Is Donald Trump a cult leader?

[pbrower2a]

(07-24-2020, 07:38 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Trump is a cult leader and a fascist. And he has a 40% loyal following of cult believers.

Jason Stanley appeared on Amanpour and Company yesterday and outlined how the USA is becoming a fascist country as part of a larger world trend that includes such leaders as Bolsonaro, Modi, Putin, Orban, Duterte and so on. It's getting to be a long list, and many have been voted in democratically. Today Erdogen celebrated with older people in Turkey the restoration of the museum at Hagia Sophia to the status of a state-imposed religion in its right-wing culture war and its imposed fascist state, democratically elected by a deceived Turkish public by a small margin and facilitated by repression and demonizing.

The traits of fascism are focused on power, loyalty, demonization of "the other" (often defined as another race, nationality, ethnic group, religion, etc.), corruption of democracy, creation of chaos for political purposes, and loyalty to the leader rather than the interests of the people. Everything is defined in terms of the threats of the enemy, and a strongman is needed to represent "us" and protect us from the enemy. This is cultism, entertainment, reality show, and constant war as in 1984 against the enemy.

https://www.pbssocal.org/programs/amanpo...us-q8l4ww/





We like to pick on our favorite "American" Trumpist here, Classic Xer, and he obliges us with his posts that live up to our stereotype. I think he is a perfect representation of the trend toward fascism in the USA. "Fascism" can be an extreme label to pin on people to create polarization, but it can also be an accurate one. According to Classic Xer, the enemy is those who are not "American." But he does not define this term, and I conclude that what it refers to is opposition to criticism of the country. We have seen that since the sixties when critics of the Vietnam War were told to love it or leave it, and George Wallace ran against the critics screaming "stand up for America" across the country. Now we have a president who offered to "make America great again" and put "America First."

I ordinarily challenge Classic X'er with the question, when he tries to claim that there is one set of ideological beliefs that define one as American and that everything else is not American... "What does it mean to be American?" So far as I can tell, he has not yet said what "American" means.   

Quote:Trump has proceeded to routinely fire anyone in his administration who was not loyal enough to him and/or did not carry out policies of enabling corrupt business authority to abuse their power without the oversight that administrations provided through their agencies. Trump has stoked fears, prejudice and hatred of non-Americans, setting up concentration camps on the border, and now is bringing these security forces to cities run by "left-wing Democrats" in order to put down protests in the name of restoring law and order.

Jason Stanley recognizes the similarity between mob bosses and dictators. Competence does not matter, and obedience is everything. Bad leaders depend heavily upon fear, without which they are helpless. Good leaders develop consensus among people who can get things done and get desirable results for people other than themselves. There's nothing subtle about Mafia style.
   

Quote:Jason Stanley points out that this invasion by unidentified security forces of our cities is not protecting law and order, but creating lawlessness. When police are shooting poor blacks on the street, that is not law and order, it is lawlessness and chaos. When new institutions set up to protect the state from enemies are used to demonize immigrants and repress protesters, this is lawlessness, not law and order.

Of course it is the chaos that a dictator uses as a pretext for a complete clampdown to bring genuine safety. 

Quote:Our USA has become a backward, helpless giant full of problems. We are loaded with an out-of-proportion prison population. Our health care system is the most expensive and least effective in the world. Our rate of infant mortality is worse than other developed countries. We have a culture of gun obsession that makes our country by far the leader in gun violence and crime among developed nations. We have systemic racism, racial profiling and police brutality. We are the country that most contributes to climate change. Inequality of opportunity has become instituted. Our democracy itself faces threats such as voter suppression and money domination. We have a dominant political philosophy of trickle-down Reaganomics that entirely handcuffs the effectiveness of our government to handle and implement solutions and challenge the power of those who abuse the people. Our current government is merely a group of loyalists to the fake president.

When Trump is gone, will such remain so?

OK, the economic elite uses poverty as a tool to ensure that wages be low and that workers be in abject fear. Is that necessary for economic success for us all or can we have something else?

Quote:The Classic Xer types reply to this necessary critique and its call for solutions by labeling it un-American. Those who voice these concerns are called the "liberal culture" that is the enemy of "the American culture." This indicates that Classic Xer, and those like him, are fascists, because this "American culture" is simply the defense of the country as it is and opposition to those who criticize "America." "America" is the authority who must be protected against its "enemies" who criticize it. The "enemies" are anyone who voices dissent, who seeks solutions and who wants to advance our country forward. Classic Xer offers no other definition of this "American culture" except this repression of dissent and defense against "the other." The "other" is a combo of lazy welfare recipients, immigrants, non-whites and well-educated liberals.

We liberals have been around for a long time, and we will be around long after Donald Trump. Sometimes it takes a critic to improve us. It would be a bad music teacher who allowed us to play music out of tune or to play wrong notes without correcting us. Trump has done things that 43 other Presidents (that's to avoid counting Cleveland twice) have never done not for a lack of imagination but instead out of contempt for old decencies in American life. 

Quote:I must admit that I also think the Republican Party as it exists today is illegitimate. But I want a truly democratic government and a new set of political parties rather than a monolithic Democratic Party to emerge from our 4T crisis that we are now in the middle of.

What happened when the Federalists died? The big-tent Democratic Party split because it was too unwieldy. What happened when the Whigs disintegrated? A few years later the Republican (Free Soil) Party formed. 

Maybe we end up splitting between Christian Democrats and Social Democrats. Maybe we end up with a political system with a structure more like that of Germany than like what we now have.