10 Jan 2021 7:39 am
It just took over 200 years for our culture to produce the “quintessentially American” man who could live up to the cult of personality necessary to pull it off.
Growing up, I was keenly aware that the U.S. seemed to be an anomaly in the world. We had these orderly Transitions of power all my life, while other countries had violent coups, fistfights in the capitols, massive protests in the streets on a regular basis and civil wars.
what made America special, I wondered? Our Constitution surely has a strong system of checks and balances that seems to prevent major upheavals. It’s like a structurally sound form of government. But that doesn’t explain all of it. Charismatic leaders have risen up before and upended stable systems, drawing sycophants into their orbit and bending entire nations to their will. What did Stalin, Mussolini, Ghandi, Selassie, and Franco and Tito all have in common?
they all managed to capture the imagination of huge groups of people because they seemed to embody the very spirit and character of a whole nation. Selassie didn’t just represent a North African nation; he was Ethiopia personified.
America is a young country. What kind of person really personifies America to the degree that they could form a cult of personality strong enough to seize power? Bombastic, gluttonous, big businessman, greedy, over the top, larger than life.
We have never been susceptible to an authoritarian leader subverting the Constitution because we had not made such a unique character, until Trump.
1 Nomination
Annoyed Liberall Jan 09, 2021
Go to original post on Jan 09, 2021 10:18pm
Growing up, I was keenly aware that the U.S. seemed to be an anomaly in the world. We had these orderly Transitions of power all my life, while other countries had violent coups, fistfights in the capitols, massive protests in the streets on a regular basis and civil wars.
what made America special, I wondered? Our Constitution surely has a strong system of checks and balances that seems to prevent major upheavals. It’s like a structurally sound form of government. But that doesn’t explain all of it. Charismatic leaders have risen up before and upended stable systems, drawing sycophants into their orbit and bending entire nations to their will. What did Stalin, Mussolini, Ghandi, Selassie, and Franco and Tito all have in common?
they all managed to capture the imagination of huge groups of people because they seemed to embody the very spirit and character of a whole nation. Selassie didn’t just represent a North African nation; he was Ethiopia personified.
America is a young country. What kind of person really personifies America to the degree that they could form a cult of personality strong enough to seize power? Bombastic, gluttonous, big businessman, greedy, over the top, larger than life.
We have never been susceptible to an authoritarian leader subverting the Constitution because we had not made such a unique character, until Trump.
1 Nomination
Annoyed Liberall Jan 09, 2021
Go to original post on Jan 09, 2021 10:18pm