08-13-2021, 11:26 AM
(08-12-2021, 11:20 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(08-12-2021, 12:31 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Wrong; that insurrection bodes ill for the survival of American democracy. Elections have meaning, lest there be no democracy. Heck, Syria has elections. In essence, democracy depends upon people in power being willing to lose elections when they fail or go stale. That insurrection will be remembered much like 9/11 or Pearl Harbor Day.
What part of "Donald Trump was a catastrophic failure as President" do you not understand? Donald Trump sought to nullify an election that he lost. That, all too often, is how democracies become dictatorships. The other method is rigged elections.
Donald Trump showed more dictatorial and despotic traits than any other President in American history. Under him formed a secret police responsible to nobody but himself to harass dissidents. What he did wrong in the Dictator's Playbook was to try to purge his political allies of backsliders before making the opposition irrelevant. Maybe he wouldn't have made that mistake the next time. Thank God, and 306 electoral votes that went to Joe Biden, that he had gotten no second chance.
Donald Trump still has a nasty personality cult behind him. If it loses him, then it will find someone else -- maybe someone who knows enough to start assassinating opponents in elected office, media, academia, labor unions, etc.
PB, the only people who would view Jan 6 as being an event equal to 9/11 or Pearl Harbor would be Libtards like yourself or someone [offensive language redacted] at this point.
I was thinking of its memory. Because of the meme "Remember Pearl Harbor" that floated freely long after World War II, I remembered it even if it happened fourteen years before I was born. I count on some 80-year commemorations on December 7, 2021 because it will remain national trauma. The "Hate Japan" conclusion is of course long ignored. (If anything I love Japanese culture... the only thing that I would change is the writing system; then again something so unique, difficult, and distinctive might keep Japan Japanese).
For a short time I thought that nearly sixty years after the 9/11 attack I thought I saw an obvious parallel in the similarity of a consummately-offensive deed as a bolt from the blue, something likely to initiate an international war in which Americans respond much as they did to the Pearl Harbor attack. Well, no... Dubya was not FDR (which is an understatement) as a leader, and Americans went back to their normal 3T activities, including a speculative boom and mindless consumerism as before. Only one high-profile athlete, film star, or popular musician (Pat Tillman) put his life on hold to enter active military service. There were analogues because of some obvious similarities of the meme.
No American precedent applies to the January 6 insurrection, so one must contemplate something that happened elsewhere. The most obvious one that I could think of was something that had happened about 113 years earlier in Russia: the Bolshevik coup long remembered in the Soviet Union and elsewhere as the October Revolution. Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace in Petrograd and ousted the freely-elected parliament of the infant Russian Provisional Republic and established a ruthless, bloodthirsty dictatorship after the electoral results "failed" to go "their" way. To be sure there was by then nobody who remembered the Bolshevik Coup/October Revolution then living, but good reason exists for reading history even if it is at times an obscene tale written in the blood of innocent people on the parchment of human flesh.
Donald Trump lost fair and square, and the event disrupted was something long considered a boring formality.
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I must admit at times, you guys do remind me of Tokyo Rose and what she did for a living at the time.
Iva Toguri d'Aquino was in a touchy situation; she lived in peril of torture and execution. She did what she did to survive after her misfortune of being in the land of her ancestors at the absolute worst time. If you want to call us traitors, then why not go all out and compare us to "Lord Haw-Haw" (an American-born British fascist who defected to Hitlerland and taunted Britain with defeatist rhetoric)... except that we are still her, and we endorse the Constitutional system that we have against all enemies foreign and domestic. Enemies domestic include those who showed contempt for American norms necessary for our Constitutional system to work by an attempt to disrupt the recognition of the loss by the incumbent President.
Did you see the testimony of Capitol and other police at the House hearing?
... Mercifully I have never seen cause to go overseas to make broadcasts against the clique ruling my country. I would do so against a murderous, despotic American regime. Heck, I would do so from Berlin or Tokyo, and all I would need do is tell the truth on behalf of old decencies in need of restoration.
Quote: Anyhow, while you and the boys were here spreading propaganda, stroking each others egos, patting each other on the back and telling each other how smart/great you are and how dumb we are and so forth. I've been busy working long hours and earning thousands of dollars and supporting an entire family. Like I said, America knows where it was at while Trump was in office and America will see where its at after 4 years with Gumby in office. Personally speaking, I think Washington DC is pretty much FUBAR at this point.
We do not vote for perfection. At times we must simply vote for someone flawed over something horrible.
Never let the Perfect be the enemy of the Good, but never let undeniable evil prevail. We all have our flaws as people. Donald Quisling Trump proved what he was on January 6 with the aid of people whose delusions and anger he stoked. That is the pattern of many dictatorships past and present.
I am satisfied that Donald Trump will be remembered for a very long time, if four unflattering reasons that will stick. If Nero, Caligula, and Commodus are seen in a derogatory light nearly two millennia later in history books and cinema, then so can Donald Trump. "President of the United States" has about as much relevance in our time as did Imperator Romanus did in its time. Nero, Caligula, and Commodus are memorable... for all the wrong reasons. May I suggest that you watch the movie Quo Vadis? It's about sixty years old, but it holds up well.
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.