02-10-2021, 02:54 AM
(02-09-2021, 06:59 PM)random3 Wrote: You know that you live in the Twilight Zone when the US is a bankrupt warmongering police state and Americans look you in the eye and say that the USA is a peaceful and free country with a balanced budget.
Donald Trump would have been a perfect model for America spiraling into despotism, except that such would have been absurd during the lifetime of the great Rod Serling (1924-1973). creator of The Twilight Zone. COVID-19 has plenty of Serling-like material for writers living in this time, but it would have been too absurd to have the credibility of fiction before 2020.
Under our wannabe dictator Donald Trump (the second impeachment suggests such), all of the usual attributes of liberal democracy (civil liberties, rule of law, and political pluralism, among others) degraded. Now that he is off the political scene we Americans must do some soul-searching to avoid a repeat by someone who gets the "Dictator's Playbook" right the next time... you know, starting by violence against and persecution of the formal opposition before purging his Party... even if (and especially if, I must say) by "my" democrats.
America is running deficits as if it were in a shooting war. At this point Joe Biden is a wartime President because this enemy
![[Image: 160px-Coronaviruses_004_lores.jpg]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/Coronaviruses_004_lores.jpg/160px-Coronaviruses_004_lores.jpg)
occupies human bodies like an occupying army like those regimes associated with these flags occupied nations
![[Image: 125px-Flag_of_Germany_%281935%E2%80%931945%29.svg.png]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Flag_of_Germany_%281935%E2%80%931945%29.svg/125px-Flag_of_Germany_%281935%E2%80%931945%29.svg.png)
![[Image: 180px-War_flag_of_the_Imperial_Japanese_...29.svg.png]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6f/War_flag_of_the_Imperial_Japanese_Army_%281868%E2%80%931945%29.svg/180px-War_flag_of_the_Imperial_Japanese_Army_%281868%E2%80%931945%29.svg.png)
![[Image: 125px-Flag_of_Democratic_Kampuchea.svg.png]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_Democratic_Kampuchea.svg/125px-Flag_of_Democratic_Kampuchea.svg.png)
![[Image: 125px-Flag_of_Iraq_%281991%E2%80%932004%29.svg.png]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Flag_of_Iraq_%281991%E2%80%932004%29.svg/125px-Flag_of_Iraq_%281991%E2%80%932004%29.svg.png)
![[Image: 125px-Flag_of_the_Islamic_State_of_Iraq_...t2.svg.png]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ed/Flag_of_the_Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant2.svg/125px-Flag_of_the_Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant2.svg.png)
Donald Trump appeased COVID-19 even after it started occupying America, and for that he can burn in Hell, so far as I am concerned. At least Neville Chamberlain found a point at which appeasement no longer worked.
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.