Of Bullies, Demagogues and Dictators

I've been trying to put my finger on what it is that creeps me out about Donald Trump (other than his support for what will surely be called Trumpcare, abortion and a xenophobic immigration program). The fact that Trump bankrupted four companies, conned little old ladies out of their savings, and skinned his partners on deal after deal is part, but not all of it.

The fact that he's a silver-spoon trust baby who portrays himself as a "self-made" billionaire isn't it either. I could have made a billion if I'd started out with 300 million dollars for crying out loud. He's a bragger. So, what politician isn't? Then in one of those worthless debates with a gang of Trump acolytes that I keep getting myself into arguments with, I saw something familiar. It's Trumps followers, then, that clued me in to the psychological dynamic that I believe is going on between Trumps and the sycophantic minions that surround him. I remember that same dynamic well from junior high school.

Junior high, as most of you will remember, is an extremely tribal place usually dominated by the strongest members of the group. Bullies in other words. Bullies achieve power by picking out small skinny, nerdy kids to knock around in front of the others to establish their dominance. Then, once properly impressed with the bully's dominance, other weaker members of the group, desiring personal safety, a sense of belonging, and power, are drawn to the bully as a protector and for his or her approval. The bully appeals to his toadies' fear, paranoia and distrust of anyone different from themselves, as well as to their desire to share in his power, if only at second hand.

Voila'. You have outlined the same technique as used by every tin pot dictator and megalomaniac in human history. And it works like a charm. Those who use this technique are dangerous. Our current president has used this technique throughout what one television reporter accidentally called Obama's "reign". But Obama uses the technique ineffectively. Instead of attacking the weakest members of the culture, he has gone after some of the strongest: rock-ribbed conservatives. He has drawn acolytes, but these acolytes are the most malleable. They were already prepared to follow him when he appeared. They were looking for a liberal messiah and they shared his ideology. He's had less success at charming the demographic in the middle that form the swing vote. As his policies fail, he has not been able to bully the undecideds into submission.

Now let's look at "The Donald".  He starts out with rhetoric attacking the weakest members of society - people that his target audience do not like; namely illegal immigrants. Trump claims he will run them all out of the country and punish Mexico for send them and make them build a wall to keep all those nasty Mexicans in. Then he goes after members they are frightened of. He tells us he will stop ANY Syrian refugees from coming into the country, appealing to the xenophobia of his potential pool of followers. Notice he doesn't "plan" to address immigration, he WILL stop it. Period. Very authoritative.

Next he makes all kinds of other vague promises without any real concrete plans for fulfilling them. He brags about himself proclaiming himself the deal-maker, military genius and financial wizard (no matter how many people have suffered financial ruin as he accumulated his own wealth). He says he can be trusted because he is rich without explaining exactly how his being responsible to no one but himself should be in any way reassuring. He also never mentions that, although he's never taken bribes, not being a politician and all, he certainly has handed out enough "donations" to them (mostly the Democrat ones). Someone explain to me how putting the briber in charge of things improves the situation.

Like the Wizard of Oz's fiery avatar, Trump says, "Pay no attention to that stuff behind the curtain. I am Trump, the great and powerful."  And like the playground bully's band of toadies, the Trump acolytes defend him blindly against the terrible fearful menace of Hillary Clinton (who attended his wedding and whose previous presidential campaign and whose foundation he supported with huge donations).

Politically, Trump is simply a more successful political playground bully. Watch his response to anyone who challenges him. When Ben Carson surpassed him in numbers, he joined Democrats in assassinating Ben's character. No matter that it was entirely bullshit, it hurt him and restored Trump to the top. He's gone after every opponent of his systematically with accusations, innuendo and character assassination. His toadies approved of it all.

I don't mean to demean people who like Trump. I really don't. It's easy to fall in with the group. Everybody wants to belong to the herd. It's very human. We feel safe being like everyone else. America was originally settled by rugged individualists, but over time, the old latent gene pool began to assert itself and people who wish less for freedom and independence and more for a sense of belonging, safety and power became more numerous.  These kinds of people are now a very substantial portion of the American population - a voting block of some consequence.

This particular cadre of individuals - people of the herd as I think of them - have long formed a dominant percentage of the population of the Old World. It's why the Old World is in the shape it's in and why dictators and demagogues do so well in the Old World and in former Old World colonies which grew for economic reasons rather than because colonists came to them seeking freedom.

At long last the herd has grown to a size and is doing what herds do best - following. All they need is the latest bull to step up and tell them which way to go. They are not interested in principled leaders who think things through, who exercise caution, wisdom and kindness. What they want is the biggest loudest bull they can get; someone who will promise them whatever it is they want. Trump appeals to the angry radical right and to so-called "moderates and independents" who are basically people who have no opinion of their own but stand around waiting to sway in whichever direction the latest and loudest bull says to go.

