Following his meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong Un in Singapore, Trump told Fox and Friends that he wants people to listen to him like Kim's people listen to him.
"He's the head of the country. And, I mean, he is the strong head. . . . Don't let anybody think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same," Trump said.
Later he said it was sarcasm, a joke. Uh huh. But obviously it's what was on his mind, and he's spoken before of his admiration of the strong-man leadership of Putin, Erdogan, Xi Jinping, al Sisi, and Dutarte, as well as Kim -- all of whom have their enemies assassinated or imprisoned.
Trump doesn't seem to understand that the North Koreans' automaton appearance and their seeming adulation are the result of the strictest training and punishment -- plus a lack of exposure to any facts other than what is fed to them by the state-controlled media and highly censored reading materials.
It is not love and admiration, freely given. It's life-long, strict training and obedience, with threat of severe punishment. All this rote recitation of praise for the "Dear Leader" -- that's something that's drilled into them, like a catechism.
More disturbing than Trump's wish for all us citizens to be his little smiling slaves is the ease with which he dismisses the atrocities and the cruelty with which these dictators -- and Kim in particular -- have killed their own citizens. Kim has had an uncle and a half-brother assassinated, because they were a threat to his power. Hundreds of thousands are in political prisons for even slight opposition to him.
Millions of Kim's own people have died of starvation and disease in order for him to put their country's meager resources into his developing the nuclear program that finally got him where he has craved to be: on an intgernational stage as an equal with the President of the United States.
And Donald Trump is the perfect chump willing to make it so easy for him to fulfill that dream, with not nearly enough demanded in return.
It is not love and admiration, freely given. It's life-long, strict training and obedience, with threat of severe punishment. All this rote recitation of praise for the "Dear Leader" -- that's something that's drilled into them, like a catechism.
More disturbing than Trump's wish for all us citizens to be his little smiling slaves is the ease with which he dismisses the atrocities and the cruelty with which these dictators -- and Kim in particular -- have killed their own citizens. Kim has had an uncle and a half-brother assassinated, because they were a threat to his power. Hundreds of thousands are in political prisons for even slight opposition to him.
Millions of Kim's own people have died of starvation and disease in order for him to put their country's meager resources into his developing the nuclear program that finally got him where he has craved to be: on an intgernational stage as an equal with the President of the United States.
And Donald Trump is the perfect chump willing to make it so easy for him to fulfill that dream, with not nearly enough demanded in return.
Ralph
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