Apparently Michael Moore has a new propaganda film out.
(And make no mistake, they are propaganda films, all of them; the man couldn't document his way past the simplest scrutiny of his objectivity.)
However, he tends to hate a lot of the same people I hate so I generally indulge in his stuff as a guilty pleasure, as long as I can step out of the room or fast-forward past the more dimwitted clowning and emotional appeals. In this latest one, rumor has it he compares Trump to Hitler.
Wrong.
Now, this is noting new. Thanks to the sheer paucity of historical coursework in American education and the undue credit the U.S. takes for "winning" WWII, Hitler has persisted as Americans' singular go-to bad guy reference. Every American politician gets called Hitler at some point, from tree-hugging welfare champions to austere liberTory-ans. In 2016 if memory serves, Sanders was hilariously lambasted for supposedly daring to compare Trump to Hitler while at the same time being compared, himself, to Hitler by some Trump supporters.
If you want to make money off an American election, sell tiny fake moustaches.
Like most urbane, college-edjumacated types, the very mention of our current presidential apprentice sends me reaching for a bottle of antacid. (I'm none too fond of his opposition either, but they can at least string two sentences together without interjecting the word "lew-zur".) The choice of analogy used for character attacks on him though is important, as it carries the social context which has produced that public figure. The Donald simply does not fit the spastic, humorless fascist archetype, nor does the U.S. match the economic situation of a country reeling after some international defeat.
It does, however, fit the bill for an empire having passed its cultural peak and begun its inevitable autophagic rot. Trump's not Hitler. He's Caligula. An entertaining figurehead initially beloved by the public despite (or because of) his infantile public persona, constantly megaphoning delusions of transcendent grandeur while investing vast sums of money toward pointless self-aggrandizing monuments, randomly lashing out at his own (former) allies, shocking genteel sexual mores... one was even known for his tiny feet, the other for his tiny hands!
And hey, given the professional qualifications and acumen of some of Trump's coterie, Incitatus might actually be a step up.
So...
Four more years?
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