Skip to main content

Much to fear from Trump

With a poll released today revealing that Trump and Clinton are tied in their race to the White House and WikiLeaks, also today, having released a raft of documents which show the party machine having plotted against Bernie Sanders - and what the fallout from that might be can only be be a matter of speculation - a piece "Donald Trump’s Convention Speech Rings Terrifying Historical Alarm Bells" on The Intercept reflects on Trump and his victory speech at the just concluded GOP Convention.     The thought of such a shallow, ignorant and inexperienced person taking office in the White House ought to scare Americans as much as the rest of the world.

"DONALD TRUMP’S SPEECH accepting the Republican nomination for president will probably go down as one of the most frightening pieces of political rhetoric in U.S. history.

Even for people who believe the danger of genuine authoritarianism on the U.S. right is often exaggerated, it’s impossible not to hear in Trump’s speech echoes of the words and strategies of the world’s worst leaders.

Trump had just one message for Americans: Be afraid. You are under terrible threats from forces inside and outside your country, and he’s the only person who can save us.

The scariest part is how Trump subtly but clearly has begun melding together violence against U.S. police and terrorism: “The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities,” he said, “threaten our very way of life.”

This is the favorite and most dangerous message of demagogues across all space and time. After all, if we know our external enemies are deeply evil, and our internal enemies are somehow their allies, we can feel justified in doing anything at all to our internal enemies. That’s just logic.

And if anything, Trump’s speech is actually more terrific, fabulous and huge than those of previous fanatics, since he promises he’s going to fix everything overnight. “The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon — and I mean very soon — come to an end,” Trump says. “Beginning on January 20th of 2017, safety will be restored.”

This use of fear to destroy democracy is so old that it’s described exactly in Plato’s Republic, written in Ancient Greece around 380 B.C.

Tyranny, says Socrates in The Republic, is actually “an outgrowth of democracy.” And would-be tyrants always in every instance claim to be shielding regular people from terrible danger: “This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears above ground he is a protector.”

Trump said that he is going to “protect” Americans or some aspect of American life 13 times tonight.

That makes sense, since as he portrayed the world, we desperately need protecting:

Nearly 180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records, ordered deported from our country, are tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens. …

Egypt was turned over to the radical Muslim brotherhood. … Iran is on the path to nuclear weapons. …

This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction, terrorism and weakness. …

My plan will begin with safety at home – which means safe neighborhoods, secure borders, and protection from terrorism. …

I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people who cannot defend themselves. …

America was shocked to its core when our police officers in Dallas were brutally executed. … I have a message to every last person threatening the peace on our streets and the safety of our police: When I take the oath of office next year, I will restore law and order to our country. …

We must also address the growing threats we face from outside America. …

Men, women and children viciously mowed down. Lives ruined. Families ripped apart. … Only weeks ago, in Orlando, Florida, 49 wonderful Americans were savagely murdered by an Islamic terrorist. …

We Will Make America Safe Again.

As The Republic explains, leaders like this inevitably end up “standing up in the chariot of State with the reins in his hand, no longer protector, but tyrant absolute.” This is how liberty “passes into the harshest and bitterest form of slavery.”

The good news is that if you turn off cable news — apparently the only source of Donald Trump’s knowledge about the world — and go outside, you’ll find that the U.S. is probably safer today than it’s ever been.

Despite the misleading statistics Trump used again tonight, the rate of murder and crime overall remains far, far lower than in the past. You also don’t need to worry about ISIS: even after the massacre of 49 people in Orlando, it’s likely more Americans will be killed by bee stings in 2016 than by terrorism.

Nonetheless, anyone who knows anything about the past must be genuinely worried that a major party could nominate someone like Trump. As the German philosopher Hegel famously said 200 years ago, “What experience and history teach is this — that people and governments never have learned anything from history.”

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Reading the Chilcot Inquiry Report more closely

Most commentary on the Chilcot Inquiry Report of and associated with the Iraq War, has been "lifted" from the Executive Summary.   The Intercept has actually gone and dug into the Report, with these revelations : "THE CHILCOT REPORT, the U.K.’s official inquiry into its participation in the Iraq War, has finally been released after seven years of investigation. Its executive summary certainly makes former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who led the British push for war, look terrible. According to the report, Blair made statements about Iraq’s nonexistent chemical, biological, and nuclear programs based on “what Mr. Blair believed” rather than the intelligence he had been given. The U.K. went to war despite the fact that “diplomatic options had not been exhausted.” Blair was warned by British intelligence that terrorism would “increase in the event of war, reflecting intensified anti-US/anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the

An unpalatable truth!

Quinoa has for the last years been the "new" food on the block for foodies. Known for its health properties, foodies the world over have taken to it. Many restaurants have added it to their menu. But, as this piece " Can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa? " from The Guardian so clearly details, the cost to Bolivians and Peruvians - from where quinoa hails - has been substantial. "Not long ago, quinoa was just an obscure Peruvian grain you could only buy in wholefood shops. We struggled to pronounce it (it's keen-wa, not qui-no-a), yet it was feted by food lovers as a novel addition to the familiar ranks of couscous and rice. Dieticians clucked over quinoa approvingly because it ticked the low-fat box and fitted in with government healthy eating advice to "base your meals on starchy foods". Adventurous eaters liked its slightly bitter taste and the little white curls that formed around the grains. Vegans embraced quinoa as

Climate change: Well-organised hoax?

There are still some - all too sadly people with a voice who are listened to - who assert that climate change is a hoax. Try telling that to the people of Colorado who recently experienced horrendous bushfires, or the people of Croatia suffering with endless days of temps of 40 degrees (and not much less than 30 at night time) some 8-10 degrees above the norm. Bill McKibben, take up the issue of whether climate change is a hoax, on The Daily Beast : Please don’t sweat the 2,132 new high temperature marks in June—remember, climate change is a hoax. The first to figure this out was Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who in fact called it “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” apparently topping even the staged moon landing. But others have been catching on. Speaker of the House John Boehner pointed out that the idea that carbon dioxide is “harmful to the environment is almost comical.” The always cautious Mitt Romney scoffed at any damage too: “Scientists will fig