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The Strongman Fantasy – and Dictatorship in Real Life

27 points by hkhn 3y ago

bawahahahaz 3y ago
[flagged]
- tuetnsuppe 3y ago
  Not sure if this is trolling but I honestly couldn't disagree more. Also what is a propaganda sniff test? First, I think you should have run sed s/strongman/manager/g. Second, when I do either I see mostly contradictions. The manager, has a manager and so on until you get to the CEO (usually). And the CEO is held accountable by a board and/or shareholders. And the board has to follow (democratically formed) laws and can be held accountable and has a reputation to defend with their name. Also each manager has to compete with other managers for the trust of their subordinates since they can more or less easily switch to other managers or companies. There is no such correspondence in a dictatorship. Good luck switching the bureaucrat assigned to your city or switching countries (besides the immense cost involved). The most important quality of a democracy is that you can get rid of a bad government without blood shed. Without that mostly bad things will happen. Mistakes happen inside democracies and outside but in a strongman fantasy they will most likely last longer and get more amplification.
roenxi 3y ago
Desire for a strongman is really a symptom of an underlying strategy that appears to be both instinctive and almost catastrophically stupid - power concentration. Based on arguing with lots of them, people generally respond to a crisis by trying to build the biggest club they can, then hitting their problem with it. This has terrible results in politics - usually the target is wrong because our information about what is happening society-wide is so poor, and the club usually hangs around for someone corrupt to wield. Pretty consistently the correct response is dialog, tolerance and decentralising power. Good luck getting anyone to listen to "time for dialog, tolerance and decentralising power!" when they think there is a crisis. They want to club something, with a bigger club than got used the last time. The big lessons out of the communists is that there is a level of power concentration where once it occurs there will be a lot of unnecessary deaths and suffering. Don't let that happen. In particular, let farmers run their farms to produce as much food as they like. There have been too many examples of people bringing the big club down on the farmers business then mass starvation (I'm thinking Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Communist Russia and Communist China when I say that, but I'm sure there are countless other examples).
arp242 3y ago
I'm not a fan of strongmen rule or dictatorships, but most don't have death pits, or even widespread assassinations and torture. This post is clearly aimed at the US, which of course means Trump. Strongmen rule is not just a black/white type of thing; Trump will never have Stalin-like power. Putin today doesn't have that either, and even though some individuals inconvenient to Putin brutally accidentally stabbed themselves in the chest while shaving, this is nothing compared to Stalin's purges and the NKVD activities. Stalinist and Putin Russia are not really comparable. This post paints with far too broad of a brush. Trump is not going to open death pits, put people in torture camps, or any of that. He's not going to close down public spaces or monitor "everything you say" either. He's just obsessed with showing the world he has very big genitalia. And to be fair, he really is quite good at this because much of the world does think he's a gigantic dick. That pretty much explains 95% of what he does – there is no real plan, ideology, or anything. Just trying be the "tough guy" (or what he perceives that to be anyway). It's almost shockingly simple: just a cunt acting like a cunt on account of being a cunt. I'm not sating Trump isn't a strongman or potentially dangerous, but I don't think this post really says anything meaningful about Trump. All off this matters because if your understanding of Trump is flawed then your solution is likely to be flawed too. Trump somehow seems to have more or less accidentally formed a cult of personality around him. I don't quite understand how that happened because I don't think it was a conscious effort on Trump's part. I think the exact reasons for this are the important bit to understand, because Trump is only a player because of the votes, and those votes could easily transfer to another strongman – there have been "Proto-Trump" figures like Sarah Palin, and some of the Trumpdroids in congress now seem to be in a contest to out-Trump Trump. Marjorie Taylor Greene for president 2028? Who knows...
- jrs235 3y ago
  He seems to be quite lazy too. So he barks a lot to get what he wants in the moment but once his side of the transaction is fulfilled he moves on often times leaving others empty handed...
  - arp242 3y ago
    Indeed. That said, I do fear a second Trump presidency could potentially be more extreme and dangerous than the first. In the intervening four years Trump has surrounded himself with much more extreme people than he had 8 years ago. These are not lazy, and have had the last four years to prepare to enact their agenda. No one – including Trump himself – expected him to win 8 years ago and everyone was caught flat-footed. Also at this point Trump was still on somewhat speaking terms with reality, whereas now they've become estranged. Never mind his temper has become even more foul since then. There's been some articles about the people preparing for Trump 2.0, and it's not looking good. So there is definitely potential for danger, especially of the GOP also has the senate. I just don't think this article accurately describes the dangers.

