It should seem evident by now that there are those on the “right” who are just as idealistic.

Danger exists on the right, just as it does on the left, and while we focus on the left, we ought to be vigilant on the right as well. It is not enough just to be against the left.

When a good portion of Trump’s supporters are advocating “blow it all up”, there isn’t much room for mis-interpretation.

Ultimately, the left and these folks are two sides to the same coin. They both want to use force to get their way – ends justifies the means.

Trump may not be a Robespierre zealot, but the fact that he is so malleable, and his commitments so mutable, voting for him is a HUGE bet. It is a wager on if Congress and the GOP party are able to keep him in line. What makes us think they can or would?

Consider this… if Trump can change so easily, backtrack at will, and have, at best, a poor track record on advocating conservative or even largely GOP issues (he’s looking more Dem everyday), what do you think this guy really wants?

Many hope he is benign, but what if he is not? What basis has he even given us to believe that he would be benign?

Do we have to wait until it is obvious (and too late) to see the full potential for an Authoritarian in office? Hasn’t he given us enough hints so far?

Does he have to walk and talk like any of history’s infamous, or dress in fatigues or uniform? Why would he make it obvious to us if that was his intention?

We’ve been so well programmed to automatically be against the left that we really don’t take seriously the threats within or amongst us, and that is part of the tragedy of the French Revolution. Many signed on thinking (absolutely convinced) they need to “blow it all up” only to find that the leaders they backed had their own agenda.

The sans-culottes never had a chance really to know. We have the internet and education to know the difference. Will we?

Folks are seriously under-rating the risk. If you cannot determine his intention, nor discern his governing philosophy, knowing what you know about his behavior and personality, the potential downside far outweighs potential upside with Trump.

Yet, we are willing to bet on the low odds upside, because the downside of the four more years of a Dem, because that Dem would be “corrupt”, because that Dem is “unlikable”?

All in the name of “changing DC” to “make America great again” – the definitions of which we have nothing consistent to go by, nothing but empty slogans?

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/1f/64/f4/1f64f4e0be86c5fec3a84ae2c9e259a3.jpg

Is this not what we see is behind the Trump “movement” – behind the “blow it all up” crowd?

I really want to believe that Trump won’t be so bad. It is seducing to want to be so, because the alternative is unthinkable for most decent people.

But … there … just … isn’t … evidence.

Many talk about there being “a chance” he might be much better than we imagine, but that is more wishful / faulty thinking, and definitely not a selling point.

People just don’t understand the size of the gamble with Trump, a man not even beholding to his own words, let alone a concept of governing in a free society.

A good many are probably assuming (hoping) that the rest of the GOP and Congress itself can contain Trump.

However, given the incentives to play along, and the pain they will receive from Trump if not, says we ought to not fall for that delusion.

Given the above, much more than Clinton, Trump’s “unpredictability” will surely set the stage for a Black Swan event.

Here’s a post I wrote nearly ten years ago on Rousseau.

Nothing much has changed.

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

This also reminds me of the comment by Krylenko, Lenin’s Minister of Justice: “Execution of the guilty is not enough, execution of the innocent will impress the masses even more.”

ISIS makes no real secret of how sexy young males are meant to find the sadomasochistic holy war, the fatwa against the infidel flesh.

When paper became prohibitively expensive, it also made education in reading and writing more prohibitive. Thus the decline from Charlemagne’s time, which was itself a decline from the Roman centuries in the West, not Byzantine.

It wasn’t so much that Islamic civilization was better than the West, as Islam retained the fruits of their conquest. They had plenty of enslaved Christians and Jews to use as their technocracy.

In order to defend against Vikings and Islamic slave raiding rapists, you needed technology and physical prowess. In other words, weapons tech and feudalism. Being able to read Latin or Greek, being able to understand the ancient philosophers, mattered not at all.

The children of those educated sorts would be the first ones taken to a Sultan’s harem. The rest would be sold off, castrated, or passed around as spoils for the Islamic jihadists.

France should have known better. Killing religious leaders tends to cause one of two reactions. Either God calls down divine disaster by using human greed against human rage. Or, people get used to the violence and they start eating their own. Same thing in the end. But France never knows better. See Joan De Arc. See also the Albigensians.

Good people are only individuals. Whereas once you get a nation full of weaklings, you get something very bad.

As for Pierre, virtue cannot be imposed using methods that destroy free will. Virtue to be virtue, has to be freely chosen. In fact, the only way to see virtue in a Reign of Terror, is to see who dies on their feet, refusing to apologize or bow down to their executioners. That is the presence of virtue. Virtue is not Enforced by Terror. That is a belief much closer to Lucifer’s, that God/Divine creation of humanity with free will was a mistake, because it allowed humans to Choose to Disobey God.

That is the same belief in Islam as well, that free will/democracy is evil, because INshallah is the only will that is right.