Thugs
Thugs
I have noticed an increase in thuggery from the Trump gang. He of course is a thug in the mafia mold (though physically cowardly). They all want to be tough guys. The aim is to instill fear. This is the next stage in installing a dictator. No one in power is standing up to it. They seem to be relishing it. The language is getting coarser, the body language more menacing, the targets more vulnerable. It is utterly detestable. There is real evil afoot.
We live in strange times. I’d hate to be an intelligent extraterrestrial being landing on this planet. I’d get a headache awfully quick.
The rest of planet Earth already has that headache at the American aliens.
If Roosevelt was with us he’d ssy: “the only thing we have to fear is Trump himself.”
Lucretius would counsel us: there is nothing for us to fear from death, for when death is here, we are not, but Trump is here, and losing our country and civilization is worse than death
As a Canadian I can testify that Trump managed to turn the most friendly neighbour into a suspicious and worried one. People are boycotting US goods and feel much more united as Canadians than before. Thrash and bullying talk of Trump and his boot lickers are met with contempt by the people of Canada not just politicians. Trump vastly underestimates the power of Commonwealth + Europe + other sovereign countries under threat. As Pierre Trudeau responded to Nixon, in a somewhat similar context of the trade wars in the seventies, when the latter called him “pompous egghead” — “I have been called worse things by better people.”
More details here if someone is interested https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/just-released-1971-recording-captures-talks-between-nixon-pompous-trudeau-1.755465
The stupidest thing Trump has ever done, which is saying something.
100% right
It might be fortunate to use the term seriuously and with irony, that Trump the authoritarian is so if not incompetent then chaotic.
There is not only going to be crisis, but chaos. It is natural to seek historical analogies; not quite the Great Depression for we had eventually competent leadership. The Russian Revolution? Post WWI Germany? I’m not sure I’m the one to say. The chaos means, I think, we’re in a dynamic disequilibrium, meaning anything can happen, most of the outcomes negative. The Stock Market may plunge in a straight line. The damage of course has been inflicted and perhaps to be hopeful Trump has to be decisively refuted for there to be some liveable America. I see this as a last line of Civilization and Its Discontents moment, but in a novel way.
We were quite lucky in the West in the last 80 years and, understandably, we thought that human race learned something and became better at living and letting others live. Some relaxed optimists dreamed about the End Of History (Fukuyama) and some about a vastly improved human nature (typical Pinker: “Things really have gotten better and not by themselves; it’s taken human effort and human ingenuity and human commitment.”). But the ugly truth is that we were lucky to get a short break. I hope to be wrong…
Yes, I think the same may be true of the climate, human health, civilization, human decency.
There was someone named Norbert Elias who wrote a book called ‘The Civilizing Process.” Certain habits such as table manners and dressing up to go to work civilized us bring us peace and prosperity.
Maybe that makes many of us today too civilized or too unable to stand up to tyranny due to our new collective arrangements. At the same time, people like Trump and Vance and the “thugs” have opted out of the civilizing process. You’ll notice that despite the violence of 1/6 and the COVID disruption, very little actual violence was applied to get the job done of overthrowing our democracy. That strikes me as odd and in need of explanation.
I think that extremists from the radical left contributed to Trump winning the elections. So called woke politicians focus on and forcefully pursue issues, some quite worthy no doubt, pertaining to a tiny minority of American people and completely disregard the economical struggles that many poor and low middle class Americans face every day. Democracy is important to the neglected people but becomes a distant secondary value in the absence of, or shortage of, basic necessities of life — food, shelter etc. When millions of illegal immigrants pouring into US are housed and receive US government support whereas American poor see none of it expecting the latter to oppose Trump, who promises to save them, is not realistic. I am not surprised he won given this context.
It does seem as if only a total catastrophe could make Trump supporters see the light.