A new way to describe Trump: he's a dangerous, despotic, and demented demagogue, by Hal M. Brown, MSW

I am keeping my Washington Post subscription despite the outrage I share with the some 200,000 people who canceled their subscriptions in protest of what owner Jeff Bezos did. While I can read news articles elsewhere, in The New York Times for example, I can't read the Post opinions without a subscription. 

Today in the opinion section two down from the top column of the page position (when I read it), which had the attempt by Bezos to justify his decision to not let the paper endorse a candidate, is a column by Eli Merritt, a research assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University, is the author of “Disunion Among Ourselves: The Perilous Politics of the American Revolution.”

This is how he begins his column Opinion: There’s a better term for Trump than ‘fascist’ as follows:

As we approach the culmination of Donald Trump’s third bid for the presidency, I continue to be struck by how bumbling most Americans are at properly naming a breed of politicians that has bedeviled democracies since the time of the ancient Greeks.

The latest example of this linguistic disorder is the designation of the ex-president as a “fascist” by John F. Kelly, former Marine general and former chief of staff to Trump, as well as by Vice President Kamala Harris a day later.

It is not wrong to identify fascist tendencies in Trump, such as ultranationalism, ethnocentrism, cronyism, persecution of internal enemies and comfort with violence. But these traits also qualify him for classification as a dictator, despot, autocrat and authoritarian.

So why single out “fascist,” an inflammatory charge conjuring images of 20th-century mass murderers?

A far better designation, one that sums up Trump with precision, is “demagogue.”

He concludes by adding yet another word, one even more chilling than demagogue: tyrant.

What we know with confidence is that the ex-president is a demagogue par excellence, and in light of the history of demagogues transforming into tyrants, it’s indisputably ill-advised to restore him to the presidency.

But such matters are not for professors of political science to decide. If Trump prevails in the election, the question of what kind of leader he is will be put to a high-stakes test. We shall see with our own eyes.

I've thought that the word "fascist" applied to Trump wasn't having as much of an effect as it ought to. This was not only because too many Americans didn't know it's precise meaning, which I think is true, but because it didn't have an ominous enough ring to it. It seemed to me to be a soft sounding word. It didn't evoke the horrors of Hitler the way the word Nazi does. 

I hadn't thought of the word "demagogue" until now. While its meaning may be more obscure than "fascist" and everyone knows what a dictator is, "demagogue" not only sounds ominous but it lends itself to alterations like "Trump is a dangerous, despotic, and demented, demagogue." 

Trump, who I and other therapists, have called a malignant narcissist could also be correctly called a "malignant demagogue." Malignant is one of the most frightening word in the English language when a doctor uses it about yourself and a loved one. Everyone knows that  malignant cells (like those shown below in the AI picture of Trump sitting in front of a portrait of his favorite person) can spread and kill someone. 

Trump uses his attack words to demonize his enemies like he's swinging a cudgel. He's been successful in spewing lies doused in rheotical gasoline designed to inflame and incite his audience. He did this on Jan. 6th and was successful.

The Democrats have not been able to do this with their words. You'd think that their wordsmiths run whatever descriptions they think of applying to Trump by Miss Manners, who at 86 is still writing advice, columns before using them.

In the same Washington Post edition Jennifer Rubin uses the term fascism in her column: "The U.S. can learn from other countries’ encounters with fascism."

She begins her column this way:

The mainstream media — spurred by the disturbing outpouring of racism at Donald Trump’s rally on Sunday at Madison Square Garden — has finally zeroed in on the stakes of this election: the preservation of our democracy against a fascist threat. (As historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat pointed out: “He knows that everyone watching and attending knows that he is reenacting a Nazi show.”)

As retired general and former White House chief of staff John F. Kelly confirmed for the New York Times, Trump certainly meets the definition of a fascist: “It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy.” The public has begun to catch on. (ABC News reports that half the country views Trump as a fascist.)

In the last week before the election let's see if Kamala Harris and Tim Walz can begin to make the case that Trump is a demagogue aspiring to be a tyrant.

Bonus:

Here's Trump assuring us that he's not a Nazi.

Yesterday's blog 

Trump's garden party was a wicked carnival of grievances, misogyny and racism but also a preview of what the country would be if he's elected

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Trump's garden party was a wicked carnival of grievances, misogyny and racism but also a preview of what the country would be if he's elected, by Hal M. Brown, MSW

 

Colorized version

This is the coverage (from Google News) of the Trump rally. Click image to enlarge the titles just from the top of the page.

