career depends upon regulations that require an elaborate system of dealing with effluents, and if those regulations get gutted, then you might be out of a job with a bad pre-existing condition in a medical system in which people get bled for their money and die when the money runs out. You have more family ties than I do, so you are at risk of great grief should Donald Trump start a war for his glorification or the profit of his cronies should loved ones go off to war and return in body bags. Donald Trump is not a Christian gentleman. He isn't a Jewish, Muslim, Zoroastrian, Bahai, Hindu, Buddhist, pagan, or atheist gentleman, either.
You are not a bad person. I would probably find you very likeable on a one-to-one basis. But good people fell for Lenin, for Hitler, for Peron, and for Castro, too. I see Donald Trump, and I see someone worse than any leader of America since George III was King and ruled America with an iron fist. If I had a proclivity for making posters, I might have one of George III to which I affix the words "MISS ME YET?"
This is not quite the ending of the whole story; we all know, all too well, what follows. The Emcee represents the depravity that made the rise of the Antichrist possible. I'm sure that you would recognize Michigan Avenue in Detroit as no less vile than the Berlin in which Cabaret takes place.
I see the Emcee as a satanic figure, someone who has debased German cultural life severely -- and he knows enough to leave Germany while the going is good. But I am nearly broke, I am too old to start over, and if I leave I might keep someone who has even more at stake from finding a safe haven. Donald Trump makes me wish that I had chain-smoked my way into an early grave -- he gives me that much foreboding. I wish I had dual citizenship.
Long Live the Queen!
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.