Will Bunch: Netanyahu's disastrous populist regime is a dire warning for U.S. voters

[Nevilledog]

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/netanyahu-israel-warning-america-trump-20231019.html

Even before the blood had dried from one of the worst days in the country’s history, a professor at a top national university tried to make sense of what had gone wrong, less than a year after a right-wing populist backed by religious fundamentalists and facing criminal charges had been returned to power.

That man, the academic wrote, was “a public-relations genius but an incompetent [leader]. He has repeatedly preferred his personal interests over the national interest and has built his career on dividing the nation against itself. He has appointed people to key positions based on loyalty more than qualifications, took credit for every success while never taking responsibility for failures, and seemed to give little importance to either telling or hearing the truth.”

These are the kind of words that I dread will be written here in the United States at some point after January 2025 if Donald Trump, the 45th president and overwhelming frontrunner for the GOP’s 2024 nomination, returns to the White House. But in this case, the writer, Yuval Noah Harari, a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was describing the disastrous, populist regime of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that citizens like Harari say left their homeland unprepared from Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack.

The widespread dissatisfaction, and even rage in Israel toward Netanyahu hasn’t received nearly enough attention in American media, which has been more focused on the shocking visuals and the horror stories of war and the role of President Joe Biden in marshaling support for Israel after the Hamas attack. In the moment — with the petty, truculent Trump lashing out at his former close ally Netanyahu over something as small as a congratulatory post-2020-election call to Biden — it’s easy to forget what amazingly similar stories these two men tell. And what a dire warning those tales are — not just for Israel, but for the United States and the entire world.

*snip*

[edhopper]

1. Trumps disasterous populus regime

should have been enough of a dire warning.

[inthewind21]

2. Well

The fact he is STILL a viable candidate speaks volumes.

[edhopper]

4. yes it does

it speaks to the shear stupidity of a large segment of American voters.

[inthewind21]

6. Indeed

[leftstreet]

3. If RFKjr can get on ballots, Trump won't win

And if he can get in the POTUS debates? LOL Trump is toast

He's running as a hard right neocon populist, with a message similar to Trump's Make America Great Again or whatever

Link to tweet

?s=20

[LiberaBlueDem]

5. IDF is anti-war

But when the IDF failed at defense, it became pro-war.

Defense is anti-war, otherwise we'd be invading and warring everywhere and anywhere