(01-05-2020, 09:52 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 05-Jan-2020 World View: Tea Party = Nazi Personality Cult
(01-05-2020, 02:44 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: > I saw the warning signs. I could see through him for his extreme
> narcissism, if not sociopathy. (Narcissists elevate themselves
> yet discount everyone else; sociopaths are schemers; psychopaths
> are predators).
> In any event, people are catching on. Maybe not the Tea Party
> types, but certainly the younger people entering the electorate as
> the Tea Party (largely people over 55) dies off a little very
> year.
> Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Satan Hussein were highly effective in
> maintaining their personality cults. Truth has nothing to do with
> it.
Each time you write something about this, it's dumber and dumber. You
should quit before you get further behind.
So you think that Trump is the same as Hitler, Stalin, Mao and
Hussein, and you think that the 63 million smelly Tea Partiers / Trump
supporters that you've loathed and despised for many years are the
same as a Nazi personality cult. You've crossed the line from total
ignorance to total idiocy.
No. But even baby steps in the direction of those monsters are to be taken with great care, if at all. I've taken up painting, which Hitler did; I have toyed with linguistics, as Stalin did. Such is trivial. If you saw your kid showing signs of delinquent behavior, then would you not try to stop it? Trump is political delinquency, and delinquency of any kind is best stopped early.
Start with demagogy. It is bad enough to end up with a politician with which one has nothing to offer. Sure, Trump offends my sensibilities with his bigotry, his sexism, and his contempt for anyone with a hardship in his past (whether poverty, a handicap, or having been incarcerated by the Commies in North Vietnam). A politician who makes contradictory promises and appeals to different groups is either a fool or a liar. Consider this: the FBI, which does not get to beat confessions out of unfortunate people as did the Gestapo or the KGB, has a more effective technique for finding perpetrators. It seeks as many people imaginably involved and asks people questions about the case. Innocent people will tell the truth, even embarrassing revelations (such as at one time "I am gay", or more apropos, "I cheated on my spouse"), to clear themselves. Innocent people might give incriminating information on the perpetrator without knowing that they have done so. Guilty people lie simply to maintain the mask of innocence. Their lies ultimately trap them, or their slow response to such a question as "On October 22, 2013, did you rob the Norwest Bank* in Kokomo, Indiana?" (I could answer that one in the negative without hesitation because I have never robbed a bank, but a serial bank robber would have to hesitate to think about whether he did. Maybe he was instead robbing a Norwest Bank* in Keokuk, Iowa that day). As J. Edgar Hoover said, every crook that he ever encountered was one thing -- a liar. The FBI technique might not be so effective where something like Article 58 of the Soviet Criminal Code (that practically defines everyone as a criminal) is in operation.
Trump is a liar -- someone who sees the only reality as what serves his ego or his economic interests at the time. He has been involved with organized crime. He was a good friend of the late Jeffrey Epstein, once saying of him that "he likes his girls young". He is a horrible person. As for the Tea Party people most are good except for their politics. They are often the salt-of-the-earth types, the people who feed relatives whose cupboards are getting bare, who meet a layaway payment coming due when a relative is a bit behind in paying off a bicycle, people who tithe to their churches, people who prepare items for family reunions and fundraisers for children with incurable diseases, people who go to a Wednesday evening prayer meeting when that conflicts with Game 7 of the World Series... above all they are the people who do the dirty, nasty jobs that people with degrees from renowned colleges and universities would never think of doing. Trump has told many people what they want to hear, which is that other people don't share their values while fleecing them.
Trump is the apotheosis of the Tea Party. I recognize that you are no liberal, but offending the sensibilities of a majority of the people is bad politics. The Tea Party is the denunciation of intellectual modernity, including science. Such ravages creativity and intellectual discussion. Have you ever talked to these people? You are in Boston, itself a bubble; I live in the rural Midwest, and I see huge Trump banners under US flags. I never saw anything like that with Dubya or Reagan. If conservative values on economics are right, then they need a more honest vehicle than that pathological, demagogic liar.
*defunct entity -- I do not give free advertising.
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.
