The Trump GOP Authoritarian Thinking
The Kind of Thinkers Who Want To Force Everyone To Think Their Way
The other day I went looking for a story from History to illustrate the life and times of Donald Trump. Curiously, there aren’t many.
There is, of course, the comparison between Trump and Herbert Hoover. They were both extreme Republican men who got caught like deer in headlights when chaos came to visit them. Hoover, as punishment, drafted the leaders of the veterans of World War I who were protesting to try to force the government to pay them the pensions they earned fighting for the country. He sent the army to forcibly remove all the rest of the protesters from Government property. All Trump wanted to do was go hold a bible upside down in front of a church. So, he tear gassed his way to the church just to take a picture of his ignorance.
Then there is King Augeas, who didn’t want to clean the stables where his immortal horses were kept. After 30 years, his stables became a problem. But then, Hercules was given his fifth task, which was to clean the stables where those horses had been held for 30 years. Hercules directed two rivers to run through the stables and in a single day had cleaned up 30 years of crap. Like Trump, King Augeas refused to pay up for the work done. That’s going back-a-ways to find someone as cheap as Trump.
There’s not much more in all of history which can even attempt to compare to Trump’s constant assault on the truth. There’s nothing to compare his story of assent to power, either. It’s clear that the man is something that society has never encountered. The man is a threat to civilization itself. Not since Henry the VIII has one man caused so much upheaval of traditional norms.
Henry the VIII was a horny old guy, just like Trump. The difference is that Trump is horny just to be horny and is doing his best to convince the world that he can be a Christian Chameleon and that that’s a real thing. Henry didn’t believe in religion, but he did believe in princely sons so he could be considered to have had reason to be horny. It could be construed as his Kingly duty. Anyway, he left the church in Rome to make a Church in England. There is no Christian Chameleon Church and fortunately, Trump does not have the power to make such an abomination. I’m sure he would if he could, but why? He has all the supposed God Fearing Christians as lap dogs already. They apparently do not know they belong to his cult and they don’t know the difference between a real Christian and a lizard like a Chameleon, either.
All I can say is, Praise the Lord.
Christian Nationalists are all smug about their boy being chosen by God because he didn’t get shot by two different assassins. Well, I have some serious questions about the conclusions y’all have come to. First, do you know if he got winged even? There isn’t any blood showing in photos of him shaking his fist as he was pulled down off the stage over there in Butler. Even if he was actually winged, wouldn’t that cause a man to stop and wonder if what he was doing was really worth the cost? Rather than make a course correction, though, Trump upped the ante.
After the debate Trump got kind of gun shy. I can’t really blame him. That laugh she laughed when he announced that people in Springfield were eating pets, must have sounded like the biggest depth charge the poor man ever imagined. If he didn’t hear those depth charges going off then, I’m sure he can hear them now.
Tonight as I write this on Vice Presidential Debate Eve, I have to wonder what JD can possibly say that will defend the sputtering star he’s hitched his wagon to? I can see where this will be the beginning of the end of the JD-era of national politics. It’s really hard for me to see how JD can survive this encounter and go on to have a political career after the Trump VP gig. I know he’s really smart, but he is not very practical or he wouldn’t be having a debate. Coach Walz, on the other hand, is the epitome of practicality. I have to imagine that Coach will go hard on the JD behind the eyeliner and the Peter Theil ideology about relevancy. He might even go so far as to remind JD that he’s really a hillbilly.
The whole Trump/JD Presidential run kind of reminds me of an old Harry Chaplin song called Taxi. It’s about a taxi driver who picks up an ex-girlfriend, years after their last date. One line goes,
You see she was gonna be an actress
And I was gonna learn to fly
She took off to find the footlights
And I took off to find the sky
Neither one made it to the dream they thought they were pursuing. The song ends with
And she walked away in silence
It's strange how you never know
But we'd both gotten what we'd asked for
Such a long, long time ago.
I think that may be pretty close to the story of Donny Trump jousting windmills with his trusted squire JD. It isn’t exactly the same, but they, Trump and JD, have unfulfillable dreams, too. I could see JD driving for Uber and Donny hooking up to be another Reality TV wannabe. He might even make an appearance on The Bachelor. By then his stock may have risen enough to show his face in public again.
They might have to rework the script a bit to allow Trump to rant and rave about crowd size. But they could show crowds of AI people adoring Trump all the while fawning celebrities arrive one after another, all arriving with chauffeur JD who is making crypto bank as an independent Uber driver. Of course, I sometimes let my imagination run wild with these kinds of fantasy stories. But the fantasy is so much better than what they’ll actually do.
One thing that is happening around the upcoming election is that Donny, in particular, is getting more and more tribal in his attacks on Ms K. Ms. K’s ads are not complementary to Donny either, to be fair. But Donny is saying things like Ms. K was born mentally impaired. He knows that’s not true, but he says it to try to make points with people who are already voting for him. He isn’t going to convince anyone to suddenly change their minds from wanting women to make their own health care choices to wanting state controlled bedtime activities with a bunch of crazy on the hoof.
That’s why this whole 2025 manifesto is so utterly mind numbingly dumb. What that document says is that the next Republican administration will have a ready-made plan to accomplish things that no one wants and that everyone will hate. Elitists always think they know best and everyone will come around to their better way of thinking. I really do not believe elitists have the ability to understand that their authoritarian methods will never translate into love and appreciation from the people. But that is their point. They don’t need no love and appreciation. They love and appreciate themselves.
Those kinds of thinkers always want to force everyone to see their way. They never succeed. Well, that’s not always true either. Sometimes they do succeed. When they do, significant portions of their population are put to death because they think about things differently than the people who they wanna govern or, should I, say lord over.
The Mongols never gave a whit about a population which resisted them. There were only two ways to go. One was to surrender to the Mongols and the other was to give up the whole population to mass murder. I greatly fear that’s more or less the kind of thing that Trump has in mind when he says Make America Great Again.
With his grasp of history, he might think that the Mongols were an early American political party. One would think that he’d be aware that Mongolia is now mostly known for Yurts, and throat singing. We all like this rendition of Mongol life better than some of the original versions. But Trump is nothing if not surprising.
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