27 points by hkhn 3y ago

bawahahahaz 3y ago

[flagged]

tuetnsuppe 3y ago
Not sure if this is trolling but I honestly couldn't disagree more. Also what is a propaganda sniff test? First, I think you should have run sed s/strongman/manager/g. Second, when I do either I see mostly contradictions. The manager, has a manager and so on until you get to the CEO (usually). And the CEO is held accountable by a board and/or shareholders. And the board has to follow (democratically formed) laws and can be held accountable and has a reputation to defend with their name. Also each manager has to compete with other managers for the trust of their subordinates since they can more or less easily switch to other managers or companies. There is no such correspondence in a dictatorship. Good luck switching the bureaucrat assigned to your city or switching countries (besides the immense cost involved). The most important quality of a democracy is that you can get rid of a bad government without blood shed. Without that mostly bad things will happen. Mistakes happen inside democracies and outside but in a strongman fantasy they will most likely last longer and get more amplification.

roenxi 3y ago

Desire for a strongman is really a symptom of an underlying strategy that appears to be both instinctive and almost catastrophically stupid - power concentration. Based on arguing with lots of them, people generally respond to a crisis by trying to build the biggest club they can, then hitting their problem with it. This has terrible results in politics - usually the target is wrong because our information about what is happening society-wide is so poor, and the club usually hangs around for someone corrupt to wield. Pretty consistently the correct response is dialog, tolerance and decentralising power. Good luck getting anyone to listen to "time for dialog, tolerance and decentralising power!" when they think there is a crisis. They want to club something, with a bigger club than got used the last time. The big lessons out of the communists is that there is a level of power concentration where once it occurs there will be a lot of unnecessary deaths and suffering. Don't let that happen. In particular, let farmers run their farms to produce as much food as they like. There have been too many examples of people bringing the big club down on the farmers business then mass starvation (I'm thinking Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Communist Russia and Communist China when I say that, but I'm sure there are countless other examples).

arp242 3y ago

I'm not a fan of strongmen rule or dictatorships, but most don't have death pits, or even widespread assassinations and torture. This post is clearly aimed at the US, which of course means Trump. Strongmen rule is not just a black/white type of thing; Trump will never have Stalin-like power. Putin today doesn't have that either, and even though some individuals inconvenient to Putin brutally accidentally stabbed themselves in the chest while shaving, this is nothing compared to Stalin's purges and the NKVD activities. Stalinist and Putin Russia are not really comparable. This post paints with far too broad of a brush. Trump is not going to open death pits, put people in torture camps, or any of that. He's not going to close down public spaces or monitor "everything you say" either. He's just obsessed with showing the world he has very big genitalia. And to be fair, he really is quite good at this because much of the world does think he's a gigantic dick. That pretty much explains 95% of what he does – there is no real plan, ideology, or anything. Just trying be the "tough guy" (or what he perceives that to be anyway). It's almost shockingly simple: just a cunt acting like a cunt on account of being a cunt. I'm not sating Trump isn't a strongman or potentially dangerous, but I don't think this post really says anything meaningful about Trump. All off this matters because if your understanding of Trump is flawed then your solution is likely to be flawed too. Trump somehow seems to have more or less accidentally formed a cult of personality around him. I don't quite understand how that happened because I don't think it was a conscious effort on Trump's part. I think the exact reasons for this are the important bit to understand, because Trump is only a player because of the votes, and those votes could easily transfer to another strongman – there have been "Proto-Trump" figures like Sarah Palin, and some of the Trumpdroids in congress now seem to be in a contest to out-Trump Trump. Marjorie Taylor Greene for president 2028? Who knows...

jrs235 3y ago
He seems to be quite lazy too. So he barks a lot to get what he wants in the moment but once his side of the transaction is fulfilled he moves on often times leaving others empty handed...
- arp242 3y ago
  Indeed. That said, I do fear a second Trump presidency could potentially be more extreme and dangerous than the first. In the intervening four years Trump has surrounded himself with much more extreme people than he had 8 years ago. These are not lazy, and have had the last four years to prepare to enact their agenda. No one – including Trump himself – expected him to win 8 years ago and everyone was caught flat-footed. Also at this point Trump was still on somewhat speaking terms with reality, whereas now they've become estranged. Never mind his temper has become even more foul since then. There's been some articles about the people preparing for Trump 2.0, and it's not looking good. So there is definitely potential for danger, especially of the GOP also has the senate. I just don't think this article accurately describes the dangers.