A moral quandary has
being hanging around since the end of WWII.
Consider the following, ‘If you could go back in time and kill baby
Hitler, would you?’ The answer when considered
lightly is simply YES, as it is well known what baby Adolf will do. The answer upon greater consideration
unravels many threads for consideration. The first of these threads, all of which are
what-ifs of course is, someone even worse takes over; by changing the past one
may invoke an even more disgusting future.
Another thread could be that by utilizing nudge theory young Adolf could
be steered away from the mental state that caused him to adopt such a strong
position on the Jewish problem. Yet another thread for consideration could be
to kill Adolf’s father approximately nine months and two weeks before April 20,
1889 although he didn’t do anything wrong at the time.
Robert Baden-Powell
started The Boy Scouts in 1908 Britain
with the intent of preparing young men to make ethical and moral choices moving
forward in life, along with skills development; the entry age for The Scouts is
11 years old. 1922 Germany brought forth The Hitler Youth and the
League of German Girls, where all Aryan children in Germany were to join at the age of
10. The would-be assassin of Donald J.
Trump was around 11 or 12 years old when Trump descended the escalator at Trump Tower
and declared his Presidential candidacy on June 16, 2015.
All propaganda,
including advertisement, contains common elements which should be looked for
when consuming mass messaging. These
elements are named: Transfer, Plain Folks, Bandwagon, Testimonials, Card Stacking,
Generalities, and Name Calling. The
reader is strongly encouraged to look up the definition of these terms as they
are applied in the fields of propaganda and advertising; for example, the term
‘transfer’ is more commonly known as ‘association’. The best propaganda and advertisement
campaigns use a mixture of the elements in the right proportion, much like
getting all the ratios right when baking a cake.
Hilary Clinton, with
her infamous “you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket
of deplorables,” catchphrase combined a number of propaganda elements. The obvious elements are Transfer, Plain
Folks, Bandwagon, Generalities, and Name Calling. Breaking the statement down into its parts,
one can see which propaganda elements are put forward. The use of Bandwagon
comes out twice, with the terms ‘Trump supporters’ and ‘basket of’. The element, Plain Folks, was craftily
inserted by the call out phrase ‘half of’, besides being approximately one-quarter
of American voters at the time, the use of this phrase caused those on the
fence to ponder if they were deplorable or not.
Moving on to Generalities, Mrs. Clinton never did go on to explain why
those Trump supporters were ‘deplorable’; thus allowing those receiving the message
to fill in the details via their imaginations, a form of verbal lingerie if you
think about it. The final element put
into play, Name Calling, is obviously a form of dehumanization or ‘othering’,
by calling people deplorable; Clinton
might as well have said ‘vermin’. Now,
remember that “you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket
of deplorables,” was one of the earliest messages that the then 12 year old
would-be assassin heard about Trump.
The celebrity Whoopi
Goldberg went so far as to dead-name Donald Trump once he became the President
of the United States; so it seems that becoming POTUS is now, depending on the
person, comparable to the act of turning into Voldemort. This could have been one of the ongoing
messages that the would-be assassin heard about Trump; this could be an anecdotal
point as not many males watch The View, regardless of age.
Post the 2020
election, the vitriol got ratcheted up, with the Name Calling element being the
weapon of choice. A Bandwagon campaign aimed
at Trump and those who support him was launched with labels such as Nazi, sexist,
Fascist, racist, Putin’s puppet, dictator, tyrant, literally Hitler, insurrectionist,
and the destroyer of their democracy. The
public got to hear from many of those in opposition to Donald J. Trump
repeatedly state that Trump is ‘a threat to our democracy’; though that quote
begs one to wonder if those opposed to Trump included that quarter of Americans
in the deplorable basket, would be allowed to be equal participants in the electoral
process to those who are not placed in the deplorable bandwagon. This too would have been some of the
messaging that the would-be assassin heard about Trump.
All of this negative
messaging that has been hurled at the general population about Trump must
balkanize the people to varying degrees on both sides, with little chance for
any middle ground outside of the tent of political apathy; the pro-Trump vs.
anti-Trump debate is almost as heated as the “pineapple on pizza” fight. Another consequence of the messaging above is
that people are talking at each other rather then with each other; this has
many people now to seemingly lose the ability to ask those on the other side
the one simple question - “Why do you think that?”
Trump Derangement
Syndrome (TDS), a derogatory phrase created by those on the side of Trump against
the other side, may also be applied to some people on Team Trump. A quick glance at the pro-Trump side will
reveal some people who hold in their head the ideal of “Orange man good” with
as much zeal as those in the Progressive tent who constantly put forth the
message of “Orange man bad”. Few and far between in the history of mankind
has there been a person who is 100% evil or good, and as such any purely myopic
view of an individual should be considered irrational, if not outright cult
like. Speaking of cult like behaviour, at
the very bottom of this writing is a line from Joe Biden’s election stepping-down letter where he puts his party before country.
Donald J Trump is now seen as an existential threat by some due to the on going narrative, and those
people are of course allowed the right to act in self defense and on July 13,
2024 at 6:11 p.m. EDT the world bore witness what ‘self defense’ looks like
now. The US election on the 5th November
will be a day to remember for there seems to be a plot, and there will be no
reason why these acts of treason should ever be forgot.
From Joe Biden’s letter on his election step-down:
“I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the
country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as
President for the remainder of my term.”
