10-09-2019, 01:01 PM
(10-09-2019, 10:56 AM)David Horn Wrote:(10-08-2019, 03:46 PM)taramarie Wrote:(10-08-2019, 01:21 PM)David Horn Wrote:(10-07-2019, 02:41 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Trump is asking other governments to invent conspiracy theories in order to smear his political opponents. He uses the office for his own financial gain. He should be carted out of the oval office and taken to jail.
True that! Trump is the first POTUS to totally ignore the responsibilities of the office, while exercising powers for his own gain -- many that are specious at best. If the GOP office holders who back him now continue until he finishes a second term, there won't be much 'America' to pass o to the next POTUS.
Questionable. Here, I have done a bit of reading. But I doubt you need to look so far for an example. But as an American, you should know more. The 5 most notorious presidents in US history
The Presidents on your list were all repugnant in their own way, but Trump is unique in using the office as a business opportunity. Worse, he is totally amoral, and sees no issue with screwing everyone as long as he gains. He's not quite shaping up as our Hitler -- not yet, anyway. That may change if he feels threatened.
Mercifully he is too old and infirm (especially mentally) to be around long enough to consolidate a full-blown dictatorship. He has no obvious understudy, although Mike Pence is a piece of work. Pence lacks the charisma with which to convince Americans to accede to the formation of a fascistic Christian and Corporate State. Trump has put the GOP in disarray, and if the GOP is ever to recover from Trump it will need a President who is best described as a right-wing version of Barack Obama -- as reactionary as Obama is liberal, someone who sees faith as an objective instead of as a consequence, but scrupulously respects formalities of law and precedent . Republicans have yet to realize that Obama is a good President and not the man with a tail and the Mark of the Beast. That will take time. After five disastrous elections for the Presidency the Republicans nominated someone who avoided taking cheap shots at the New Deal and Social Security... and won.
One danger is that Trump has infuriated three entities with which conservative Republicans have usually gotten along well -- federal law enforcement, the CIA, and the Armed Services. This triad resembles those that have overthrown erratic regimes in other countries in military coups. We do not have a coup in our history, but that may say more about the Presidents that we have had than about the permanent power of the police-intelligence-military triad. Obama got along with them because he is a likable fellow who does not challenge tradition except when the tradition (such as the ban on same-sex marriage) is moribund.
The Republican Party is responsible for the preservation of the Trump Presidency. It can save him through some perfunctory dismissal of articles of impeachment, but if it does so it may be on the way to a long time in the political wilderness, if not oblivion.
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.