Thursday, August 23, 2018

The Final Solutilon: Trump's Willing Executioners


Hitler’s Willing Executioners is a book by Daniel Goldhagen. Goldhagen’s thesis is that German people as a whole were guilty of complicity in the Holocaust. Now the same appears to be true with theTrumpocracy. The president himself has said that he “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters” (CNN, 1/23/16). And even the indictments of two of his former henchmen one of whom points to the president's direct involvement in illegal campaign activities ("Michael Cohen Says That Donald Trump Directed His Crimes," The New Yorker, 8/21/18) is unlikely to bring about an end to a presidency which has a support of a vast majority of Republicans (whether the Mueller probe determines that the Trump campaign was “complicit” with the Russians or not). It’s really wrong to believe that dictators repress the populace. In one way of looking at it a dictator expresses the will of a large enough part of the public to stay in power. The difference between a dictator and a mere demagogue or even liberal politician is simply the parliamentary piece. Erdogan rules dictatorially in Turkey and Orban in Hungary. In Poland you have Duda, but none of these personalities would have legitimacy if it weren’t for the fact that a good portion, if not majority, of the polity were tired of immigration, globalism or any of the other pet peeves that fire the imagination of masses of disgruntled voters today. As has been evident, populism in its modern form itself is an expression of fascism, particularly since it holds democratic principles like due process and individual rights in such low esteem. Disaffected and disenfranchised thugs filled the ranks of the nascent Nazi Party and there were undoubtedly criminal elements too. Now we're learning that two early members of the congressional "Trump Caucus" (Chris Collins of NY and Duncan Hunter of California) have both been indicted for their criminal activities.

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