How This Will End - Sooner or later, tyrants are always abandoned by their followers

[dalton99a]

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/the-end-of-trumps-reign/568480/

How This Will End
Sooner or later, tyrants are always abandoned by their followers.
Eliot A. Cohen
Aug 24, 2018

....

But to really get the feel for the Trump administration’s end, we must turn to the finest political psychologist of them all, William Shakespeare. The text is in the final act of what superstitious actors only refer to as the “Scottish play.” One of the nobles who has turned on their murderous usurper king describes Macbeth’s predicament:

Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love. Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.

....

This is going to happen to Trump at some point. Of the Republicans in Congress it may be said of most of them: Those he commands move only in command, nothing in love. For now, admittedly, there are those who still court his favor—Senator Lindsey Graham, for example, once the trusty vassal of Senator John McCain, the bravest of warriors and noblest of dukes, seems to have switched his allegiance from his dying lord to the swaggering upstart aged prince. But that is about ambition, not affection.

For the moment, the Republicans will not turn on Trump. They fear a peasant revolt, many of them; they still crave favors; they may think his castle impregnable, although less so if they believe what the polls tell them about some of its tottering walls. But if they suffer a medieval-style slaughter on Election Day, the remnants of the knights of the GOP will know a greater fear than that of being primaried. And at the moment when they no longer fear being swept away in 2020, when the economy may be in recession and Robert Mueller’s probe is complete with revelations whose ghastliness would delight the three witches of the Scottish play, they will suddenly turn on Trump. Act V of this play will also have a nonlinear finish.

And what of Trump himself? In this respect he will be like Macbeth. Where Nixon, who was a statesman, saw the inevitable and resigned, this president is more likely to go down spitting defiance. As for the rest of us, Macduff says to the cornered king just before their final death grapple:

Live to be the show and gaze o’ th’ time.
We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
Painted upon a pole, and underwrit
“Here may you see the tyrant”

And so it will likely be, as Americans gaze back and wonder how on earth this rare monster, now deposed, ended up as their president.

[Miles Archer]

1. People have to vote. It's that simple.

People vote, Blue Wave.

People stay home, no Blue Wave.

I don't have concerns regarding DU...I think it's safe to say that we have an enthusiastic and eager voting populace here.

I'm concerned about everyone else.

I don't want to see 2% Republican "victory margins" on election night because people decided it was more convenient to stay home, or that their vote "wouldn't change anything."

I know what people on DU think...I'm here 7 days a week.

Everyone else? It's not a "lock." Between now and November, everyone who is NOT on the "Trump Train" needs to clearly understand the price tag that comes with apathy and lack of responsibility.

The Republicans are going to do everything they can to hold onto power. We can't let that happen. We can't sustain two terms of "President" Trump...or "President Pence," for that matter.

[thucythucy]

2. Would that it were so.

The German people, by and large, stuck with Hitler right up until that shot in the bunker. It took the armed forces of the three greatest industrial powers on earth--and millions of deaths--to shake loose his grip.

There were reports of weeping in the streets when Stalin's death was announced to the people of the Soviet Union.

Some tyrants fall. Some are abandoned by their followers. Some are not.

We can't count on anything like historical inevitability to get us out of this mess. Only a resounding victory in November will set us on a course to recovery. And that, if and when it happens, will only be the first step on what is sure to be a long and difficult road.

Get out the vote! It's our last, best, and only hope.

[dalton99a]

3. Absolutely. They must be outnumbered at the polls.

[malaise]

4. Hahaha

Can't wait - soon come as we say. :

[UTUSN]

5. *This* tyrant's gonna get it both ways since *he* attacks & humiliates his own followers!1

Not content with attacking/humiliating his original follower/SESSIONS, he's broadened it into an attack on the Southern dialect itself. Plus slashing Federal pay increases. Going back to his attacking this group and that group. Didn't the fabled (according to him) Wharton school teach him that to get business or votes you want to *attract* them rather than *alienate* them to you?!1 Don't really need deep study, just an old proverb or two.