It's Time To Say It: Trump Is Handling COVID-19 Like A Dictator

[riversedge]

yes. trump fits this to a t.



04/07/2020 02:57 pm ET Updated 1 hour ago

It’s Time To Say It: Trump Is Handling COVID-19 Like A Dictator
How a new generation of authoritarians explains the president’s coronavirus response.


https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-covid-19-coronavirus-dictator-but-not-how-you-think_n_5e8ca74ac5b62459a92fc66b

President Donald Trump is handling the coronavirus more like the world’s authoritarian rulers than its democratically elected leaders.

Since the start of the crisis, advanced democracies — even those ruled by right-leaning parties — have listened to public health experts and taken drastic steps to safeguard both their residents and their economies. In the United Kingdom, for example, Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party is offering laid-off workers 80% of their salaries if their employers keep them on the payroll.

The world’s authoritarians, on the other hand, have responded to COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, with tantrums of paranoia and denial. As recently as last week, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro ....................

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By any rational calculation, authoritarian leaders should be using the virus to boost their own popularity. Instead, they’re taking a stance that will allow COVID-19 to ravage their populations and destroy their economies — both of which risk sparking popular movements against them. .......................................



................In contrast to traditional dictators, however, modern-day authoritarians often don’t have the skill — or, in many cases, the interest — to competently enact their agendas. Instead of employing experienced administrators, authoritarians typically appoint loyalists and family members. When they fail to deliver on their outsize campaign promises, authoritarians double down, blaming shadowy conspiracies and wily saboteurs inside their own government agencies.

“Authoritarian populists don’t trust science and expertise in general and they mistrust scientific evidence,” Norris said. “And it’s not just them as individuals. It’s a philosophy that defines how they approach everything they do.”

This explains why modern authoritarians have responded to COVID-19 with paranoia and denial: They’ve deliberately purged their administrations of anyone who will tell them hard truths about their own performance.

Trump’s COVID-19 response follows the same outline: deny science, purge whistleblowers, and install unqualified family members in key positions. .........................

[OnDoutside]

1. An incompetent dictator.

[Newest Reality]

2. Not just COVID-19.

This has been my stance since I realized it many months ago after some careful study and observation.

It may take a real, major blow from his fist into our guts before this is common knowledge and undeniable. Usually, that's when it is too late. Well, we can't do anything but know it right now, but it's a good start. At least the lesson would be that it can happen here and here is a person who exemplifies this and would, left unhindered, bring America to its knees and stomp in in the face with authoritarian boots, and when Jr., etc. is installed at his demise, the same thing, on and on.

He handles it like one because?

[muntrv]

3. This is a Chenobyl moment. Not Pearl Harbor or 9/11.

[2naSalit]

6. +1

[chriscan64]

9. Good point.

No analogy is perfect but some are more apt than others. I lived through hurricane Katrina and its aftermath two weeks after my wife and I were displaced by an apartment building fire and for one of those weeks my wife was hospitalized with a kidney infection. Our medical infrastructure can handle one woman with kidney trouble, the Red Cross along with friends and family can manage 15 people displaced all at once by fire. When you get to the size of a city with close to a million people experiencing disaster simultaneously the logistical capacity is strained.

My takeaway from Katrina was that a huge flash bulb went off and a snapshot was taken of our condition. Economic inequities and the limitations of systems designed to deal with emergencies and logistics in general were laid bare for all to see. It is this aspect of our current situation that is giving me flashbacks.

A hypothetical president who understood the problem, empowered the experts and did everything right would still govern over a situation where some had to wait for assistance longer than others and some would fall through the cracks to suffer tragedy. What we have now is a blowhard who promises a chicken in every pot, then says, "Who am I, Colonel Sanders?" when people show up with empty pots.

[appalachiablue]

10. THIS should be a separate post pls., glad you survived Katrina.

Stay well.

[chriscan64]

12. I have seen posts go more off topic than this.

The original post was an analogy. Someone else offered another analogy and I had one of my own. Sorry I rambled on.

[appalachiablue]

13. I meant your post is so interesting, how you

got through so many difficult experiences around Katrina that it would be good as a stand alone/separate post if you wanted to make it into one in the Gen. Discussion section. Sorry I wasn't clear and forgot how I didn't know what this meant when it was suggested to me a while back. Take care.

[chriscan64]

14. I see, thank you.

It was harrowing for sure. Perhaps around the 15th anniversary I may retell it in detail.

[DEbluedude]

4. He's also handling it exactly like he handles his businesses.

Take credit for positive results when he had nothing to do with them and place blame for negative results where he had everything to do with them. I'm not sure that we are at the point where he walks away and claims bankruptcy. Yet.

[Grasswire2]

5. Yale holocaust historian Timothy Snyder predicted just that.

"It's pretty much inevitable that Trump will try to stage a coup and overthrow the government in the next year."

[BigmanPigman]

7. His daily pressers/rallies

are classic dictator-everyone must tell him he is God or they are insulted.

[Skittles]

8. he is a fascist dictator wannabe

fuck anyone who was fooled by that freak

[appalachiablue]

11. Thanks for posting riversedge. More from the article:

(Huff Po) ...The message is always ‘rally behind a strong leader who will protect you from dangerous outsiders.’ That’s where we’ve been since his campaign started.”

- A New Kind of Authoritarian

Dictatorships are not what they used to be. Since the end of the Cold War, authoritarian regimes have changed in two fundamental ways, both of which have profound implications for the global spread of the coronavirus.

First, modern dictators are more likely to mimic the characteristics of more liberal countries.

“Most dictatorships these days pretend to be democratic,” said Erica Frantz, a political scientist at Michigan State University. “They didn’t use to do that.”

As opposed to old-school authoritarians like Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong or Joseph Stalin, modern dictators are more likely to hold regular elections and allow popular protests. Their goal isn’t to terrorize their own populations. They simply want to convince them — through state propaganda and misinformation — that they’re doing a good job.

“It’s a more subtle and smart form of authoritarianism,” Frantz said. “In the past, there was no fooling ordinary people that the regime was repressive. Now, when it comes to things like restricting the independence of judges or shutting down political opposition, authoritarians are careful to maintain plausible deniability. The smartest dictators have huge numbers of citizens who don’t think they live in a dictatorship.”

Like Trump, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has responded to the coronavirus with paranoia and denial...