Donald Trump Will Make America Great Again
An election slogan that continues to be the platform for symbolic actions
Who knows what is going on in the head of a man who wants to be great?
We have many examples during times, all over the planet, of power people who wanted to look even greater than the power made them look.
They wanted to enter the history books, or they wanted to reshape society, or perhaps they wanted to arrange for the world to become a better place, according to them.
Pol Pot, for instance, wanted to get rid of all the disloyal people in Cambodia. He saw millions of them, and he killed them. Just like that. Was that making him great? It did arrange for him to enter the history books, even though it didn’t last very long. The world has almost forgotten already – nobody ever talks about it. Nobody cares.
Josef Stalin was originally a simple man, not really capable of understanding what was lawful and what was not. He was a bank robber, before he became a revolutionary. Just like Donald Trump, he didn’t have any sense of moral, nothing that held him back from doing whatever he wanted. Not holding back probably helped him to move forward in the hierarchy of Russian revolutionaries, helped somewhat by the oustering of some potential competitors. When he was finally the one in the lead, his power didn’t know any ends. He also entered the history books, but in several contradictory ways.
Yes, Stalin made Russia great again. Really! He was feared by everybody, so people tended to do what they could to avoid his rage. Again, a similarity with Trump. It didn’t matter if what Stalin said was sane or not, they followed troupe and did what he expected. He was also extremely paranoid and killed everybody he didn’t trust, which was very many people. He respected nobody and was willing to sacrifice everybody for some reasons consisting mostly of vanity. And very many were sacrificed.
Was Staling great? Did he make Russia great? Yes. Most people today don’t think of him for anything good, and millions of killed people and their unborn heirs never got the chance to think anything about him, posthumous, but his madness made some of the constructive developments happen in the Soviet Union, that people still thrive on today. Solid buildings, for instance, which are among the most popular in Russia today – if you can get an apartment in a Stalin building, you’re lucky.
Adolf Hitler was ridiculed in the League of Nations, the predecessor of the United Nations. People spoke about him as a ridiculous little man. He had a broken country to lead, damaged by the first world war and further damaged by the war damage it had to pay. It was further complicated by the former world-leading German industry now in ruins, many companies captured by the former partners, such as the UK and the USA, and factories dismantled and useless.
Making a proud nation out of this mess was actually some achievement! He was obviously completely insane, but when the population played by his tunes, doing what he wanted (and he could get just as angry as Stalin, so they did), the ruined German society saw a progression toward something that really looked like if it was about to become great again. The third thousand-year nation, the Third Reich, after the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire. Now, again, life looked promising for many people, so they considered him the one that could make Germany great again.
His ways of doing it were exactly like Trump’s: Blaming the weakest parts of the society for everything that was wrong in the world, picking out some particularly vulnerable people and making their lives a living hell, which made all the others feel good. Claiming some overall goals for the society that were very nationalist and in opposition to all other countries. Basically, leading a “moral” fight against everything non-German, using fake news, truisms, superstition, conspiracy theories, and fake attacks on him and the nation as arguments in his claim that the real Germans, the Arians, were under attack and had to fight back, to become that new, glorious thousand years long happy nation.
Hitler was attacking black people, communists, and especially Jews. The latter group had been under attack already for a hundred years (or, actually, for thousands of years), with pogroms being conducted by people of all nationalities in that geographical space that would become the new Germany. Hitler was also burning books, banning culture that was “entartet”, degenerated, and, of course, banning various political groups that could have been in opposition.
Trump is attacking immigrants, students, universities, public administration employees, and who knows else, going forward, as he has only just begun. Jews are more lucky with Trump, though, and he finds it somehow funny to joke (if it was a joke?) about clearing Gaza for Palestinians by the help of Israel, to get a nice, empty area for building hotels.
The lack of respect for people is the same with Trump as with many others who wanted to make their nations great again.
I have no idea if Pol Pot, Josef Stalin, or Adolf Hitler ever hoped for a Nobel Peace Prize, but this is such a thing Donald Trump has decided that he wants. As Trump in general talk to other people by threats, it is not unlikely that he will threaten the Nobel Committee or Norway, Sweden, or who else, who he believes are the idiots preventing him from getting that prize – until he gets it.
Donal Trump has the same fundamental attitude as the other leaders mentioned, that he is extremely focused on himself and has zero respect for other people, having no problem in doing things that are simply meant to make him look good, all while thousands of people die, or millions are being driven from their homes.
But what about that stuff about making America great?
Well, it is safe to say that it didn’t go well for Pol Pot. Josef Stalin had better luck and was somehow able to live a full life, but becoming extremely paranoid along the way (as many tyrants do, because they somehow feel the hating eyes on them no matter where they go), and Adolf Hitler, well, he managed to almost destroy the world and finally kill himself, and Germany ended up in a situation that was even worse than the Germany he had taken over.
Did all these leaders act mostly on the basis of their initial slogan, or mostly on the basis of their skewed personalities?
Well, these leaders all had the people in their promises – they didn’t take over leadership for their own sake, officially, but for the people’s sake. And, of course, as we all know, the people became the losers. Some people more than others, losing their lives, but all normal people lost their freedom, many also their trust in humans, and a lot of people lost property, future, and their honor – the latter for having allowed the madness to happen.
For a while, it looked good for these leaders. And then it fell apart.
So, if Trump will do like his predecessors, he will make America great in some way, for a while, and then it will all explode. The end result will be everything but great.
Factoids
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