This is the first article, on the bottom left above) that I clicked on: 

I’m a U.S. Navy veteran. Here’s why I’m protesting Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally

Next to the photo I used to illustrate this blog he wrote:

In February 1939, over 20,000 Americans gathered at MSG to support Hitler in a shocking display intertwining American nationalism, swastikas, and images of George Washington. Hijacking Washington’s birthday, they advocated for a “white-only America” and included a Pledge of Allegiance, posters stating, “Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America,” uniformed stormtroopers, and speakers denouncing Jewish refugees and praising American racism like the anti-miscegenation laws, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and Jim Crow policies.

“It’s always been American to protect the Aryan character of this country,” declared one speaker, Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze.

Does any of this sound familiar? It should. Trump’s rhetoric echoes the same dangerous themes. He frames immigrants as invaders, journalists as enemies, and political opponents as existential threats to America’s future. This is the same playbook authoritarian leaders have used for centuries.

He wrote this prior to the rally. Not ony did everything the author, Ken Harbaugh, predicted would happen actually happened, it was worse than I would guess he thought it would be.

By now if you have been watching MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and watched some of the coverage last night, you have seen discussions about how the rally was replete with offensive and racist comments. 

The New York Times (which unlike The Washington Post and the LA Times) has endorsed a candidate) published this article (subsription): 

Here's how it begins:

Donald J. Trump’s closing rally at Madison Square Garden on the second to last Sunday before the election was a release of rage at a political and legal system that impeached, indicted and convicted him, a vivid and at times racist display of the dark energy animating the MAGA movement.

A comic kicked off the rally by dismissing Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” then mocked Hispanics as failing to use birth control, Jews as cheap and Palestinians as rock-throwers, and called out a Black man in the audience with a reference to watermelon.

Another speaker likened Vice President Kamala Harris to a prostitute with “pimp handlers.” A third called her “the Antichrist.” And the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson mocked Ms. Harris — the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father — with a made-up ethnicity, saying she was vying to become “the first Samoan-Malaysian, low IQ former California prosecutor ever to be elected president.”

By the time the former president himself took the stage, an event billed as delivering the closing message of his campaign, with nine days left in a tossup race, had instead become a carnival of grievances, misogyny and racism.

The article didn't go into what Trump actually said beyond this: "Mr. Trump took the stage two hours after scheduled — was often infused with more self-indulgence than political strategy. It was about what they called a closing carnival of grievances, misogyny and racism. I would add that it was a preview of what a Trump administration would look like. 

I have a feeling that when the Trump event was called a carnival the writers were thinking of Ray Bradbury's classic novel "Something Wicked This Way Comes" because it is about a wicked carnival with a menacing villian named Mr. Dark. Note the subtitle: The inflammatory rally was a capstone for an increasingly aggrieved campaign for Donald Trump, whose rhetoric has grown darker and more menacing. Mr. Dark is described in Wikipedia as follows:

 "Mr. Dark", who seemingly wields the power to grant the townspeople's secret desires. In reality, Dark is a malevolent being who, like the carnival, lives off the life force of those it enslaves. 

I could go on to draw a parallel with Trump and Mr. Dark, and the secret desires, though not so secret desires, of the people who are the townspeople who support him, but I am sure you can do this yourself. 

 Addendum: Here's an article that you may have missed.

This is what Kathleen Belew, an associate professor of history at Northwestern University, posted on X:

The point here is that fascism is on full display, openly: no dog whistles, no plausible deniability. It's a show of power and an another attempt to make this look and feel normal.And it will not just magically disappear after the election, regardless of the outcome. In fact, it might be worth thinking through the very likely possibility that this kind of display suggests that this candidate and this movement don't care that much about the outcome.

This is what Ruth Ben-Ghiat, historian and author of "Strongmen" posted on X in response to Aaron Rupar noting that almost every speaker at this rally has claimed that "they" tried to kill Trump.

The purpose of this is to conjure a threat environment sufficient to justify authoritarian action if they win. Old trick of those planning coups as well.

On Salon Heather "Digby" Parton wrote a column which includes some quotes I won't share becasue I want to keep this blog PG rated. 

Trump's Madison Square Garden scandal: Is it too late to undo the damage?

She concluded:

Is it just another tempest in a teapot? Could be. Trump is a master at eluding all accountability. He didn't say anything about it in his own speech but perhaps he'll address it today and that will be the end of it. But if there's a lesson from 2016 it's that a scandal that would normally blow over given enough time can be lethal in the final days of a campaign. In a tied race it's the last thing any campaign would want.

Of course, everything that was said in that rally should, by all rights, disqualify Trump in the minds of decent people everywhere. I'll never understand how any of that is considered normal political discourse now. But specifically insulting a group (Puerto Ricans) that's necessary for victory is just plain dumb even for them. All it takes is just a point or two in the right place and it could be the death blow.  

