Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can!

[Bob Butler 54]

(07-05-2016, 08:09 PM)Dan Wrote:

I haven't pretended to understand Trump.  I've not been pleased with his way of handling people, nor his understanding of foreign policy.

But he actually got it sort of kind of right.  The Middle East still has strong elements of Agricultural Age values floating around.  In the time before democracy, the times of peace and plenty are the times when strong leaders (Fill-In-The-Blank the Great) crushed everyone else around them.  They were so strong and so willing to use that strength that folks followed their lead and dared not rebel.

Your typical westerner, seeing Stalin, Saddam, Assad or ISIS using this approach to government is instinctively appalled.  We're apt to react with words and phrases like 'terrorist', 'state sponsored terror' and 'crimes against humanity'.   We've been rebelling against the Stalin - Saddam - ISIS style of government by atrocity for a while.  In the distant past, during our Dark and Middle Ages, we experienced and endured it to various degrees.  We've learned how to recognize it and our values suggest it ought to be quashed firmly and often.

The difference is that when one lives in a culture that has always clung to the Agricultural Age pattern, state sponsored terror is the primary example of successful government.  The time of peace and plenty is the time when no one dares draw the attention of the Saddam - Stalin - Assad style strong and ruthless leader.

I'll even acknowledge that Cynic Hero as well as Trump has some aspects of the old way of thinking right.  A return to Agricultural Age values, where human rights and soft love-thy-neighbor values are replaced by ruthless application of brutal force is a plausible path that worked for lots of cultures over a long period of time.

But I'm stuck in my partisan Western value system.  Authoritarian terrorist autocratic government ought to become a thing of the past. 

Now, on Trump's behalf, if one can follow the above 'logic', you can say he might understand the Middle East better than a lot of folks immersed in Western Values.

On the other hand, the last thing we need is a President of the United States who would want to put an Agricultural Age state terror foreign policy into practice.