FRIPPERIES, THE FASCIST EDITION — By Tom Alderman
“If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” (Adolf Hitler) This is one of many examples from FACISM, A WARNING, the powerful audiobook from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Our current president is not the subject of this personal and historical narrative but Trump is on every page by way of comparison.
Example: “Adolf Hitler was never constrained by moral scruples,” Albright writes. He saw emotional hardness as essential, used simple words and did not hesitate to repeat colossal untruths over and over.Hitler also incited hatred to those he considered traitors. Think fake news and anybody else who did not help us out on the Normandy beaches in 1944.
Pulling a line from HBO’s series, THE WIRE, Albright writes, “A lie is not another fact, it’s just a lie.”
(Harper audio: 10 hrs. Narrator: Madeleine Albright)
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“The wall is going up very fast. Mexico will pay for the wall. Believe me.” (Donald Trump)
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YOU WANT TO DO WHAT TO THE INTERNET? — When radio blossomed in the 1920s, the federal government soon realized that rules and guide lines and were definitely needed. Radio was pure democracy, a mass communication platform where bogus products and services were hawked, where race-bating and hate-filled screes went unchecked. So the Federal Communication Commission prescribed boundaries and regulations for radio content and, again, for television.
Which brings us to the latest in mass communication platforms, the internet. The public’s enthusiasm for the anything-goes internet has turned into a somethings-got-to-go internet. There are reasons Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook and others have gone from wizards to warlocks in just a few years. It’s mainly about privacy and meddling in our presidential elections.
There is a rising believe that — like radio and television — the internet demands federal regulations. Or, as psychologist and educational reformer John Dewey wrote, “Internet technology carries with it the power to divide and atomize society with individual constituencies increasingly replacing a shared sense of community.” (The Quest for Certainty — John Dewey, Southern Illinois University Press, 10 hrs, 34 min, narrator: Fred Filbrich)
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TRUMPS NEW POLITICAL PARTY — Republicans may be worried their party has been subsumed by the malignant narcissist in the White House. Not really. In the hearts, GOPers know Trump is not really one of them, nor Republican nor Democrat. He is what Thomas Jefferson derisively called a Monocrat — a government of one. Republicans are advised to keep pitching their well established philosophies and issues in contrast to this president’s abhorrent monocratic morality. (Thomas Jefferson, The Art of Power, by Jon Meacham, RandomHouse Audio, 19 hrs, narrator: Edward Herrmann)
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Occasionally Trump does act presidential, like when he reads Teleprompter. Is a cannibal more civilized when he eats humans with a knife and fork?
