"It is to be remembered that the affections of men generally lie on the side of authority. Patriotism is not durable in a conquered nation."
-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835) 74.
What of the mentally defective among men? One would think a number of those ill-equipped would gravitate, as water seeks the lowest level, toward the strongman, seeking his protection, dependent upon him. A few more florid would seek to become the strongman, the Leader, the dictator, the messiah. Power acts as a strange magnet to those who are, or believe themselves to be, powerless, the insecure, the ill-equipped, the conquered in life.
Affection is a variation of love; patriotism is love of country. Insecure, ill-equipped, powerless women stay in marriages in which they are regularly beaten, pulled back time and again by that strange magnet. Some women wept and threw themselves at Hitler, drawn by his "magnetism," eager for his "protection." Some women have written to Donald Trump explicitly asking him to protect them from Muslims, Blacks, Mexicans--all men--Trump appending "rapists" to Mexicans to make his dog whistle call clearly audible to them. There are photographs of women gazing awestruck at Trump; others show women in orgasmic rapture before him. Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, Henry Kissinger said, and he lived it. There are men who gain a transferrence in power, in courage, in violence, and who act out their violence, in the magnetic orbit of Trump.
Love is emotional, it is the opposite of rational. It "just happens" when two are brought together. Love can be created, manufactured, out of nothing rational, because it is not rational and they are not rational.
And so we have the strange sight of 40+% of Americans, overwhelmingly White people, most of them men, believing themselves conquered, willingly giving up their liberty, literally pledging to follow their Leader who is a tool of a--White--foreign authoritarian, in the name of patriotism, to "Make America Great Again.
-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835) 74.
What of the mentally defective among men? One would think a number of those ill-equipped would gravitate, as water seeks the lowest level, toward the strongman, seeking his protection, dependent upon him. A few more florid would seek to become the strongman, the Leader, the dictator, the messiah. Power acts as a strange magnet to those who are, or believe themselves to be, powerless, the insecure, the ill-equipped, the conquered in life.
Affection is a variation of love; patriotism is love of country. Insecure, ill-equipped, powerless women stay in marriages in which they are regularly beaten, pulled back time and again by that strange magnet. Some women wept and threw themselves at Hitler, drawn by his "magnetism," eager for his "protection." Some women have written to Donald Trump explicitly asking him to protect them from Muslims, Blacks, Mexicans--all men--Trump appending "rapists" to Mexicans to make his dog whistle call clearly audible to them. There are photographs of women gazing awestruck at Trump; others show women in orgasmic rapture before him. Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, Henry Kissinger said, and he lived it. There are men who gain a transferrence in power, in courage, in violence, and who act out their violence, in the magnetic orbit of Trump.
Love is emotional, it is the opposite of rational. It "just happens" when two are brought together. Love can be created, manufactured, out of nothing rational, because it is not rational and they are not rational.
And so we have the strange sight of 40+% of Americans, overwhelmingly White people, most of them men, believing themselves conquered, willingly giving up their liberty, literally pledging to follow their Leader who is a tool of a--White--foreign authoritarian, in the name of patriotism, to "Make America Great Again.
