(10-24-2020, 07:22 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(10-24-2020, 04:44 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: In the last election before Pearl Harbor, the difference between the Democratic and Republican platforms on foreign policy was practically nil. Of course, American politics were already showing one of the usual signs of a society heading into a 1T -- placidity.
Nitpick: I would suggest that we had a double crisis in the 1930s and 1940s. In the election before Pearl Harbor, isolationism was already very much fading, but it was once strong at the beginning of the crisis.
(10-24-2020, 04:44 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The foundation of Trump's power, such as it is, was real estate.
The point is that the military leaders, the landowners, the robber barons, the slave owners, all represented a wealthy or dominating class. At various times, each was problematic in their greed, though at times one group seeking to wrest power from another may have advanced something that needed to be advanced. Mostly, at one time you could forgive the Robber Barons for allying with abolitionists and advancing the industrial revolution. You could also forgive the various defensive alliances that contained aggressive military leaders such as Napoleon, Hitler or Bush 43.
With each crisis, one or another aspect of these classes fade. The progress is visible. Pretending that the progress is not visible, that you cannot tell the difference between, say, Hitler and Trump, is just wrongheaded blindness.
I don't confuse Trump with Hitler. I see Trump more like America's Milosevic, and I would not be surprised that much if Trump endured much the same fate as Milosevic. I see an inexcusable body count, and Milosevic was tried and convicted for that. Obviously the United States is not Yugoslavia... yet. Trump acts much like one of the despotic leaders from the time when agricultural land was the foundation of power, and despotic kings started wars with other such kings over tiny affronts. Urban real estate involving rapacious landlords with the ability to extract income from tenants just as feudal landlords could extract labor could be even more effective in serving as a basis for a New Feudalism in economics and politics. We will need a working democracy to squelch such power.
Trump at the least is not a military aggressor. He has not yet planned 'liberations' of Cuba or Venezuela (as if he would be good at it [/snark]). Castro and Chavez had more to fear from Obama in the event that either did something incredibly stupid.
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.
