I see much of the Islamic world undergoing the authoritarian way of much of the Christian world eighty years ago with fascism. By 1939 there was no democratic society in Europe except France, Switzerland, Luxemburg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the UK, and Ireland. An Orwellian nightmare, or worse, was the rule from Lisbon to Venice to Berlin to Moscow. By the summer of 1940 practically the whole of Europe lived in the shadow of the concentration camp. Was something wrong with Christendom?
This is a 4T, and institutions undergo the severest distress in such times. Just look at America, where we endure the greatest political distress since the Civil War. We need another FDR, and instead we have Donald Trump, a hollow narcissist who has no understanding of the character of our institutions.
We in America have economic elites who believe that all Americans rightly yield all to them, toiling to the extent that the human body is capable in return for the privilege of living to suffer another day. Those elites did not fully consolidate power, but they seem to dream of it -- or enough of them do. Those elites do not want a prosperous and independent middle class: they want a world of lords and peons. Nothing in their culture -- not even formal education -- can negate the worst tendencies possible in elites.
I look at narcissism and I see people who get away with it. Someone who does real work is invariably obliged to show some deferential humility toward customers and bosses. Nobody does humility for the fun of it; one does it for survival. Figure that someone who milks cows or sweeps away cow droppings in the dairy gets little opportunity to exercise any elevated sense of self. A retail sales clerk or a fast-food worker , just like a domestic servant, learns his place early. The narcissism that so pervades America's administrative elites was not so common among GI executives who had risen from the shop floor. Can you imagine someone doing so now?
We have our own problems to sort out in America. The Islamic world has bigger ones, including entrenched tyranny and government responsible to none but an elite. It is easy to see the likes of Moammar Qaddafi and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as diametric opposites just as people saw Nazis and Stalinists as diametric opposites. Such neglects the similarities of repression and brutality of totalitarian regimes. I am tempted to believe that so long as the economic elites have their view that the rest of Humanity (and not only Americans) has the duty to suffer as greatly as possible for as little as possible so that they get the privilege of surviving another day for much the same. That will not end well. This is a 4T, and vile institutions and practices either entrench themselves or implode.
This is a 4T, and institutions undergo the severest distress in such times. Just look at America, where we endure the greatest political distress since the Civil War. We need another FDR, and instead we have Donald Trump, a hollow narcissist who has no understanding of the character of our institutions.
We in America have economic elites who believe that all Americans rightly yield all to them, toiling to the extent that the human body is capable in return for the privilege of living to suffer another day. Those elites did not fully consolidate power, but they seem to dream of it -- or enough of them do. Those elites do not want a prosperous and independent middle class: they want a world of lords and peons. Nothing in their culture -- not even formal education -- can negate the worst tendencies possible in elites.
I look at narcissism and I see people who get away with it. Someone who does real work is invariably obliged to show some deferential humility toward customers and bosses. Nobody does humility for the fun of it; one does it for survival. Figure that someone who milks cows or sweeps away cow droppings in the dairy gets little opportunity to exercise any elevated sense of self. A retail sales clerk or a fast-food worker , just like a domestic servant, learns his place early. The narcissism that so pervades America's administrative elites was not so common among GI executives who had risen from the shop floor. Can you imagine someone doing so now?
We have our own problems to sort out in America. The Islamic world has bigger ones, including entrenched tyranny and government responsible to none but an elite. It is easy to see the likes of Moammar Qaddafi and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as diametric opposites just as people saw Nazis and Stalinists as diametric opposites. Such neglects the similarities of repression and brutality of totalitarian regimes. I am tempted to believe that so long as the economic elites have their view that the rest of Humanity (and not only Americans) has the duty to suffer as greatly as possible for as little as possible so that they get the privilege of surviving another day for much the same. That will not end well. This is a 4T, and vile institutions and practices either entrench themselves or implode.
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.