destiny, and all that

As usual, Mr. Kunstler is great this morning. He uses postgraduate words at times, but mostly simple syntax and un-convoluted ideas to explain to a mostly clueless American public what we're up against.

Today's final short paragraph, plus the stinger (para fragment) on the end say pretty much all that need be said about our current predicament.

Donald Trump could never be a Franklin Roosevelt or a Lincoln. These were figures who, if nothing else, could articulate the terms that reality had laid on America’s table in their particular moments of history. Mr. Trump can barely speak English and his notions about history amount to a kind of funny papers of the mind. A sinister host of adversaries who ought to understand what is happening in this country, but don’t, or can’t, or won’t, are coming after him, and they are going to get rid of him one way or another. They have to. They must. And they will.

And then what?

I spent the early hours of the morning today listening to outtakes from old speeches by Oswald Mosley, the English fascist who was a political heavyweight in the 1930's, and a study in contrasts with Preznit Trump.  

The first contrast is that Mosley was literate, educated, and an excellent public speaker, for whom A. Hitler provided the speaker's template. Secondly, he knew what he was doing in manipulating crowds -- one reason he did it so well. His problem lay in the same place as Trump's, and Mussolini's and every Fascist who ever lived: he was a romantic who believed in destiny.

This belief in destiny is dangerously close to a belief in God's Plan. And wh0's to say -- it might be God's plan that we become ever more fat, stupid, diabetic, and addled by TV and lack of exercise that over a couple of centuries we'll die off. The dams will crumble, the continent will revert to ownership by bears & lions, moose & elk, salmon & trout, rattlesnakes, beavers, and birds.

And we will have succeeded in making America Great Again.