08-31-2022, 12:20 PM
(08-31-2022, 11:08 AM)Anthony Wrote: Someone out there - on One America Network - seems to think that Donald Trump is going to go down in history as the Gray Champion:
“Russia could’ve taken Ukraine inside of three weeks but didn’t. They’re holding back, why? China is too scared to invade Taiwan, why? The reason is because they don’t know what Trump is going to do with them in 2025. Trump remains more powerful than anyone in four generations.”
One America Network? The National Enquirer has similar credibility.
Donald Trump seems more likely to go down as a hyper-villain of American history as someone who appealed to the worst in American life and brought it forth. Putin chose to not embarrass Trump, Putin's favorite American student -- and if you believe Malcolm Nance, a tool of Russian and Soviet intelligence since he was a young man. Supposedly Ivanka Trump was the daughter of someone in the former Czechoslovak secret police, a reliable cat's paw for the Soviet secret police until Czechoslovakia disbanded its Soviet-servile secret police.
Let's put it this way -- having a foreign-born spouse is not good for a career as a military officer or personnel in the CIA... for good reason. If your spouse's extended family includes members of the Italian Communist Party, then you might be suspect when questions of compromised security arise. In Okinawa, American non-com men were not prevented from dating Japanese women; junior officers were strongly discouraged from doing so. There we are talking about two countries with pro-American governments.
Donald Trump has been loyal to only one thing: himself. He brings out the worst in people so that he can get what he wants. A real Gray Champion
like Lincoln, Juarez, FDR, Churchill, Mannerheim, Blum, or Adenauer brings out the best in people. In our time I see the closest in Angela Merkel. Maybe Obama has set a pattern for other Presidents to follow, melding the virtues of conservatism at its best with not-so-conservative optimism in human nature while rejecting a reactionary set of economic assumptions. Obama may not have been the sort that one would expect to have a cozy relationship with the Armed Forces and the Intelligence Services, but that is how things worked out.
If there is anything to say about Donald Trump, it is that he serves as a warning of what not to tolerate in American life. He shows the dangers of pathological narcissism, the inability to bond, pathological lying, cruelty to anyone in a hard position, rejection of expertise, and no institutional loyalty. He confuses patriotism to loyalty to himself. Donald Trump is "Rosemary's Baby" having gone almost completely through his likely lifespan.
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.