10-10-2019, 08:09 AM
(10-10-2019, 01:16 AM)taramarie Wrote:(10-09-2019, 10:56 AM)David Horn Wrote:Yep sounds like him given he is a money hungry narcissist.(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.
You are talking about many of America's entrepreneurs and corporate bureaucrats, and many of our entertainers and pro athletes. Our system fosters narcissism in its economic elites. The system breaks narcissism in people who must do either hard labor or must do servile work. Certain roles in life teach people that they are expendable in the grand scheme of things, or at least the economic reality that defines the most materialistic society on Earth.
America used to have a more egalitarian ethos, and flagrant narcissists usually did not develop. Maybe that was because more of the business owners were farmers for whom production was the objective and means of sustenance, shopkeepers who had to connect customers to their needs, small-scale bankers who connected entrepreneurs to savers' money, and small-scale manufacturers who had to make things that fit customers' needs. America is less capitalist today because it has far fewer entrepreneurs as a part of the populace but it is also far more plutocratic because those few are in charge of command-and-control systems.
OK, the most flagrant narcissist at one time was the stereotyped prima donna of the opera; then came the Hollywood star. Careers of such people typically went into a fall when the flamboyance overpowered the talent, and such people became more objects as much of contempt than as delight. There were lessons to learn from that -- don't get too big for your breeches, as the saying went. But thanks in part to the economic priorities that people like Ronald Reagan and both Bushes got us directed, we ended up with more concentration of industry and more flagrant concentration of industry (monopolization and trusts are more profitable than small business, so such is a virtue and not a bane) and the debasement of any moral or cultural quality in education, and while the system created huge numbers of low-paying jobs as restaurant workers and store clerks the manufacturing jobs (remember well that the best route out of poverty for anyone not particularly bright or talented is the factory) faded away. So we got a more severe hierarchy, and people within the favored spots within the hierarchy could get away with more than they used to. I remember (when GI's were the bosses) that the typical GI executive was comparatively old, had been with the company from early adulthood (job-jumping was strongly held in disdain even if there was a pay raise as a career choice), and knew what went on in the mail-room, on the shop or (retail) sales floor, or in sales territories far away from headquarters because he (it was a male-chauvinist time) had been there in that company. Can you imagine someone as an executive in a company having gotten to the top of a bureaucratic organization in a bloated firm after having started as a laborer, clerk, or assembly-line worker? Above-all, the fifty-something executive had a fifty-something wife, and a house (his house was simply paid for) perhaps a little bigger than most. His car was a staid sedan, maybe a Buick instead of a prole Chevy or Ford. Absolutely never was the car a sportscar; by the time he could afford one he no longer needed or wanted one. Such executives could relate to the common man because he really was one. In contrast the typical executive comes from an MBA school... and the deficiencies are obvious, and the culturally-and morally-empty graduates that often come from such schools compensate in egregious consumerism that are theirs because they succeed at keeping others poor.
Donald Trump fits the pattern of the bad MBA. To be sure, we may not need a PhD in Russian literature to be a good leader, but I can assure you that Donald Trump seems less knowledgeable about science, philosophy, and high culture than did many factory workers fifty years ago. Nothing about him is genuine. He is a fake, a fraud, and a phony.
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.