12-14-2020, 04:21 AM
(12-12-2020, 08:52 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(12-11-2020, 06:01 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(12-11-2020, 05:33 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: "Personality cult" is a derogatory term as most see it. It is obviously more difficult to put the label on someone like Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter... If we are talking about national leaders, do you really want to assign one to Barack Obama as you would to Benito Mussolini? If one can attach it to any leader, then the term becomes meaningless.
In a genuine democracy, one would not expect to see the image of the President attached everywhere. To be sure, the personality cult around Trump is still 100% voluntary... but I can only imagine that having no Trump paraphernalia might have become harmful to one's business opportunities or advancement on the job had Trump won. (He didn't, so I guess we can flush the Valium down the toilet and save the vodka for a suitable celebration -- like getting a vaccine for COVID-19).
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Sir Winston Churchill, Mohandas Gandhi, or Charles de Gaulle get the recognition for legitimate deeds.
Personality cult, political popularity, legitimate recognition for deeds, they have some similarity. A bunch of people get behind a leader for good (or perhaps not good) reason. You are correct that 'personality cult' is a derogatory label. We would have to define exactly what such a personality cult is other than working towards something something you don’t like.
What is the difference between the cultures following Churchill and Mussolini other than your admiring one culture over another? Is there something specifically in the style of leadershp that can be pointed out as bad?
Personality cults are usually indoctrinated which is why they're considered derogatory. Liberal's are into indoctrination. Trump's not. Trump's a practical businessman who built a small empire of his own and achieved celebrity status by creating his own hit show who took a major cut in pay and a reduction in lifestyle to serve as our President.
Except that personality cults result from careful indoctrination of the masses which means the denial of any alternative views, you are completely wrong. Liberals do not seek to indoctrinate; objective history is adequate for describing social reality in the milieu in which people live, and even that has changed as historical documentation and criticism gets better. We liberals have no problem giving people the tools, including science and mathematics that can prove us wrong when we are wrong. Trump has sought to indoctrinate us with the complete rejection of objective reality, even dispensing quack medical advice. Can you imagine that? He thinks that he knows more than the physicians, medical researchers, and experts in public health. Practical businessman? He has been a successful landlord because his properties are in a place of rising incomes, which is one of the easiest ways to make a very good income. Otherwise he has dabbled in businesses that he has sold either as failed, folded as failures, or sold off because he could not dedicate the effort into operating them well. This guy lost money operating a casino. A casino! Figure that most casinos are largely collections of vending machines that take in money and dispense dreams only to take most of those dreams away... anyone who can lose money with those is a really-awful businessman. As I said earlier, really-good businesspeople already successful do not go into an area in which they know nothing. Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's, could have seen that because his fast-food places have high traffic going through that he could put in gas pumps to add some more profit. He chose not to. His reality show is pure schlock. He got into beauty pageants because he wanted to be where the beautiful women and girls are.
He has made money off the Presidency, directing government operations to spend money at his places, likely paying full price.
Trump has a cult, one that can do much harm to its participants. From The Allure of Toxic Leaders (Jean Lipman):
The characteristic destructive behaviors of toxic leaders include:
- Leaving their followers (and frequently nonfollowers) worse off than they found them.
- Violating basic standards of human rights of their own supporters, as well as those of others that they do not count among their followers.
- Feeding their followers illusions of the Leader's power while destroying the independence of followers, enhancing the dependency of followers.
- Playing to the basest fears and needs of their followers.
- Stifling constructive criticism so that one can demand and expect unqualified and uncritical obedience.
- Misleading followers through deliberate untruths and faulty diagnoses of problems
- Subverting the structures and processes of the system to generate truth, justice, and excellence to make unethical, illegal, and criminal acts possible.
- Building a totalitarian hierarchy that subverts normal standards of succession and making advancement through the ranks practically impossible for all but cronies and sycophants.
- Failing to nurture other leaders, or clinging inappropriately to power.
- Maliciously setting constituents against each other.
- Treating followers well, but persuading them to hate and destroy others.
- Identifying scapegoats and inciting others to castigate them.
- Ensuring the that the cost of taking down the Leader is the destruction of an organization upon which subordinates need.
- Ignoring or promoting incompetence, cronyism, and corruption.
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.
