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I couldn't even finish this before I shared it with my friends here -DONALD TRUMP AND THE ENEMIES...
DONALD TRUMP AND THE ENEMIES OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
When the leaders of the Bolshevik movement—Lenin, Stalin, and the rest—used the term vrag naroda, an “enemy of the people,” it was an ominous epithet that encompassed a range of “wreckers” and “socially dangerous elements.” Enemies included clergy, intellectuals, monarchists, Trotskyists, “rootless cosmopolitans,” and well-to-do farmers. To be branded an enemy of the people was to face nearly inevitable doom; such a fate was soon followed by a knock on the door in the middle of the night, a prison cell, the Gulag, an icy ditch—a variety of dismal ends. To be called an “enemy of the people” did not mean you had to hold oppositional thoughts or commit oppositional acts; it only meant that the dictator had included you in his grand scheme to insure the compliance of the population.
Robespierre, one of the architects of the Jacobin Reign of Terror, set out to “horrify” the opposition, and his instruments were the epithet, righteousness, and the blade. “The revolutionary government owes to the good citizen all the protection of the nation,” he said. “It owes nothing to the Enemies of the People but death.”
...
Then came his press conference, last week, his first solo press conference in office, and it was epochal. Ostensibly an occasion to announce a replacement appointment to the Department of Labor after the first had to step aside, Trump instead took it upon himself to denounce repeatedly and at length the sinful, dishonest press and the “very fake news” it produces. It was unforgettable. With all his nastiness, his self-admiring interruptions and commands (“Sit down! Sit down!”) Trump resembled an oversauced guy at a bar who was facing three likely options in the near term: a) take a swing at someone, b) get clocked by someone else, or c) pass out and wake up on a hard, alien cot.
...
In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, as in every genuinely authoritarian state, there are no “enemies”—or, at least, none with the capacity to challenge power. Calling on all the repressive means available in such a state—compliant courts and legislatures; the elimination of political competition; comprehensive censorship of television—soaring popularity ratings are achieved. President Trump may wish for such means, just as he wishes for such popularity. For all the chaos and resulting gloom these past weeks, it has been heartening to see so many “enemies of the American people”—protesters, judges, journalists, citizens of all kinds, even some members of Congress—do their work despite Presidential denunciation, not necessarily as partisans of one party or another but as adherents to a Constitution.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/donald-trump-and-the-enemies-of-the-american-people
When the leaders of the Bolshevik movement—Lenin, Stalin, and the rest—used the term vrag naroda, an “enemy of the people,” it was an ominous epithet that encompassed a range of “wreckers” and “socially dangerous elements.” Enemies included clergy, intellectuals, monarchists, Trotskyists, “rootless cosmopolitans,” and well-to-do farmers. To be branded an enemy of the people was to face nearly inevitable doom; such a fate was soon followed by a knock on the door in the middle of the night, a prison cell, the Gulag, an icy ditch—a variety of dismal ends. To be called an “enemy of the people” did not mean you had to hold oppositional thoughts or commit oppositional acts; it only meant that the dictator had included you in his grand scheme to insure the compliance of the population.
Robespierre, one of the architects of the Jacobin Reign of Terror, set out to “horrify” the opposition, and his instruments were the epithet, righteousness, and the blade. “The revolutionary government owes to the good citizen all the protection of the nation,” he said. “It owes nothing to the Enemies of the People but death.”
...
Then came his press conference, last week, his first solo press conference in office, and it was epochal. Ostensibly an occasion to announce a replacement appointment to the Department of Labor after the first had to step aside, Trump instead took it upon himself to denounce repeatedly and at length the sinful, dishonest press and the “very fake news” it produces. It was unforgettable. With all his nastiness, his self-admiring interruptions and commands (“Sit down! Sit down!”) Trump resembled an oversauced guy at a bar who was facing three likely options in the near term: a) take a swing at someone, b) get clocked by someone else, or c) pass out and wake up on a hard, alien cot.
...
In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, as in every genuinely authoritarian state, there are no “enemies”—or, at least, none with the capacity to challenge power. Calling on all the repressive means available in such a state—compliant courts and legislatures; the elimination of political competition; comprehensive censorship of television—soaring popularity ratings are achieved. President Trump may wish for such means, just as he wishes for such popularity. For all the chaos and resulting gloom these past weeks, it has been heartening to see so many “enemies of the American people”—protesters, judges, journalists, citizens of all kinds, even some members of Congress—do their work despite Presidential denunciation, not necessarily as partisans of one party or another but as adherents to a Constitution.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/donald-trump-and-the-enemies-of-the-american-people
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