No, I’m still not a Trump supporter, and would not vote for him (or any other presidential candidate) if the vote was today. Yet, all these “Trump’s a dictator in waiting” articles from the Credentialed Media are a hoot. And this one raises the Barking Moonbat scale up to about a 9, as Carlos Lozado loses it in the pages of the Washington Post
Americans have seen this leader before. Boastful, deceptive, crudely charismatic. Dabbling in xenophobia and sexism, contemptuous of the rule of law, he spouts outlandish proposals that cater to the lowest instincts of those angry or frightened enough to back him. He wins the nation’s top office, triggering fears of an authoritarian, even fascistic U.S. government.
Normally, though, this leader resides safely in the pages of American fiction.
Donald Trump’s ascent to become the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has released a spasm of mea culpas from reporters and pollsters who failed to anticipate the biggest story in national politics — and a spate of literary and film references among those fearing a turn toward dictatorial government. It is Plato’s “Republic†that anticipatedthe rise of Trump. Or maybe the 2006 political comedy “Idiocracy.†Or the 1981 young-adult novel “The Wave.†Or is it Howard Beale’s mad-as-hell rants in 1976’s “Network†that truly portended the anger erupting four decades later?
In particular, two novels depicting homegrown strongmen have become ways to interpret Trump’s campaign and to imagine his presidency. Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here†(1935) features a populist Democratic senator named Berzelius “Buzz†Windrip who wins the White House in the late 1930s on a redistributionist platform — with a generous side order of racism — and quickly fashions a totalitarian regime purporting to speak for the nation’s Forgotten Men. Salon hasdubbed it “the novel that foreshadowed Donald Trump’s authoritarian appeal,†while Slate’s Jacob Weisberg writes that you can’t read the book today “without flashes of Trumpian recognition.â€
Seriously, in this long, long, long opinion piece Lozado is actually making comparisons of Trump to fictional dictators. It doesn’t get much dumber in Liberal World.
The dictators whom Roth and Lewis conjure share the intolerance underlying Trump’s most controversial proposals — banning Muslims from entering the United States, building a wall straddling the U.S.-Mexico border, deporting millions of undocumented immigrants — but the fictional characters often go further and scarier. Lindbergh moves Jews from urban centers into the rural heartland through an ominous Office of American Absorption, leaving them vulnerable to anti-Semitic violence. Windrip creates concentration camps for dissidents; establishes a sham judiciary; and bars black Americans from voting, holding public office, practicing law or medicine, or teaching beyond grammar school. “Nothing so elevates a dispossessed farmer or a factory worker on relief,†Jessup realizes, “as to have some race, any race, on which he can look down.â€
So, because Trump is against letting in potential Islamic jihadis into the country, is against an invasion of illegals causing problems for Americans, and is (supposedly) for kicking illegals out, he’s a fictional dictator. Interestingly enough, it is Democrats who tend to be anti-Semitic. It is Democrats who fantasize about rounding up Conservatives and climate skeptics and putting them in re-education camps. Or just killing them. Want to use foreign law, or simply their gut feelings, in legal rulings. And love that Blacks are concentrated in crummy parts of big cities run by the Democratic Party.
I don’t imagine that is possible beyond a writer’s imagination. Even now, whether or not Trump wins this election, whether or not he builds his walls and subverts our laws, he has set loose passions and compelled choices that will long mark us. If the politics he represents take deeper root, as in so many other nations and times, tweeting #NeverTrump or slapping a “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Hillary†sticker on the car will offer little solace. And the man promising to make America great again will have succeeded in rendering America, finally and conclusively, unexceptional.
Good grief. This is the part where you say “me thinks thou protests too much.” I certainly think that Trump is yet another Big Government Republican, but he pales in comparison to the type of Big Government that Hillary and Democrats want, rooted in Progressivism, which is termed “nice fascism.” In other words, big, controlling government that is enacted in your best interests. At the end of the day, though, expect whiny liberals to continue this meme, as they do for every Republican presidential candidate.
Crossed at Right Wing News.
Authoritarians crave societal order and protection from the “other” more than anything else. The question isn’t whether Trump appeals to the authoritarians (now mostly Republicans), he does, but what does it mean?
What has Trump said to support he’s an authoritarian?
Change libel laws to control the press
Religious based immigration laws
Torture/kill families of potential terrorists
Intimidate the judiciary
Register Muslims
Advocates followers use violence
Racist – Blacks, Native Americans, Muslims, Hispanics
His supporters care little about Ryan/McConnell/Priebus/Bush/Rubio/Kasich-type traditional economic policies or social issues like abortion. They want a strongman to protect them.
More than typical Republican voters, Trump supporters favor bans on Muslim and LGBT immigration, and immediate deportations of undocumented immigrants, thought the WWII interment of American-Japanese citizens was a good idea, think that caucasians are a superior race, disagree with Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, support state gov’ts flying the Confederate battle flag, and wish the Confederacy had won the Civil War.
Trump didn’t create these supporters, he attracts them.
For sure, when Trump loses, right-wing authoritarianism will not disappear. It’s part of us. 44% of all white Americans are authoritarians.
vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism
Teach I see a lot of high profile GOP comparing Trump to Hitler
CEO of HP, Meg Whitman just did in front of a large GOP crowd
Hillary 2016! because vagina, milestones and shit …
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QFwdvMQHmOI&time_continue=5
No contest.
Hillary is more evil than Trump. He says had things, she DOES bad things.
But even if you disagree: media, academia, Hollywood will enable and encourage hillary. They will actively undermine and oppose Trump.
Evil with a headwind beats evil with a tailwind.
What part of this is NOT more true of Obama than of Trump?
Obama has inflamed inter-racial conflict. Every time someone complains they are a victim of racism, Obama is there to side with the black person before bothering to examine the facts of the case. There’s a conflict between two people? One of them is black and the other is white? Well obviously the black person is in the right.
Obama has ignored the rule of law. He himself said that he didn’t have the authority to nullify immigration laws, and then a year or two later he did anyway. He’s unilaterally “amended” the Affordable Health Care Act many times without bothering to go back to Congress for a vote. Etc.
Obama’s administration has allowed thousands of Muslim refugees from Iraq and Syria to enter the U.S., but only a handful of Christians. There’s no published policy. So is there an unwritten rule, or does their case-by-case review just always seem to favor Muslims?
The Obama administration is actively working to marginalize anyone who disagrees with them. People who doubt global warming are threatened with prosecution. Business owners who disagree with gay marriage are driven out of business. Schools who disagree with transgender bathroom rules are threatened with loss of federal funds. Political groups that support conservative candidates find their tax exemption held up indefinitely. Etc.
“And, perhaps most importantly, his (Trump’s) willingness to flout all the conventions of civilized discourse when it comes to the minority groups that authoritarians find so threatening. That’s why it’s a benefit rather than a liability for Trump …”
Trump was about my 13th choice of the available candidates for president, but this is one of the few things that makes me like him.
Because, translation: Trump doesn’t run away and hide and beg for forgiveness when we call him a racist and a Nazi, like good, well-behaved conservatives do. It used to be that if a conservative said, say, that he favored faster licensing of nuclear plants, we could just yell “that’s racist!” and he’d immediately withdraw the proposal, even if we couldn’t think of any actual connection to racism. But Trump refuses to back down when we make ad hominem attacks and call him nasty names! This breaks all the rules of polite politics. It’s totally unacceptable.
That’s because you and Jeffrey are both collosal idiots.