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Title: The Banal Belligerence of The Trump
Source:
NY Times
URL Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/ ... ence-of-donald-trump.html?_r=0
Published: Jan 24, 2017
Author: Roger Cohen
Post Date: 2017-01-24 14:25:07 by Willie Green
Keywords: None
Views: 2656
Comments: 10
The soldiers, millions of them, came home from the war. They dispersed across the country, in big towns and small. It was not easy to recount what had happened to them, and for the dead it was impossible. Something in the nature of their sacrifice was unsayable. The country was not especially interested. War had not brought the nation together but had divided it. The sudden flash, the boom, the acrid stench and utter randomness of death were as haunting as they were incommunicable. This was war without victory, the kind that invites silence. For the soldiers, who fought in the belief that their cause was right and their nation just, the silence was humiliating. They bore their injuries, visible and invisible, with stoicism. Resentments accumulated. The years went by, bringing only mediocrity. Glory and victory were forgotten words. Perhaps someone might mutter, “Thank you for your service.” That was it. There was no national memorial, for what would be memorialized? Savings evaporated overnight in an economic meltdown engineered by financiers and facilitated by the abolishers of risk. Democracy, the great diluter, slow and compromised, was inadequate for the expression of the soldiers’ emotions. Reasonable leaders with rational arguments could not assuage the loss. They seemed to belittle it with their parsing of every question and their half-decisions. No, what was needed was a leader with answers, somebody to marshal a popular movement and cut through hesitations, a strongman who would put the nation first and mythologize its greatness, a figure ready to scapegoat without mercy, a unifier giving voice to the trampled masses, a man who could use democracy without being its slave. Over 15 years national embitterment festered and yearning intensified. But which 15 years? Anyone these days may be forgiven for moments of disorientation. The 15 years from the devastating German defeat of 1918 to the electoral victory (with 43.9 percent of the vote) of Adolf Hitler in 1933? Or the 15 years from the devastating 9/11 attack on the United States to the electoral victory (with 46.1 percent of the vote) of Donald Trump in 2016? National humiliation is long in gestation and violent in resolution. German soldiers, two million of them killed in the Great War, came home to fractious and uneasy democratic politics, the ignominy of reparations, the hyperinflation of the early 1920s, the crash of 1929, and the paralysis of a political system held hostage by the extremes of left and right. Some 2.7 million American soldiers came home to a country that had been shopping while they served in the Afghan and Iraqi wars, with 6,893 killed and more than 52,000 injured. They returned to an increasingly dysfunctional and polarized polity; to the financial disaster of 2008; to the mystery of what the spending of trillions of dollars in those wars had achieved; to stagnant incomes; to the steady diminishment of American uniqueness and the apparent erosion of its power. Every American should look at the map in Kael Weston’s powerful book, “The Mirror Test.” It shows, with dots, the hometowns of U.S. service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. No state is spared. The map should be hung in classrooms across the country. I have tried to tread carefully with analogies between the Fascist ideologies of 1930s Europe and Trump. American democracy is resilient. But the first days of the Trump presidency — whose roots of course lie in far more than the American military debacles since 9/11 — pushed me over the top. The president is playing with fire. To say, as he did, that the elected representatives of American democracy are worthless and that the people are everything is to lay the foundations of totalitarianism. It is to say that democratic institutions are irrelevant and all that counts is the great leader and the masses he arouses. To speak of “American carnage” is to deploy the dangerous lexicon of blood, soil and nation. To boast of “a historic movement, the likes of the which the world has never seen before” is to demonstrate consuming megalomania. To declaim “America first” and again, “America first,” is to recall the darkest clarion calls of nationalist dictators. To exalt protectionism is to risk a return to a world of barriers and confrontation. To utter falsehood after falsehood, directly or through a spokesman, is to foster the disorientation that makes crowds susceptible to the delusions of strongmen. Trump’s outrageous claims have a purpose: to destroy rational thought. When Primo Levi arrived at Auschwitz he reached, in his thirst, for an icicle outside his window but a guard snatched it away. “Warum?” Levi asked (why?). To which the guard responded, “Hier ist kein warum” (here there is no why). As the great historian Fritz Stern observed, “This denial of ‘why’ was the authentic expression of all totalitarianism, revealing its deepest meaning, a negation of Western civilization.” Americans are going to have to fight for their civilization and the right to ask why against the banal belligerence of Trump.
