As the June 6 House Committee Hearings continue, I’ve revived a post abandoned in draft because it seems relevant. How the cult of personality led the US to the brink of something awful. With Trump 2024 looming, the Hearings could trigger criminal proceedings which might disqualify Trump from another run at the Presidency.
That’s why we’re still talking about this fool.
Donald Trump graduated from the New York Military Academy to Fordham University, and later transferred to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania where he bought earned his B.S. in Economics — so Donald Trump was b.s. in Economics? aw snap! It’s clear he only felt the need to read one book.
Trump’s illiteracy (famously dislikes to read anything) may have led him to confuse the hero of Orwell’s book, as the former President was clearly more inspired by Big Brother than he was Winston Smith.
Maybe because Smith loses in the end, and DT doesn’t like to lose.
Orwell wrote 1984 in 1949 with a real-life baddie in mind: Joseph Stalin. who was by then well-entrenched as dictator of the Soviet Union, with his cult of personality (personenkultus) in full swing.
Orwell’s uber-villain may also have inspired future despots such as Mao Zedong, Recep Erdogan, the Kims of North Korea, and even Donald Trump.
Villains because they absolutely believed that, like Trump, they “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and … wouldn’t lose any voters.” unquote.
Personenkultus.
Stalin wasn’t so elitist — he’d shoot anyone, anywhere.
Born into poverty, brutally ambitious, he drove the Soviet Union from subsistence famers to superpower. Stalin makes Putin seem like a soft-cock. Like Mao after him, Stalin collectivized agriculture and starved millions. Those who opposed him were executed or exiled.
In 18 months he murdered 750,000 Soviets dissidents, then rewrote history by mythologizing himself at the center of a glorious Soviet Renaissance.
Stalin’s face appeared on books, artworks, statues, legal tender, posters, everywhere. The national anthem had his name inserted into it. He invaded Finland. He made sure it was the Red Army that crushed Berlin and ended the war, not the Americans. Hitler was shit-scared of Stalin, but totally dismissive of Roosevelt. Stalin was contemptuous of them all.
Except for all the executions and stuff, does any of this kinda remind you of anyone? Do you remember how in the lead-up to the 2016 US election there was so much talk of civil war? How Trump fed the hate, then fed off the hate?
On 25 November 2016 Vice.com surveyed MAGA supporters and asked them if Trump had shot somebody in Fifth Avenue would they still support him, half said yes.
50% of these morons would have invented some form of justification for murder, if the big orange fool didn’t do so himself: “Our kick-ass prezdent — givin them commie New York faggots some hell!”
I wonder what Orwell might have written after 6 January?
Or what will be written in 2024?
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