Donald Trump and his adulation of dictators.

[odanny]

Originally Posted by PedroMartinez

No, I cant sit here and listen to "the other guy is horrible" when the people screaming it don't hold their people to the same standards.

You're making a false equivalency. It does not work with informed people who rely on facts.

[Ringo1]

Trump does seem to have a soft spot for authoritarian leaders. He would LOVE to rule over a banana republic; he's almost made us one now.


Let's see - surround yourself with inept family members because you trust no one. Surround yourself with incompetent people who can't govern (Preibus, Bannon) because you reward loyalty more than expertise. Denigrate the press with every opportunity . . . I could go on and on.


Hopefully, our checks and balances would prevent him having a gulag of sorts for immigrants and others he doesn't like.

[sheena12]

Originally Posted by Ringo1

Trump does seem to have a soft spot for authoritarian leaders. He would LOVE to rule over a banana republic; he's almost made us one now.


Let's see - surround yourself with inept family members because you trust no one. Surround yourself with incompetent people who can't govern (Preibus, Bannon) because you reward loyalty more than expertise. Denigrate the press with every opportunity . . . I could go on and on.


Hopefully, our checks and balances would prevent him having a gulag of sorts for immigrants and others he doesn't like.

Let's hope so. However,m Trump finds "checks and balances" to be an annoyance. He is impatient with Democracy, to say the least

His popularity is so low, and he is failing to build any consensus that I predict that he will do something diversionary - a stunt that will allow him to declare martial law.

The only consensus Trump has been able to build is a consensus of concerned Americans and others, who are troubled by this man's infatuation with power, lack of knowledge, in a broad sense, and malignant narcissism.

[odanny]

I've read this author's work (Timothy Snyder) a few year ago, he wrote about how the staggering loss of life from the early 1930's to 1950 in his book about Stalin and Hitler. It was scholarly, heavy reading. He has a new book out and is sounding the alarm that Trump will take a page from history with some manufactured emergency similar to the Reichstag fire that allowed Hitler to suspend civil liberties and due process in the court of law.

This thin skinned, uneducated, incurious loudmouth of a man won't get away with it here, but he might try.

Yale historian warns it is inevitable that Trump will stage his own Reichstag fire