by fulltimestudent 52 Replies latest social current
I thank one of my former lecturers for drawing my attention to this overview.
After some 100 years, living out its "manifest destiny" dream, as the hegemon of the world, what has this 'dream' done to/for the USA? The approaching Presidential election provides an opportunity to examine this question.
And what of all the appendage organisations (like the WTS) that rode across the world on the hegemon's coattails?
The answer may be here: http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism
An image from the above cited overview:
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Another interesting question, noting the enthusiasm of Christian Republicans for Trump, is 'Does Jesus appear as authoritarian to Americans?'
It says that people are not thinking.
I thought Trump was smart and a good businessman as he presented on the Apprentice. But he is not showing that on the campaign. He talks about building a will between Mexico and the USA. A good businessman would not build a wall around a business, he would use M&A, mergers and acquisitions. Merge and acquire these other lands and take their assets. Mexico, Cuba and other countries have plenty of assets. A good businessman would make deals to acquire them and make them our own, part of the country.
But yet people are against Trump because he insults and says bad things about women. Those are his good qualities. The bad qualities are that he does not think. Abortion. Not something a president deals with.
USA may have been the power (business and militarily) hegemon of the world since WW1 but the description falls down in it's cultural influence.
Western Europe is the wider cultural influence which comes from the spread of earlier times of France, Spain and Great Britain and why South America, Africa and much of Asia in many ways look to Europe - the historical trade and communication routes have been there for centuries.
This is why the USA (republicans especially) has a reputation for being insular and self serving. Actually given it's awesome power I believe it has been quite benign militarily speaking and I believe its British background roots has a lot to do with this.
It is still a relatively young culture - as Disraeli said to an Englishman who made anti-jewish comments "3000 years ago when your ancestors were painting themselves blue and running around half naked, mine were building Solomon's temple."
The western world is steadily dropping the Christian religion as a major influence; the USA is a little behind the rest in this. Possibly because many there still believe its success stems from it.
I don't think Trump will be your next President.
Trump is consistently getting 30-40% of the Republican vote.
The Republicans who bother to vote in a primary are a minority of all Republicans.
Republicans comprise less than half of US voters.
Yet...there are 300 million + citizens of the USA.
[A very small percentage] of 300 million is still 10's of millions of people.
Answer to the OP question:
In a country as vast and diverse as the USA, there are bound to be 10's of millions of nitwits who would vote for Mussolini if he were running under the "conservative" banner. So why is their support for Trump a surprise?
(In the interest of fairness: There are also 10's of millions of Americans who would vote for Stalin if he were running under the "liberal" banner. It is, fortunately, the greater mass of reasonable people in the "middle" who determine the outcome of elections.)
I agree though with those who have said that he won't make it to becoming president.
