Trump’s Dangerous Habit of Attacking Non-Compliant Americans
Some motorcyclists, angry, or pretending to be angry, about Harley Davidson’s plan to move some of its production overseas, are threatening to boycott the company in some sort of “America First” protest. The company claims part of the reason for their decision is the fallout from Trump’s tariffs on steel. Naturally, this has caused the Thin-Skinned-Bully-Hiding-Behind-His-Friends-In-Chief to come out tweeting.
Many @harleydavidson owners plan to boycott the company if manufacturing moves overseas. Great! Most other companies are coming in our direction, including Harley competitors. A really bad move! U.S. will soon have a level playing field, or better.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2018
Aside from the obvious hypocrisy of a man who has made his worthless and undesirable self-promotional materials overseas for years suddenly playing “America First” with the serious business decisions of internationally successful manufacturers of real products, there are the inescapably disturbing implications of a President of the United States — a former limited republic; anyone remember those? — openly taking sides in the so-called free market, officially promoting this company and condemning that one, using his bully pulpit to provoke anger against private enterprises and to discourage Americans from buying their goods, and endorsing a citizens’ boycott as if the consumer preferences of private individuals were a public policy issue on which the POTUS ought to be weighing in.
Private citizens boycotting (i.e., refusing to pay for) a company’s products, whether wise or foolish, is perfectly within their rights, and fair game.
President Trump’s need to “endorse” such a boycott and turn it into a personal fight between himself and a private American business, in addition to showing him (yet again) to be the most insecure and repulsive twelve-year-old mean girl in the schoolyard, also reveals – yes, I know the truth hurts, cultists – his genuinely tyrannical instincts.
Comparing Trump to Hitler is stupid and false. Hitler was motivated by a maniacal ideology and a twisted sense of personal mission.
But comparing Trump to Mussolini, as I frequently do, is perfectly legitimate and true. Mussolini was motivated by vainglory, the showman’s need for love and approval, and a desperate hope that the world would see him as a “big man” who did “big things,” while in fact he did next to nothing of substance, and a great deal of material harm to his nation.
Trump’s Mussolini reflexes are sickeningly obvious at this point. He needs everything to be about him, and he needs to assert his ersatz muscle to demand that everyone bend to his will. Most of all, he needs to “punish” anyone, big or small, who shows him up. The desperate need for adulation, and fantasies of Greatness, are his ultimate motives in all situations.
In spite of all these obviously un-American and anti-American instincts, his cult continues to excuse and justify such behavior on the grounds that “He’s sticking up for Americans,” or “At least he fights.” Being blind idiots, they cannot see the dangerous precedent staring them in the face: Trump is creating and fostering the moral and political climate in which a true ideologue, a progressive demagogue with aggressively totalitarian intentions, will be able to play Trump’s game in earnest and for keeps.
The next hard leftist to ascend to the presidency, in the inevitable backlash to Trump’s infantile quasi-fascism, will be free to go full Maoist in a way that Barack Obama never did. He will lead boycotts which evolve into punitive regulations against companies that refuse to embrace the progressive agenda — climate change, transgenderism, social justice, and all the rest. He will threaten, and follow through on, imprisonment for any “property owners” and “capitalists” who refuse to use their property in the properly “inclusive,” socially sensitive ways. He will stage public demonstrations and lead the outcry against “regressive” churches and political subgroups that deny, and fail to redress, the evils of Western systemic oppression and cultural appropriation.
And when the marginalized minority formerly known as American conservatives stand up to defend their liberty against that abuse of the presidency as public morality czar and progressive “equality” enforcer, the leftists will dismiss them by saying, “But Trump….”
And they will have logic and consistency on their side. This is perhaps the gravest danger Trump presents to America. He himself is too stupid and infantile to formulate a truly tyrannical agenda, but his instincts and demeanor are laying out the red carpet for a more serious demagogue down the road. Not far down the road, I would guess.
