Lust for strongman in divided states of America

Everybody, it seems, loves a strongman. Our love for celebrities has its source in us wanting to be popular and loved by all and sundry (strangers included). Similarly, the fascination for the testosterone-pumped knight in shining Humvee, who rules by the exercise of muscular charm, threats, force or even violence, stems from the popular secret lust to have everyone else be under one’s thrall. The next best thing? Go rah-rah over the alpha playing to the mob’s gallery. This is something the likes of Vlad Putin, Viktor Orban and Don Trump know and feed off – with Don Don doing his bit in the Divided States of America.

Responding on Sunday to a question on Fox ‘Tox’ News about possible election ‘chaos’, the Make America Grate Again evangelist replied, ‘The bigger problem are (sic) the people from within…. It should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by the national guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.’ While Don Don didn’t specify who the agents of chaos may be on whom, ‘if really necessary’, the military should be let loose upon, one clue that it may not be just rioters is that he singled out lead prosecutor in the ex-prez’s first impeachment trial, California Congressman Adam Schiff, as posing a bigger threat to a free and fair election than ‘terrorists or illegal immigrants’.

In her 1976 SF novel Arslan, M J Engh – incidentally, Mary Jane Engh – wrote about a foreign strongman invading the US and destroying its democracy with ‘Asiatic’ despotism. Looks like neither is Don Don’s America too science fictional nor does the US need to look outside – they’ve got their own homegrown ‘General Arslan’ gunning for the Big House, making ‘tough guyness’ an object of awe and veneration.