(06-13-2016, 09:40 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(06-13-2016, 08:08 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: The Trump Campaign has revoked the Washington Post's press credentials. Smooth move Exlax ... cutting off access to a major media outlet.
He does have an unusual approach of bullying people who say things he doesn't like. It sort of worked during the primary season. He convinced the Republican establishment not to gang up on him long enough for him to get over the top. He seems to enjoy making up rules on the fly for how campaigns ought to be run. It seems awful that Obama is planning to campaign for Hillary? He shouldn't do so as Trump said so?
It's one thing to behave this way as a candidate. I for one wouldn't want to see a president with an instinct to silence the opposition. I saw enough of that with Nixon. Trump seems to have much more ambitions along that line. He seems very ready to be open about it, to use open in your face stuff rather than Nixon's tricky covert approach.
But some Americans like tha bullying. Authoritarians love to show others what they claim to know -- if necessary, with beatings. Does anyone want to suggest that such a view of the world is easier to achieve if one has much childhood experience with corporal punishment? So beat people enough times and they will never show disrespect toward their superiors, show unorthodox views on religion or politics, or mock such a virtue as patriotism.
Corporal punishment teaches something else -- that force overpowers all else, including reasoning and conscience. The only reality in a world of force is power, and they have learned that from childhood.
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.