(07-06-2017, 11:43 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Lots of people have been miserable in history. But there's no inherent reason why they should support their bosses who create their misery (like Trump, and Republicans who represent the oligarchy) in response, instead of those politicians who oppose the bosses. Les miserables are themselves responsible to make a choice that will answer their needs, as opposed to their prejudices. If they don't, then they alone are mainly responsible for their own misery.
They may have an alternative to showing loyalty to brutal, exploitative bosses -- especially if those bosses have the power to torture or kill them. But to challenge those bosses they risk being killed, murdered, or both (as with so grisly means of execution as crucifixion, burning at the stake, breaking on the wheel, being crushed by elephant, or being fed alive to half-starved dogs) and perhaps getting loved ones similarly treated. Consider how brutally the Spanish put down the indigenous rebellion in Peru in 1781. See also Nero, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Francois Duvalier, Saddam Hussein, and ISIS. See also the norms of the feudal agrarian order of medieval Europe.
Brutality against helpless people is the key to maintaining an exploitative, repressive, inequitable hierarchy in political and economic life. Man is far more adept at creating Hell than at creating Paradise.
Should America go down the totalitarian route as did its three main enemies of World War II, then culpability will be not only that of the leaders themselves but also with anyone who does the dirty work, whether a judge who authorizes the torture of confessions out of innocent people, a camp guard who enforces the rules with sadistic means, a soldier who participates in massacres, someone who disseminates hateful propaganda on behalf of the regime, a policeman who arrests people solely for their identity, or someone who denounces pariahs in return for some reward (let us say some of the property of the damned). In such cases there is an appropriate sentence, one that might not be avoided of one doesn't face justice by courts established by occupying forces or some tribunal of revolutionary justice (imagine the July 20 plotters succeeding).
It's called HELL!
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.