01-05-2020, 05:21 AM
If Trump should be re-elected, then democracy dies in America and will not revive until America endures some catastrophe that destroys the system. If he does not start apocalyptic war, then President Trump initiates a 1T of extreme repression, inequality, and perhaps brutality. America would be at best much like Spain after the Civil War, when the only modernity tolerated would be the techniques of warfare and repression. America would be the sort of country in which stupidity becomes a survival value as a defense of sanity. Americans would be obliged to find silver linings in every bit of economic and personal rottenness.
Let me remind us of how things were at the time in which the barbarians put an end to the Western Roman Empire. The common man, overworked by his feudal lords, overtaxed for the pompous splendor of the Imperial bureaucracy, and having nothing to defend saw the barbarians as liberators. The common man, unaccustomed to experiencing the finer things of life, were delighted to show where the jewels, precious metals, and other fine objects were; the common man did not need those. He was delighted even to betray the oppressive elite to the barbarians who might rape and kill the wives and daughters. The barbarians in return gave land to the peasants and quit taking the crops... and the peasants were happy enough.
Well -- that will happen in some other, subsequent Crisis Era... if this one goes badly.
Let me remind us of how things were at the time in which the barbarians put an end to the Western Roman Empire. The common man, overworked by his feudal lords, overtaxed for the pompous splendor of the Imperial bureaucracy, and having nothing to defend saw the barbarians as liberators. The common man, unaccustomed to experiencing the finer things of life, were delighted to show where the jewels, precious metals, and other fine objects were; the common man did not need those. He was delighted even to betray the oppressive elite to the barbarians who might rape and kill the wives and daughters. The barbarians in return gave land to the peasants and quit taking the crops... and the peasants were happy enough.
Well -- that will happen in some other, subsequent Crisis Era... if this one goes badly.
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.