America is about to fall or at the very least to divide in a very violent and ugly way. It is sad to see.

Just one man's opinion,

Tom King
© 2016

Why History Makes Leftists Mad

(c) 2013 by Tom King

Dictators are what you get when you replace God.with a man.

I was going to write a piece this morning on the top ten nasty mass murderers of the past century.  In researching it, I found a nicely researched piece called the "Top Ten Most Evil Dictators of All Time". While the article covers more like the top ten of the past 100 years, it was nicely researched.  What I particularly loved was the comments section.

These kinds of historical laundry lists always bring out all kinds of garbled nonsense from all the wonderful leftist trolls that inhabit cyberspace. You have to know that when you list the sins of truly evil people, you are going to catch hell from the left. These lists of mass murderers, especially if you include facts to back your list up, they inevitably highlight the preponderance of socialists that make your top ten. 

Inevitably when socialism goes off the rails, the only way the socialist leaders can preserve their power is to kill anyone who objects to them continuing to wreck the country.  There are no US presidents on this list because every single one stood down willingly at the end of their terms.  None had a strong enough need to hold on to power, so none had to kill to keep it. Every American president has understood that power is only lent to him for a time.  So far every president has accepted the office as a privilege to serve, granted for a short time only. Each president does his best to execute his duties well and then stands down when his time is done.

America's system of minimal government, balanced between legislative, administrative and judicial branches has proved a powerful stabilizer in the United States. It has created a nation that, while it has risen to be the most powerful nation-state in the world, has felt no need to establish an empire.  As much as you may disagree with the wars America has fought in the past century, we left every country we have fought with in the hands of its own people when it was over and paid for its rebuilding to boot.  You may hate the gulf wars, but we are gone from Iraq and extricating ourselves from Afghanistan as quickly as possible. That is not the act of despots or empire builders. 

In the end we're businessmen. What America wants is what's good for business.  When we can establish open trade between our nations, we all make a little money and the people of our nations are a little better off for it. Is there corruption?  Sure.  But isn't it better for the government to be in the business of rooting out corruption in business than it is for all of us to try and root out corruption in a too-powerful government.  Power corrupts and, as the saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

Centrally planned, centrally controlled socialist nations seldom last long.  Once all the wealth is taken from the rich and distributed to the "people" through the government, then the government has to turn back to the people and take back from them.  The only problem is that the people have by then used up what was redistributed from the wealthy and nothing was produced as a result (except maybe some votes for the people in power). 

There is nothing more ravenous and destructive than a powerful central government that can't get its hands on enough wealth to keep it strong.  Soon it beginst to either cannabalize its own economy or it attacks its neighbors.  Placing the record of history where socialists and others can see it always makes the socialist true-believers incoherent with anger. You can read it in some of the comments on the article linked above. The sociology ideology must be right whatever history reveals and if the facts don't quite support the ideology, they become downright frantic.  One commentator screams, "STOP SAYING STALIN WAS A “COMMUNIST”!! He wasn’t a communist at all."  The last resort of socialists, when confronted with the massive failures of socialism, is to simply claim whatever dictator we're talking about wasn't a "real" socialist.  They are always certain that someone more pure could have done it right.

And there's the fallacy. Only God could pull off socialism. The almost absolute power, inevitably given to the leadership of socialist movements, corrupts absolutely. Humans have not the capacity to engineer something as complex as an economy or a culture.  Nobody's smart enough. It's a mistake to try.  It's not an accident that atheism almost always comes hand-in-hand with socialist movements.  It's because socialism is little more than an attempt to build a political Tower of Babel.

The Tower of Babel was meant to create a place for man above the level of the flood so that God could no longer interfere with man's behavior.  Socialism is nothing more than an attempt by man to create Heaven here on Earth.  If we can do that, men reason, then we have no need for God.

If we can just eliminate God, the atheist/socialist reasons, then I no longer have to feel guilty about my naughty behavior and if I no longer feel guilty, I can do anything I want to and.................it begins.  The long slide toward misery, war and mass murder.  It happens time and time again and we can see it in history.

But we don't want to see the evidence of history, because, if we can't create Heaven on Earth, then our only hope is God and if we serve Him, we cannot serve ourselves and we cannot be naughty without guilt. So, in order to support the illusion of socialism, we simply ignore the actual results and stick to the ideology.

And it gives us delightful characters like Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and Fidel Castro. 




I'm just saying,


Tom King

You may now continue foaming and ranting.....