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Install guardrails, not rulers [1]
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Date: 2022-11-29
Before Donald Trump went to bat for Arizona’s recent gubernatorial runner-up, the last time I’d run across the term “install” (regarding politics) was in a loose (though valid) comparison of Donald J. Trump with Rufus T. Firefly. “In the 1933 Marx Brothers farce ‘Duck Soup,’” I wrote, “a rich widow installs a comically inept strongman to ‘save’ the bankrupt, fictive, tinpot fiefdom of Freedonia.”
Come to think of it, on a vast inheritance, the self-styled self-made legend Trump reportedly went bankrupt six times. (But who’s counting?)
Let’s connect some dots. After “The Great War” (later re-badged WWI), Italy grappled with fiscal fragility. In 1922, having unleashed mobs that compare to today’s Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, Benito Mussolini took over. According to NYU’s Ruth Ben-Ghiat, at the beseeching of J.P. Morgan financier Thomas Lamont, Uncle Sam provided loans that got Il Duce up and running (if not goose-stepping) toward a bad end (for him and, in WWII, scores of millions).
Dr. Ben-Ghiat points to Lamont as a proud, overt fascist. In tandem rode such swells as William Randolph Hearst. Thomas Edison. Father Charles Coughlin. And scads of hoi polloi who called themselves “America Firsters.”
As if to belie their freedom-fragging came the galvanizing blast of Pearl Harbor (which united us as never before or since). But the bombs and torpedoes hit home a lifetime ago. As Trump presager Richard Nixon observed, the public has “a very short memory.” Having ridden to power in a campaign steered by Il Duce fan Steve Bannon, Trump now seeks to “install” (in the Grand Canyon State) Kari “Trump In Heels” Lake.
The alarms stay all but mum. Granted, at such loser-touts-loser schtick, one might grin. Laugh. Or honk, “Who does he think HE is?”
But he’s long since told us. In 2019, he anointed himself “Chosen One.” Fifteen months later, voters chose Joe Biden. No matter. After claiming he, Trump, had prevailed “by landslide,” he urged his troop to converge on DC and go “wild” on 1/6/21; his party still calls that would-be coup “legitimate political discourse.”
So, can we talk? If it quacks like a duck and goose-steps like a fascist, it’s likely out-of-step with liberty (which Mussolini called “a putrid corpse”). With control of the US House looking to be as red as the gore spilled in its Rotunda, we’ll do well to review our past- and resolve our need to ramp up our vigilance going forward.
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/29/2139017/-Install-guardrails-not-rulers
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