Saturday, November 18, 2017

President Trump has learned his lesson well



It’s no secret about President Donald Trump’s love and admiration for dictators and autocrats. Throughout his run for president and after assuming office he has praised them as “strong leaders unlike what we have in this country.”  He systematically ignores the atrocities that these leaders have committed to rise to power and maintain it.

The list of Trump’s favorites includes: Rodrigo Duterte, President of the Philippines; Xi Jinping, President of China; Abdel-Fattah el- Sissi, President of Egypt; Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of Turkey; Kim Jong Un, President of North Korea; and Vladimir Putin, President of Russia.  Trump has even praised the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.  Anyone, including Trump, can just Google these guys to read about the atrocities they have committed.
 
President Trump, unlike all his previous predecessors, avoids all discussion of human rights issues when he meets with these leaders.  The most cited reason is his many business ventures and agreements with these countries, which always take precedent over his influential responsibilities as Leader of the Free World.

However, if one closely examines the governing style of Trump, he has learned valuable lessons about leadership from his dictator friends as was recently pointed out on the John Oliver TV show.

In full disclosure, Oliver’s show is definitely leftist biased in its reporting on Trump’s actions, but sometimes even the biased shows can give one an “aha moment.”

I had such a moment the other night when Oliver pointed out that Trump and his supporters continually use the following dictator techniques:

Delegitimizing the media
“Whataboutism”
Trolling
Character discrediting (I added this one)

We are all familiar with Trump’s campaign to discredit most news media outlets as “Fake News”.  Accordingly he claims that his tweets are one of the only sources of the real facts.  This is the number one tactic used by most dictatorships, delegitimizing and suppressing all opposition media sources coupled with convincing people their regime’s news outlet is the only true source of facts.

“Whataboutism” is an old Soviet propaganda tool used to marginalize inquiries into current immoral, unethical actions or violations of the law.  It implies all actions share an equal moral equivalence.    An investigation or inquiry is initiated and to cloud the issue the “What about” term is applied to incidents or persons from the past as a comparison to minimize the present illicit activity.  This is a favorite of Trump, and his supporters.   Watch Fox News and count the number of times “What about” is used in their reporting.  It really is very amusing but doesn’t address the fact that the illicit or unlawful behavior is occurring today and should be dealt with accordingly.  The past behavior of others doesn’t legitimize, minimize, or absolve from prosecution someone’s present actions.

Trolling the internet is another technique skillfully utilized by Trump to play upon the fears and biases of our society.  Find out what people fear most, incite mass confusion about it, and provoke anger.  Dictators like Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un love this technique.

The last Trump governing technique is my personal favorite, character discrediting.  President Trump doesn't intellectually debate any of his critics.  Instead he makes fun of their personal appearance and plays upon a personality weakness by assigning each a childish nickname, all in an attempt to discredit them for criticizing his regime. Unlike dictators Trump can’t have them physically assassinated, but he, like his beloved dictators, is obsessed with the destruction of his critics.

If you’ve read this to conclusion and you’re angry with the Trump characterization, just remember you can always invoke Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as your “What about” to dismiss the realities of the issue and feel better.

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