When Madmen Lead the Blind.
Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam, August 15th 2024
Salaroche

Who is the real culprit for the lamentable political mess the United States is currently in? The mad Republican wannabe-despot leader, or the foolish blind Republicans who follow him? Evidently, the one couldn’t exist without the others, so, the real question is, how can so many Americans come to despise their own system of government so badly as to be willing to dangerously jeopardize the stability of the country while trampling all over their own moral core in their desire to get rid of it?

Was Shakespeare right in suggesting that only the blind would follow a madman as he implied in “King Lear”? Or is it that deep down inside the people living in “the land of the free” never really wanted to be so free after all? Apparently, Democratic systems are way too loose for the Republicans, not strict and constrained enough. Too many voices can be heard. Too many choices. In their view, political power in a Democracy is too fluid, not solid and concentrated enough on one constant, single, conservative entity.

They seem to have fully embraced the first part of Winston Churchill’s aphorism that says that “Democracy is the worst form of government”, but they have cynically ignored the second part that says “except for all the others that have been tried”. NO Democratic system is perfect, but Democracy is way preferable above any other existing system. Turns out the authoritarian vein that has always been lurking inside the American personality is alarmingly stronger than we had ever imagined.

Authoritarian individuals crave authority. They long to submit themselves unconditionally to a strong leader, and their need to be dominated can grow to fanatical proportions. On the other side of the equation, authoritarian leaders feed their ambition for total power on the masses’ authoritarian need to be dominated, and when the authoritarian masses are large and powerful enough they can invest their authoritarian leaders with an unconditional, dictatorial authority over the country.

Those are clear tendencies that the Führer of the Republican Party and his followers themselves have openly shown in public (see here) What’s more, the authoritarian majority of the Supreme Court has already handed to any future American presidents the possibility of exerting a virtually-unconditional power over the country, clearly thinking and hoping that the next president of the United States would be their nefarious Führer. He won’t. But the script has already been written for a dictator to enter the scene and take full control of the whole national scenario.

No doubt the Republican masses have already given up on the American Democratic System, as proven in their insidious, pigheaded reluctance to accept the results of the 2020 elections. They have given up on the American Rule of Law too, as evidenced in their ill-willed, emphatic insistence on rejecting and discrediting any impeachments, convictions or indictments their Führer has already been lawfully subjected to. In short, to say that the Republicans are authoritarians is not name-calling, it is NOT meant to be an insult. It is just an accurate description of their present traitorous political predicament.

Fortunately, there's still a silver lining around that dark cloud. The formidable challenge the Republicans are now facing in the form of a youger, brighter, better-prepared Democratic candidate is forcing their Führer to reveal himself as the buffoon he really is and has brought to light the lack of mental accumen he would need to sustain the nefarious parody of a leader he has been impersonating over the past decade, meaning that the despicable Republican Führer might most deservedly bite the dust in November. Such well-deserved defeat, however, won't exonarate the Republicans from their shameless betrayal of the most cherished American Ideals.

The hill that Ronald Reagan’s Shining City was standing on has now caved in and is threatening to come down on all of us like a heavy mudslide of smelly authoritarianism. If you don’t want to end up suffocating under any such execrable system of government, don’t vote Republican in November.

Salaroche