Is this the beginning of the end of the American empire?

American Carnage

When people turn against their best self, what do they become?

He mobilised the rage in people, not because he sought to show them a way forward on a more just and rewarding path, but to take the power they would give him and use it as a means to destroy all who dare to see him for what he is.

George Orwell through his experience in Spain during its civil war learned well the ways of these monster men. Let us please, not call them strong men, for they are deep inside very frightened men and what they most fear and rage against is their own mortality. What they really stand for and what they really intend is almost always the opposite in meaning to the words they use. The 'Big, Beautiful Bill' represents a 'death march' in GOP populist economist Oren Cass's own words, it is 'a total dud for the people who actually voted for President Donald Trump.' Tax cuts for those who don't need them to be paid for with cuts of billions to Medicaid, food assistance and environmental programs. There goes quality of life for anyone not super rich. 

Now the military are urged to use Democrat cities as training grounds against the enemy within, that is anyone who believes in democracy, equality, love between our brothers and our sisters. 

Because who are these people who have welded themselves to MAGA? They are frightened people who see life as a fight against others. 

The American Revolution needed soldiers who would fight. They were promised freedom, democratic rights, the institutionalisation of the principle of equality. MAGA does not stand for freedom. It stands for winner takes all. 

Those who value truth, and honour, need to refrain from making divisions worse. Differences in values and differences in how cause and effect are understood, are not so important as respect for each other. 

The flattery though has to stop; it isn't a strategy, it is fawning. In Australia, our Indigenous people have a custom of turning their backs when someone has behaved in a way that makes them unworthy of respect.   

 

Jon Stewart's Post-Kimmel Primer on Free Speech in the Glorious Trump Er...

Hannah Arendt's lessons for our times: the banality of evil, totalitaria...

Stop Acting Like This is Normal | The Ezra Klein Show

What Makes Trump & MAGA So Cruel? A Psychiatrist Explains

                                              

Dr Russell Razzaque exploring the psyche of MAGA.

He explains that authoritarianism isn't a stable personality trait. It is activated by fear. When we are fearful we feel the need for someone to be an authority. Trump is an expert at stoking fear and fabricating scenarios that engender fear. He presents himself as the man who can make America great again, by eradicating all that threatens.

The unifying factor for MAGA is a sense of loss of status. The MAGA majority are white males who used to have a dominant status within the social hierarchy. As women and immigrants and other groups of the oppressed become empowered by democratic social progress those who previously had an automatic right to superior status feel that these democratic processes are a threat to them. 

They want a return to their former status of dominance. That is what Trump promises them as he sets about disenfranchising all those who have risen through the enactment of democratic values. 

All that Trump has to do is push others down. He is not required to create policies that benefit the whole of America. 

The psychology of this, pushing others down, so that those who feel resentful can feel good about themselves again and reassert their right to dominate, won't make America great again, but instead devolve into a dark dystopia that benefits no-one.

Somehow democracy has to deepen and become a place in which everyone can feel valued and at liberty to be the best they can be. The democracy project is not over, but needs to acknowledge its past failings, become wiser, stronger and even more compassionate. 

Anne Applebaum on the Trump revolution

A

                                              Anne Applebaum in conversation on The Paul Wells Show after the release of the paperback version of her book Autocracy, Inc. in which she has written a new preface after the re-election of Donald Trump as President, whom she describes as 'a president who is not especially interested in democracy or democracies'. Applebaum points out that the preface was written a few months ago and while trying not to be fearmongering, admits that it is now somewhat of an understatement. America is under President Trump sharing many of the same practices and behaviours of autocracies. American foreign policy is being sacrified to the will of the President and his family. 

She points out that during his campaign 'he talked about his enemies as vermin' and 'by enemies he meant democrats and judges and journalists', 'using the kind of language that has never been used in US presidential politics before'. 

The fact that a lot of people must have chosen not to believe it, she sees as a lack of imagination in that Americans are so confident in their system that they cannot imagine it being undermined to this degree. 

Another point that Americans may not be able imagine and that Applebaum makes clear, is that automatic trust and faith in the United States from democratic nations has gone and won't come back. Democratic nations can and will form political and trade alliances that do not include America.