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#1. To: Willie Green (#0)
No it isn't. It's true. The people are the bosses. The elected representatives are mere servants. And, for a long time, arrogant, crappy, corrupt, criminal servants. The Founders had an idea, and were worried about the People so they gave us a representative republic. That's fine as far as it goes. But one check that they did not build into the system was a check against the wholesale money corruption of the representatives by very rich donors. Oh, wait, they DID put in a check: the People THEMSELVES. That's right: the solution, in a represenative republic, to corrupt, crappy criminal elected representatives is to THROW THE BUMS OUT in an election, and put in leaders more amenable to the People. The People just did that. Donald Trump is the elected solution, in our democratic republic, to the heretofore unbridled corruption and criminality of the elected representative class. They have to be brought to heel. The People chose to do that through elections, as opposed to nooses and lampposts.
Trump’s outrageous claims have a purpose ... fleabaggers bubonic disease losers winning maga love If you ... don't use exclamation points --- you should't be typeing ! Commas - semicolons - question marks are for girlie boys !
' democracy ' maga love ps the red If you ... don't use exclamation points --- you should't be typeing ! Commas - semicolons - question marks are for girlie boys !
“Being lectured ... by Hillary Clinton about fake news is like being lectured by --- Ted Bundy about not raping and killing women. “Being lectured by NYTimes about fascism is like being ... lectured by Adolf Hitler - Goebbels --- about no social engineering - propaganda - racial profiling. Only Lib Built in are their good love If you ... don't use exclamation points --- you should't be typeing ! Commas - semicolons - question marks are for girlie boys !
In affect, the author claims the above to be true.... But in reality, it is horseshit. The truth is, -- the 15 years from the humliating 9/11 attack on the United States have been passed by a lack of leadership from a elected republocratic swamp in Washington,DC. The electoral victory of Donald Trump in 2016 will hopefully drain that swamp. National restoration is long in gestation and may be violent in resolution, -- if politicians have their way.
...a lyrical narrative attempting to associate Trump with a variety of passing emotionally charged events that he had nothing to do with. Typical liberalistic formulation. To quote Isaac Asimov, one of the finest political social minds if the previous century, "People are stupid." They'll buy into such tripe.
morce lame meme's from the democratic site, dailyracingrag.com, keep hoping hillary will make a run in 2020, maybe your girl will win this time
With Trump running the show, expect your site libtards and closet libtards to smear libtard and YELLA propaganda articles on your site to a greater degree than you've ever seen.
I'm the infidel... Allah warned you about. كافر المسلح
To say, as he did, that the elected representatives of American democracy are worthless and that the people are everything is to lay the foundations of totalitarianism.
#2. To: Willie gangGreen, fredbot, hondope, zulu, mau mau, hutus, lice, druids, morloks, 666ers (#0)
(Edited)
Trump’s outrageous claims have a purpose: to destroy rational thought.
... to destroy dnc rat - ional
ebonics - issis
plague
losers
losers
losers
losers
losers
losers
losers
losers
losers
losers
losers
losers
winning
winning
winning
winning
winning
winning
winning
winning
winning
winning
winning
boris
#3. To: Vicomte13 (#1)
That's right: the solution, in a represenative republic,
(( ... mobocracy ))
is
what
' they '
(( ... overlords ))
call
it
boris
white
house
needs
to
be
permanently
lit
up
white
blue
#4. To: BorisYnot666 (#2)
#5. To: All (#3)
in
others
news
Towers
in
the
ground
floor
of
every
conspiracy
their
every
lie
swindle
web
their
1st
victims
casualty
own
tomb
shrine
holocaust
memorial
riddance
boris
#6. To: Willie Green (#0)
--- the 15 years from the devastating 9/11 attack on the United States to the electoral victory (with 46.1 percent of the vote) of Donald Trump in 2016 ---- (were a) ---- National humiliation -- long in gestation and violent in resolution.
#7. To: Willie Green (#0)
(Edited)
The Banal Belligerence of The Trump
#8. To: hondo68 (#4)
#9. To: Willie Green, A K A Stone (#0)
(Edited)
#10. To: Willie Green Weiner (#0)
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