Libertarian Commentary #16-17G  by Nathan Barton

Time seems to be speeding up

Consider Napoleon Bonaparte.  He started out as pretty near a mercenary (Corsica wasn’t really France, after all, just some island), became a good and then great general, then the “savior of the Republic” and then an emperor and a political prisoner (way before “war crimes” were invented), and then a bugaboo with which to scare small children and idiots.

Or take Adolf Hitler (Schnickelgruber) – He started off as an Austrian and a corporal, became a rabble-rouser, got elected to office, became the supreme leader, supposedly committed suicide to avoid being the star of a war crimes trial, and then a bugaboo with which to scare idiots and small children (including college students).

So, now take Donald Trump – he started out as a millionaire, became a billionaire, a “reality show” star, a celebrity right up there with dear Kim and Snooky, and then a politician … and got promoted directly to bugaboo status scaring idiotic small children called college students.  Oh, and more idiots called the “GOP establishment.”

My, oh my, some record, eh?  We are told today that the ONLY presidential candidate in American history that was hated (and feared) by more people than The Donald was David Duke, the KKK politician from Louisiana.

We are told that college students AND administrators are in fear of Trump, as reported by The College Fix. DePaul University’s Black Student Union accused its College Republicans (CRs) of a hate crime because they organized the April 4 chalking outside the Student Center, with messages that alluded to Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump and praised police and Israel… Such messages have angered students and aggravated administrators at Emory University, the University of Kansas, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, University of California-Santa Barbara and University of Michigan, among others.

It took decades for Napoleon and Hitler to go from revered national leaders to monsters and boogymen to scare children with (well, about 12 years or so for Adolf).  For Trump, they have short-circuited the process: he isn’t even in ANY political office and he is the deputy of Satan himself.  He has become an evil monster in a matter of months.

Why is this?  Clean Gene and the protesters of 1968 didn’t show this kind of fear and hate for LBJ.  Nor did those of 1972-1974 treat Tricky Dick this way.  Even Reagan and Bush I didn’t merit this kind of attention.  And even that old warmonger and “compassionate conservative” Dubya didn’t scare the pants off college students this way.

There is just something about Trump, I guess.  I honestly can’t see him as any worse than any of those people I just mentioned, or much different from Bill Clinton or even the guy there in DC right now (when he isn’t spending a million bucks a day flying around in Air Force One, that is).  What is there about him?

Actually, I don’t think it is as much about Donald Trump and his personality and policies and threat to the establishment, as it is about other things.

First, there are the coddled infants that infest our “institutions of higher learning” these days, and no, not just the students, but the faculty and staff.  More dependent than ever on government hand-outs, more treated like babies (and acting like babies who aren’t potty-trained in ANYTHING), and more brainwashed to believe in fairy godmothers and the benefits of a planned political economy than any past generation, they fear more than ever any change to the status quo.  (The same can be said for the vast masses of the welfare classes and the immigrants (legal or not).)

Second, the more powerful and controlling that government grows, the more important who is running things becomes, and the more likely to be feared and hated by those who seek that power and claim to want to change the status-quo.  It is no accident that we should compare the next person to be elected to the Presidency of the united States (whether it is Trump, Cruz, Sanders or Clinton) to Bonaparte and Hitler.  It is certain that the next POTUS will have, at the beginning of their term in office, MORE power than either of those two monsters.

Third, as the Fifty States race to a truly Wagnerian Gotterdammerung, the passions and rhetoric grow ever more strident and consuming. There is no more room in the hearts of most people for mere “like or dislike,” for “better or worse.”  The villains running for office MUST be monsters in every way, or MUST be knights on white horses.  There is no middle ground.

Which makes the solutions for this hatred and fear, this demonization of The Donald (or Miz Clinton (Nana?) or Bernie or Ted, or even Gary Johnson or John McAfee) very simple, and probably impossible to achieve: Get government at all levels out of our lives, out of our homes and businesses.  Get politics reduced in importance to near the bottom of our list below food and shelter, clothing and family, and frankly, what am I going to wear to work tomorrow.

Enough is enough.