Thursday, October 25, 2018

A Current Look At My Mind

* a note
I can only look at the world through the eyes I have.  Which is too bad. I would love to see nothing sinister in Donald Trump.  I used to. I think Donald Trump WAS a simple capitalist, who wanted to run for President to expand his brand and make money. I don’t think he wanted or expected to win.

But he has grown to enjoy the power. He loves the stage and craves attention. It is normal.  And he is given a free hand by his supporters in this. He can lie (exaggerate) at will. He can call and response to them just like the Preachers of old, but without the word of God, only the power of themselves.

This is the power of the mob in the negative, but also the power of the crowd. True, it was the power of the Nazi’s and Italy’s black shirts, but it was also the power of Rome and the patriotic millions who marched for civil rights. The power of the people is only a mob when you are on the wrong side of it. They don’t see themselves as a mob.

The next few weeks are a minefield with possible problems. I suppose it is my nature to look at the problems, not the possibilities, but such is life. The first hurdle is the mid-term elections. If the party of Trump wins, it means that my country-men can look past a tax cut for the rich, trying to take away the health care of millions, daily lies and misogyny to vote for, in the best case, a good economy, in the worst case, a fear of brown people.

The second hurdle is if the democrats win, Trump and the Republican Party - who have worked hard to disenfranchise voters - put up a fight to not seat people. Given the lengths they have gone to in order to deny the vote to hundreds of thousands of people of color in Georgia alone, it is a reasonable - albeit it far-fetched - fear.

Say everything works though and the Democrats take the House of Representatives.  Hazzah.

The third hurdle, and possibly biggest, occurs when the economy finally turns negative. This will happen whoever wins. And how the President and the Republicans respond will be the test of the country. So far, Trump has reveled in blaming the Democrats and the “others” for anything that goes wrong. The truth has no part in his explanations (the Democrats are paying for the Caravan, George Soros hired the Kavaugh protesters, Obama electronically bugged me) but Fox News and his followers believe it and the Republican establishment falls in lie.

An economic challenge freaks me out. A strong man that can take care (or take advantage) of an economic problem is what kills democracies. Germany in the 1930s, Italy in the 1920s, Russia in the 2000s, the Philipenes in the 2010s. Trumps followers already screamed “Lock Her Up” for a woman that simply recounted her memory of a possible Supreme Court Justice (which Trump himself said was very believable). Imagine their vitriol and anger when an actual recession wipes out jobs!

Until recently, the lack of a focused, paramilitary arm of Trump’s followers lulled me into complacency. But the recent Republican welcome of the Proud Boys has freaked me the fuck out.  In New York City, the Proud Boys we’re invited to a Republican Party function. This is a group that self-identifies as angry (usually white) men that promote political violence. They ran as a mob and beat up gay people after the function.

Whatever you think of analogies, we have a President that doesn’t value democratic norms, that doesn’t pretend to respect or like anyone who didn’t vote for him. He has the full backing of a major political party. At least some of his followers are organizing into a well ordered paramilitary organization.  He has already identified a minority group that is the target of his followers economic and social anger (the Hispanics in general and brown immigrants in particular).

It’s scary.

* This book, written in the 1800s, looks at the story of Jesus being intertwined with the politics of the moment. A beacon of Victorian values for England, a beacon of liberation for France and a beacon of teaching and order for Germany.