04-01-2017, 09:41 AM
Donald Trump does not need artists or scientists as supporters. He needs the police, the tax-collectors, and the military to support the Master Class of which he is a part. The only intellectuals for whom he has any use are those who laud him as the most wonderful thing to have ever happened to America.
The irony is that the commercially-successful often have far better taste than Donald Trump. Of course you did see my thread on 'dictatorial style'. Bad taste does not make a bad person; the semi-literate have always been vulnerable to Kitsch. But the semi-literate are usually harmless. For someone like Donald Trump, nothing matters but material indulgence and his overweening ego.
So what can PBS do that he hates? Expose the corruption of Trump, expose his emptiness as a person, and suggest that climate change is real. It can offer an alternative to the stupefying bilge like reality television that so infests the American media. It can show us what needs preservation and rediscovery.
The irony is that the commercially-successful often have far better taste than Donald Trump. Of course you did see my thread on 'dictatorial style'. Bad taste does not make a bad person; the semi-literate have always been vulnerable to Kitsch. But the semi-literate are usually harmless. For someone like Donald Trump, nothing matters but material indulgence and his overweening ego.
So what can PBS do that he hates? Expose the corruption of Trump, expose his emptiness as a person, and suggest that climate change is real. It can offer an alternative to the stupefying bilge like reality television that so infests the American media. It can show us what needs preservation and rediscovery.
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.