Two Hundred and Sixty Seven

A ruler is only one man, powerless if people refuse to obey him.  Why, then, do Americans tolerate Trump?

Most complain about him, but they do no more than complain.  

Some march in the streets, protesting his lawlessness; but when they’re beaten and/or shot by the police they don’t arm themselves and fight back.  Why don’t they fight back?  I’m a pacifist, but not a masochist.  If someone tried to kill me, I’d fight back.  And why do the police, who swore an oath to uphold the law, obey our lawless president?

Trump’s opponents and his supporters both predict that if this crisis continues, civil war will break out.  His opponents predict it will break out if he continues to flout the law, while his supporters predict it will break out if people continue to protest his lawlessness; but Americans have even less stomach for opposing their rulers, however lawless, now than they did in the ‘60s.

In the ‘60s, when we marched for civil rights and against the Vietnam War, I hoped it was the beginning of a reform movement—but only the beginning, because our goals were so modest.  And the results of our protests were equally modest.  The Vietnam War did end—not because we marched, but because our rulers decided the war wasn’t cost effective; and we won black Americans the right to vote—a right which was already theirs under the law­—not because we marched, but because voting had become nothing more than a symbolic gesture of support for the status quo.  Both were no more than symbolic victories—but even symbolic victories so terrified our rulers that they’ve been fighting to undo them ever since.

Every war the US fought since the ‘60s has been part of our rulers' ongoing effort to cure us of what pundits call the ‘Vietnam syndrome’—the reluctance of Americans to go to war.  And they succeeded.  The US is now waging numerous wars, both declared and undeclared, but no one marches to protest them because Americans have become inured to endless war.

The movement died because we finally understand that the American empire can’t be reformed, can't become the republic we're taught it already is.  No empire can be reformed, because its only law is the will of its ruler(s).

Some compare Trump to Hitler.  They claim Trump was elected because he deceived the people, just as some Germans claim Hitler deceived them (although most Germans claim Himmler deceived Hitler); but every leader, not even but especially one we call a dictator, can only lead people where they want to go.

Germany was the first modern industrialized nation to have a welfare state.  Bismarck created it in order to forestall revolution from below with a revolution from above; and he succeeded in placating the German people for a while.  But when the German republic failed to deal with the Great Depression, Germans realized their republic, like the empire it succeeded, was a fraud, a government that would not or could not govern.  They supported Hitler because he destroyed the faux republic and recreated Bismarck’s welfare state, albeit one that served only ‘real‘ Germans by confiscating the property and exploiting the slave labor of 'nonAryans'.

Hitler’s American counterpart isn't Trump, as his opponents claim, but FDR.

In Cæsar's time, civil war threatened to destroy Rome, just as in FDR's and Hitler's time the Great Depression threatened to destroy the world.  Cæsar saved Rome, and forestalled revolution, just as Hitler saved Germany and FDR saved the USA, by doing what the government would not or could not do.

The welfare state is not socialism, as some claim; neither is it national socialism, as others claim.  It’s the last stage of capitalism—which some call 'state capitalism'—an attempt to save a decadent empire from collapse. 

The age of revolutions, whether from above or below, is now over because we learned that revolutions against empires only replace one ruler, or ruling class, with another.  They can't reform a decadent empire, much less replace it with another political system.  They only further damage an already damaged system, hastening its collapse.  Cæsar knew this, as did Bismarck, Hitler and FDR.  

FDR boasted that he'd saved capitalism; but only for a while.  He didn’t try to reform it, because he knew it can’t be reformed.  He only patched it up.  And now it’s obvious that it can’t be patched up again.  That’s why we rejected Bernie Sanders, the reformer who wanted to revive FDR’s welfare state, and elected Trump. 

As soon as FDR died, our rulers began dismantling his welfare state because they knew, as we now do, that the USA is so corrupt that any attempt to reform it will only hasten its collapse, as Gorbachev’s attempt to reform the USSR hastened its collapse.  

Our rulers hope that if they do nothing to change it, the American empire will last their lifetimes. Après moi, le deluge.  But the rest of us don't want the empire to last our lifetimes.  Most Americans are so disgusted with an empire which pretends to be a republic that they chose Trump to destroy it, just as Germans chose Hitler to destroy the faux German republic and Romans chose Cæsar to destroy the faux Roman republic.

Destructive he is, but Trump is not a dictator; nor does he want to be one.  He’s a narcissistic buffoon who wants only to be loved and admired.  America's Hitler is yet to come.