07-01-2016, 09:21 AM
I see Donald Trump as a real-life J. R. Ewing, someone who can get away with despotic management as the boss of a business empire -- hollow and unfeeling. He may care about others' image of him if such serves his ends, but he cares more about his image than about the people who hold the image.
As the most powerful man in the world, his hollowness and shallowness would make him a disaster. He would try to govern like a dictatorial CEO, which is incompatible with the Constitutional reality. He can fire the entire staff of a resort with impunity, but he can't fire a Justice of the Supreme Court, the Governor of California, a Senator from Michigan, or the anchorman of ABC, CBS, or NBC nightly newscasts. He might love to stifle Rachel Maddow, but he won't get away with it. She'd go on Canadian TV, and cable companies would pick up the channel carrying her show.
What he says about foreigners and people that he considers questionable about their American-ness he dares not say of people whose American identity is unquestioned. But he will question how American anyone is once that person disputes his claim to truth.
Post by Yours Truly on another Forum.
Donald Trump will make George W. Bush look benign by contrast. Dubya may have been a buffoon, but he simply ignored his opponents, trying to make them irrelevant. Donald Trump will vilify his enemies and opponents, and what his staffers have shown to hecklers may be what some secret police new to America does to people who get in the way. Some of us might want to look into other countries as places to live in the event of a Trump Presidency, especially if our jobs have no geographic requirement. Maybe you will prefer Coimbra to Columbus, Tucuman to Tulsa, Munich to Miami, Warsaw to Washington, Bangalore to Baltimore, or even Shanghai to Chicago for the duration.
By "Warsaw" I do not mean Warsaw, Indiana.
As the most powerful man in the world, his hollowness and shallowness would make him a disaster. He would try to govern like a dictatorial CEO, which is incompatible with the Constitutional reality. He can fire the entire staff of a resort with impunity, but he can't fire a Justice of the Supreme Court, the Governor of California, a Senator from Michigan, or the anchorman of ABC, CBS, or NBC nightly newscasts. He might love to stifle Rachel Maddow, but he won't get away with it. She'd go on Canadian TV, and cable companies would pick up the channel carrying her show.
What he says about foreigners and people that he considers questionable about their American-ness he dares not say of people whose American identity is unquestioned. But he will question how American anyone is once that person disputes his claim to truth.
Post by Yours Truly on another Forum.
Donald Trump will make George W. Bush look benign by contrast. Dubya may have been a buffoon, but he simply ignored his opponents, trying to make them irrelevant. Donald Trump will vilify his enemies and opponents, and what his staffers have shown to hecklers may be what some secret police new to America does to people who get in the way. Some of us might want to look into other countries as places to live in the event of a Trump Presidency, especially if our jobs have no geographic requirement. Maybe you will prefer Coimbra to Columbus, Tucuman to Tulsa, Munich to Miami, Warsaw to Washington, Bangalore to Baltimore, or even Shanghai to Chicago for the duration.
By "Warsaw" I do not mean Warsaw, Indiana.
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.