Monday, October 05, 2020

Sadopopulism: How Trump governs America


The Yale historian Timothy Snyder explains how Donald Trump can govern without policy and while causing pain:

"These are policies that are deliberately designed to administer pain, to add to the total amount of pain in American society.

"If you hurt people you create a resource of pain, of anxiety and fear which you then direct against others.

"If, in the long run, the way that you govern is by hurting people who don’t mind being hurt because they think other people are hurting worse, what you will tend to do is take the vote away from people who expect more from government, what you will tend to do is try to suppress the vote and keep the vote down to the people who accept that government can do nothing except for administer pain. And then that moves you away slowly from democracy."

2 comments:

nigel hunter said...

Elements of Johnson? Lashing out money to those who already have it.Going back to 'olden days'before the EU? Spreading confusion, mental pain with the 'control' of a virus?

Anonymous said...

Go on pathologising Trump, it's worked so well in the past.

No politician goes into politics to inflict pain on people. That a politician is following policies other than those you support is not evidence they are trying to inflict pain. That your philosophy is on the left and someone else's is on the right really is not evidence they are trying to inflict pain.