Trump Thread

[Montmorency]

Trump's rhetoric is every bit as effective as FDR and his fireside chats. He appeals to commonality and Americana mythos & nomos appeals with his core support group like few ever have. The believe he shares their most important experience of America is going to Hell and we need to take it back -- never stop swinging back at your opponents (never give up, never surrender) until they are destroyed (and that there are no real rules in a knife fight except to win). His connection with his core 20% of the electorate is profound. That it contravenes all of Aristotle's precepts about proper rhetoric doesn't mean it isn't working. Logos is ignored, Ethos redefined to tribalism, and pathos reigns triumphant. That is, by the way, the exact demagogic approach to successful rhetoric decried by Socrates, Aristotle, Hobbes, and Kant as being without ethics. But what did they know.

I don't think I was the first to compare Trump to Peisistratos (thrice reigned, twice deposed) during the Biden years.

But FDR didn't have nearly the power over his party and base that Trump does, although there may have been a similar scale of adoration. He consistently restrained himself to Congress, who implemented or allowed the implementation of most of the New Deal of their own authority. In contrast, all Trump demands from his Congress is quiescence and a unified front before the media (which Republicans have always been pretty good at) as he and Musk establish a despotic biumvirate. What we can compare the two in is in their limits in trying to usurp or retire dissatisfactory politicians: both have always failed at that, because it's really hard for a single politician to command a local electorate vote one way or another against a live person in that jurisdiction. Especially incumbent. That is technically some sort of balance of powers I suppose.

Anyway, the national Democrats are continuing in their historical trend of accommodationism, actually more intensely than I would recall of the Reagan years or other such eras. One can't identify what Democrats in Congress stand for right now, other than competing for the Ludwig Kaas and Franz von Papen Prize for Merit in Liberal Politics.