Trumpeting

When he first surfaced over my horizon a few years ago I thought Donald Trump was a loud-mouthed, empty-headed buffoon. At that time, he was obsessed with the belief that Barack Obama was not born in the USA and therefore was not eligible to be president of the USA.  In retrospect and in view of his current pronouncements, this obsession would seem to have its roots in a racist belief that non-European people are unfit for high office. Cautiously observing his increasing appeal to all that is worst about the masses and their reaction to demagogues, I am becoming more than a little alarmed. His ignorant ravings have done nothing to erode his appeal to the masses -- if anything, the reverse.

He reminds me more of Hitler every time I see and hear him speak in the sound bites that appear on my TV screen whenever I turn it on. We didn't have TV in 1938-39 when Hitler's face and speeches dominated our newsreels in the 'shorts' that preceded the main feature
 at the movies. Trump's mannerisms resemble those of Hitler's that I remember from those long-gone days. 

There is one interesting difference.  Hitler was very clear about his demands and his political agenda. Trump isn't. Apart from a proposal for a wall between Mexico and the USA, and perhaps one between Canada and the USA, and an edict (or whatever it takes) to keep all Moslems out of the USA, I have no clear notion of Trump's political platform. I wonder if he has actually defined his platform yet. I get an impression that he has a list  of undesirable people and events but is less sure of what he actually wants to do in the event that he achieves the Republican nomination for President of the USA, and the even more unlikely event (I hope!!) that he gets elected.

There have been dystopian fictions about a fascist takeover of the United States. I fervently hope life isn't going to imitate art, but Trump is unquestionably a fascist demagogue, as intelligent, cool-headed clear thinking Americans instantly see. It worries me, however, that there are increasing proportions who perceive him as the saviour who will restore the USA's lost greatness.  How he proposes to go about achieving his ill-defined and undefined aims is troubling.  A demagogue who develops or invents his cause or causes  and his policies and political agenda after the fact of being identified as a national leader is a truly terrifying prospect.

America has undoubtedly lost much of its former greatness, I believe as a direct result of a misplaced national hubris.  Thucydides knew it well, understood it, and eloquently described its tragic consequences in his history of the Peloponnesian War, fought between Athens and its adversaries more than 2000 years ago. Aspiring leaders of America and other countries should be required to read Thucydides as a condition of running for office. One of the signs of decline from greatness is the lack of merit demonstrated by aspirants for high political office. This is manifest emphatically in the dozen or more who seek the Republican nomination, most of all in the worst of them all, Donald Trump.