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ELI5: What in the hell did Trump tap into that is almost causing a second civil war in america?
(self.explainlikeimfive)
this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2024
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As fascism always is.
They could have picked someone who's not transparently a crayon-eating moron, though...
Considering that both Mussolini and Hitler were also incompetent fucking morons, it's no surprise that modern fascists also pick leaders like them.
They're sending their best.
Trump represents modern conservatism, but he himself? I'm not sure he actually stands for a whole lot beyond his own orange bubble.
He's mostly a blank slate (philosophically and intellectually) that the people around him can use to get their agendas enacted. He surrounds himself with sycophants and bootlickers, so as long as they promise him wealth and power, he is content to parrot the talking points he's given.
Steven Miller, Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, and all the others...those are the real evil motherfuckers. When Trump is out of the picture, they'll find some other half-wit to puppet. The fight won't end when one figurehead fades in to history.
idk, just one dude's thoughts.
(Just to be clear, none of that absolves him of the real damage he's done. Malicious indifference is still malicious.)
I suspect one of them would directly take his place, actually. Trump is kind of an anomaly in not having redeeming qualities himself, if you look around the world and through history.
They were absolute geniuses compared to Trump, and put on a far more convincing show of honesty - particularly Hitler, with his faux-compassionate warmups and vegetarianism. Mussolini had an actual career as an intellectual before he was famous. Hitler sounds kind of intellectually average.
Well, he certainly considered himself to be an intellectual. Whether he actually was one is another matter entirely
He made an actual living as a newspaper editor, and got some good reviews according to Wikipedia, so apparently he convinced other people too. At the very least, he could pass.
I don't think fascism is capable of producing competent longterm leadership. Like the ideology preselects for loyalty above all, it's rabidly anti-intellectual and scorns anyone perceived as being an intellectual elitist. It's purely emotion driven and requires ever escalating emotional rhetoric to keep the based angry at external all-powerfully weak enemies (lazy mexicans stealing your jobs, sneaky jewish bankers crashed the entire economy, thuggish high school dropout gangbangers in the inner city are criminal masterminds responsible for all the drugs flowing through rural communities who would overrun everything if they were smart enough to unify, take your pick of contradictory scapegoat.)
That's not to say incompetence means harmlessness, there's a lot of blood that has been spilled throughout history due to incompetence.
Well, they certainly got straight to the point this time. The last time it took a world war before they really started to shit the bed. I'm grateful, if confused.
Well... were not on the other side of this yet. Were still in the sort of early 1930s Germany era where the real problems people face haven't gotten all that much better, and the fascists have made many decently successful smaller attempts at power but haven't quite succeeded in that big push for power. like the stuff that is planned in project 2025.
Yes, fingers crossed Kamala wins and we get another 4 years, at least (us in the rest of the world included).