12-12-2020, 04:10 PM
(12-11-2020, 09:58 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(12-11-2020, 09:21 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: You assigned one to Trump. Are you and Obama off limits? Obama is directly associated with one of the largest and most powerful personality cults this country has seen since the Nazi's. We got to see it in action and see what it can do last summer and we got to see the preparation for the violence and carnage that would ensue if the personality cult didn't get the President that it wanted in office. What's different for them here, we're here waiting for justification to wipe them off the face of the Earth and replace them with better people. However it gets done, the majority of country won't care when the time comes to eliminate them. I figure we are about a half a term away from the beginning of that endeavor.
So far, no one has defined what a personality cult is. I suppose it would be up to Pbrower and Einzige to define since they are the ones who want to use the term. Thus far the only difference is that the goals that the politician are working for are undesirable. That is not at all satisfactory. It changes too much between people.
It's a gradation. Insisting that one's image or symbols related to him be everywhere, even in incongruous places, would suggest a personality cult. Consequences for inadequate support could be anything from on-the-job discipline to criminal sanctions. Even inadvertent abuse of the image, as in using a newspaper with the image of Josef Stalin on it for wrapping fish in a market, might get one sent to the Gulag and a great likelihood of death.
Quote:The protest this summer were much more about ending a systematic racism that has been going on for centuries. Trump took actions which seem supportive of the racism and violence, while the blues sought to avoid both. I do not see the protests as demanding a specific candidate for president, or a specific style of leadership. Most protestors would support whoever the Democrats ended up nominating.
Trump endorsed the racism and expected others to trivialized occasional incidents in which black people are assumed to be criminals, perhaps in error, with the cops over-reacting lethally. As with a dictator, the President established what he expected people to think and how to speak of him. He has his fanatical supporters, and he seems to have expected the rest of us to go along. One of the salient characteristics of a personality cult is that people are to do things even if such sacrifices their freedom, their moral compass, and even their personal safety in support of the Leader.
I have seen characteristics of foreign personality cults in Trump and no analogue in American history. I recognize the commonplace yard signs... everyone has had those at one time or another. The news media have not gone along except for those that accept the Trump agenda without reservation as do their devoted users. The most benign explanation is that Donald Trump has adopted the practices stars of pop music who had their swooning fans, as did Frank Sinatra in his time (Sinatra did not need it, as his talent was solid enough to allow him to top the charts) or "Beatle-mania". This said, Sinatra didn't have command over anything and the Beatles did not set social policies.
With a personality cult one is expected to recognize the harm that people do, whether the degradation of political life, the destruction of civil liberties, corruption of the political process, or even military blunders as brilliance. His long and disorganized harangues and his insulting tweets are the antithesis of what one expects of a President. Ideally the expressions of a President (and it is acceptable that these be composed by a speechwriter) be clear, simple, and complete in a small passage. Even if one disagreed with him, Ronald Reagan did that well. Obama is much the same. Trump is muddled, excessively complex, and meandering... or he turns to shock-jock language of the sort that one associates with Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. Add to this the mass of Trump banners that people treat as if objects of reverence. I can see through it.
Quote:I do see Trump gathering a quite personal loyalty. It seems people are more loyal to him than to the party. This enables him to hold the party hostage, to force the Republicans to support absurd positions like his election stealing lawsuits. I see him also as focused much more on improving his own position rather than improving the party's positions or Americans of all political affiliations.
And what happens when he is gone? Unless they realize that they have been had, that their idol has clay feet and that Donald Trump. People who have fallen for one cult without facing consequences for its failure would seem the people most likely to fall for the next one. Some slimeball pol may be thinking of how to use the techniques of the Trump cult for the service of his ambition. Trump failed, but someone else might destroy American democracy with a personality cult more pervasive that has more ruthlessness and brutality behind it.
Quote:Obama and Michelle have cults of loyalty as well. They cared about being good representatives of their race, about being the best as humans that they could be, to give no excuse other than prejudice to vote against another person of color. They also pursued the blue agenda. They definitely had a different style than Trump. I'm just not sure I can put a finger on what might make one the head of a personality cult, the other honored for his achieving his ideals.
No worse than John and Jacqueline Kennedy. Obama is about as good a person as Trump isn't, and if that is not a huge difference, then what is? I can't see what segment of the American public that President Trump represents unless it is extreme narcissists or abusive sex fiends. I expect any President to pursue the agenda upon which he ran in the election. Incumbent pols run on their records and usually win -- or run from their records and invariably lose. Maybe at some time the Red Agenda will be the right one, and I am not going to say that that will be when America is in need of some deep chastisement for economic or cultural wickedness. Blue America is not largely associated with any "anything goes" ethos in personal lives.
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.
