07-21-2021, 06:23 PM
(07-21-2021, 05:01 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(04-09-2021, 02:20 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Donald Trump is a lazy and unsophisticated version of a would-be fascist tyrant. It is only the mercy of Providence that Trump did not fully understand what he was doing. Hitler knew his history well, and studied what he needed to know in the arts of persuasion and administration while ignoring the significance of morality and humanitarianism. Hitler turned to brutality after destroying democracy and freedom quickly. Brutality is effective until it destroys the initiative and resourcefulness of the exploited people. Trump did not move as rapidly as Hitler or Pinochet in smashing all semblance of freedom, and that makes all the difference in the world this time. COVID-19 made Trump an electoral failure in his bid for a second term.
I see Hitler as centered on his nation and culture, while Trump is centered on himself. That makes them hard to compare. Still, the elites and the racists are a real problem in America. Trump managed to take advantage of them.
Hitler also exploited the economic elites -- tycoons, executives, and big landowners. He took their money and stole their souls in return for promises of super-cheap labor. He did deliver that.
It's hard to see what culture to which one could affix Donald Trump. This said, culture does not dictate politics. Nazis and Zionists often had much the same taste in music. In that I have no connection to any particular culture. You can probably figure that I am quite cosmopolitan. Trump has no obvious culture other than the celebration of his empty self.
Culture is over-rated as an improvement in human nature. The Russians have one of the richest cultures in the world, and yet they ended up with Stalin. Of the Germans I can say much the same, except that they ended up with Hitler instead. Japan has one of the richest aesthetic cultures in the world and are highly receptive to the best of any other culture (Western classical music might as well be theirs, too).. and yet they still ended up with a regime that 'gave' the world the Bataan Death March, horrible experiments with germ warfare, and the brutality of the construction of the Burma Railroad.
The Nazis were proud of the great achievements of German and Austrian music.
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.