06-12-2019, 10:59 AM
(06-08-2019, 08:20 AM)David Horn Wrote: So far, this is conjecture meant to capture the lead in the current news cycle. Credit where it's due; Trump never comes up short on blazing distractions.
The memory is the nemesis of the would-be tyrant. I think of 1984, where much of the intellectual activity is the rewriting of history to serve the regime... of course modeled upon such totalitarian states as the Third Reich and Stalin's Soviet Union.
Broadcast television is perfect for allowing the sort of historical manipulation that tyrants like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Saddam did...and Putin does now with much success and that Trump bumbles at. It needs no archive of the past except to be edited at will, and keeping everything au-courant ensures that nothing matters but the current reality of power.
Trump's biggest enemy is more the educated conservative than the left-wing populist. As a liberal I find it far easier to hit Donald Trump from the traditionalist Right than from the Left. A great store of wisdom existed before Donald Trump and it will long survive him because it remains useful. The rules of logic that the Greeks of antiquity knew are valid today. Even the most advanced technology more likely defends old truth than promotes falsehood. The computer has gone from a laboratory curiosity useful to scientists and engineers to something useful to those who majored in English and history. The problem is that any moron or crank can use a computer for his own purposes, as with the pests who peddle their conspiracy theories, likely second-hand.
Some of us are learning old truths -- most importantly that objective reality exists and that reliable means of discerning it from nonsense are within the range of learning. Maybe we have gone as far as we can with technology improving our material lives, except perhaps for medical miracles (cure cancer? undo dementia?). 600 channels of cable TV mean less than 15 channels of watchable television. No miracle cure yet exists for pompous ignorance and deceit except the costly consequences of personal failure and social stigma.
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.