This is from HuffPost:

Just a note about how Madison Square Garden is being abbreviated as MSG. When I lived in New York we just called it "The Garden." Ricky Nelson sang Garden Party (see video). MSG most often stands for monosodium gulatamate, the flavor enhancer generally considered safe for your health. In this instance the rally at MSG is not safe for the health of democracy.

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Has Trump's crude phallocentric politics led to evangelicals abandoning him? By Hal M. Brown, MSW

Who would ever have thought that the size of Arnold Palmer's penis would come up in a presidential election? Most adults, even none golfers, know that Arnold Palmer was one of the world's greatest golfers and even know that a drink which is still popular was named for him.  It is shown above in the long glass which it is generally served in.

From here I make the leap into Trump and Jesus and then to Trump and phallic symbols:
 

Voters who saw nothing tawdry, let alone sacrilegious, about images of Trump and Jesus shown above and didn't find it off-putting that Trump would sell electonic trading cards like the decidely phallic one may be rethinking voting for him. Consider this article:

The article begins:

Donald Trump’s “Believers and Ballots Faith Town Hall” in Zebulon, Georgia, on Wednesday was very short on words about believers, ballots or faith. In the closing days of past campaigns, the Republican Party and its Christian right allies made strong appeals to these voters to get out to the polls in huge numbers to save “Christian” America and “biblical” values. On Wednesday, though, Trump’s perfunctory appearance at Christ Chapel Church in the battleground state punted on an opportunity to make such a plea inside a church. The abbreviated, uncomfortable charade showed how Trump, in his third presidential run, has dispensed with the GOP’s farcical claim to being the party of religious Americans, relying instead on his status as a messiah figure to mobilize his loyal base of white evangelical voters. 

One of the town hall participants asked Trump about a survey released earlier this month by the evangelical pollster George Barna and Arizona Christian University, claiming that 32 million regular churchgoers may not vote this November (this is not the first time Barna has made such dire pronouncements, including in 2016, when Trump won). Asked to “share a final message to those Christians to encourage them to go to the polls,” Trump could not even bring himself to offer such a message. He did not acknowledge or thank the voters who helped propel him to the White House eight years ago and stood by him throughout his scandalous presidency and insurrection. Instead, he said, “Christians are not tremendous voters,” and then rambled for nearly three minutes on themes of religious persecution by “not nice” and “stupid” people, guns and COVID restrictions, without completing coherent sentences or thoughts.

The article goes on to describe how Trump and his "embrace of a new evangelical leader, far-right campus troll and election denier Charlie Kirk may have worked against him." Kirk claimed Democrats “stand for everything God hates” and called the election “a spiritual battle.”

If these evangelical voters are paying attention at all they should be realizing that Trump is a sleazy lowlife liar who will pander for votes in any way that he can from courting the phallocentric (look it up here) "bros" who are fans of the Joe Rogan show to using language to attack his enemies that, if their kids used words like that, they'd be taken to task.

Read this from The States Newsroom:

The article, which I find an extraordinary example of how unprecedentedly bizarre this campaign has become, begins:

In all fairness, the latest installment of our phallocentric presidential politics began with Barack Obama’s taunt of Donald Trump’s fragile manhood at the Democratic National Convention last summer.

With one deft move, Obama combined a humorous observation about Trump’s preoccupation with the size of his rallies with hand gestures the raucous crowd interpreted as a reference to the former president’s brag about his penis size during the 2016 Republican primary.

In an exchange with then rival Sen. Marco Rubio, Trump denied that the size of his hands bespoke any sexual inadequacy on his part. “Look at those hands, are they small hands?” Trump said to a stunned, but thoroughly titillated nation watching the debate on television. “And he referred to my hands — ‘if they’re small, something else must be small.’ I guarantee you, there’s no problem. I guarantee.”

It was a puerile insult that a bigger man — and certainly every woman — would’ve ignored as too stupid and self-demeaning to engage, but not Trump. 

The GOP frontrunner was more than willing to become the first presidential candidate in history who was insecure enough to assure voters he possessed enough ‘big penis energy’ to lead America into whatever post-coital future it could imagine.

Pehraps the accusations coming from no fewer that 23 women about how Trump sexually assaulted them is starting to lead them to believe that there's no way all of them could be making this up. Maybe they are wondering about why Trump would want to hang out with Jeffrey Epstein.

I see the preening narcisstic (read yesterday's blog about that term) phallocentric Trump having his deepest insecurities being triggered by the fact that he is running against a self-confident and accomplished woman who also happens to be physically attractive, one who clearly doesn't see him as the hunk, the hunk of burning love he fancies himself to be.

Sorry Trump, you never were and never will be Elvis.

Yesterday's blog:

I just read an article blasting Trump for wearing more makeup than Kamala and was reminded about how Jennifer Senior first called him a preening narcissist.

Read all previous blogs.