They become them. It takes time to learn the skills of dictatorship, just as it does anything else. 10,000 hours hardly gets you into Dictator College. Indeed, the skill developed from constant practice in dictatorship is a rare and hard-won skill, like being a concert pianist, not the reflection of a general attitude to life, like singing in the shower.
Vladimir Putin didn’t start acting as a dictator until 2014 when he invaded Crimea. Victor Orbán became Prime Minister of Hungary in 2010, but he took five more years to build his first border fence. Even Venezuela’s Nicholás Maduro, who also took office in 2010, took four years to plunge his country into dictatorial chaos.
Whether Donald Trump has the discipline to move from being a caricature of a dictator to acting like one is open to question. But he has already satisfied one necessary condition of successful dictatorship by getting elected. We’ll find out next year if it’s a sufficient condition as it was with the most powerful dictator in modern history.
President Trump is surrounded by advisers willing to obey his every whim, and ready to call in their chips. The anti-vaxxer, Robert Kennedy, says he will be Secretary of Health. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, will be the new Secretary of Cost-Cutting. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is angling for Secretary of Homeland Security. In the lottery of people manifestly unsuited for these positions, you might well ask, how did their names get drawn?
This week I happen to be reading a book about Adolf Hitler.
Hitler’s People chronicles the 21 advisers to the Führer who made Naziism and the Second World War and the Holocaust possible. The human cost alone of Hitler’s rule was 85 million lives lost.
Richard Evans’ book has won rapturous praise because it overturns some of our hazier views of the Nazi era and lazier comparisons between Hitler and Trump.
Wrote Evans of Hitler’s people: “[They] were not psychopaths, nor were they deranged or perverted, or insane, despite the portrayal of many as such in the media and the historical literature.”
“They were not gangsters, or hoodlums who took over the German state purely or even principally in order to enrich themselves or gain fame and power, though when opportunity knocked, many of them did not hesitate to take advantage of it.”
And here Evans twists the “not crazies” argument by noting: “Apart from flying in the face of the evidence, thinking of them as depraved, deviant or degenerate puts them outside the bounds of normal humanity and serves as a form of exculpation for the rest of us…In most of their life, they were completely normal…They were well-read, or played a musical instrument, or painted or wrote fiction or poetry…There was not a single manual labourer among them.”
“What they [and many Germans] all had in common was a shattering emotional experience, of a sharp and shocking loss of status and self-worth…mocking the sacrifice that they and their families had offered, sometimes in blood.”
“Hitler offered them a way out of their feelings of inferiority, linking their fate and his own …from defeat and humiliation to resurgence.”
True, Donald Trump has already been in power for four years. But 2016 is different from this week. This time, his team is already in place. The question is, can his real inner circle control his more self-destructive impulses in a way that Hitler’s people couldn’t?
So keep your eyes not so much on Kennedy and Musk and Greene, but on Chris LaCivita, Susie Wiles and Stephen Miller.
Meanwhile…
1. Can we all at least talk? Ken Burns offers some painfully true and overdue words on how to come together. His next PBS series, by the way, premieres on PBS this month, about Leonardo da Vinci. Plus…how to disagree without pistols at dawn.
2. Going places. The world’s longest non-stop flight. Plus the 25 best places to travel to. Plus the safest countries in the world. (Canada’s # 11). Plus tallying up the world’s languages.
3. A name you should know. Kemi Badenoch is the new leader of Britain’s opposition Conservative Party. She served in Rishi Sunak’s and Liz Truss’ cabinet, but missed Boris Johnson’s.
4. Forget fast public trains. They’re threatening to link Quebec City to Toronto again. In our dreams: on that day, sheep will pilot the Concorde. Try slow private ones.
5. Fine. Be that way. Russia fined Google more money than exists in the entire world. The tech company was told to pay two undecillion roubles, or $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 for restricting the content of 17 Russian TV channels on YouTube. That amount is in the neighbourhood of a “googol” which is 10 to the power of 100. Google had no comment.
6. “The most fulfilled people I know tend to have two traits. They’re insatiably curious—about new ideas, experiences, information and people. And they seem to exist in a state of perpetual, self-inflicted unhappiness.” We know these people. We are these people. Celine Nguyen calls their affliction “divine discontent” in this telling essay on the difference between happiness and fulfillment.
7. Jumpers. One shape; many sizes. But jumping rope is no joke.
8. Worst nightmare. Twenty five years ago, pianist Maria João Pires walked on stage in Amsterdam to play Mozart’s concerto in D Minor, K 466. Problem was, the conductor and orchestra were set to play a different Mozart piece. Here’s what happened next. With big lessons about memory, fear and acceptance.
9. Is being manly a threat to a man’s health ? Manliness (medically, “male gender expressivity”), now has a scientific basis. It seems men aren’t that great at self-reporting illnesses. I could have told you that.
Speaking of ‘ungirlie men’, did you know that the head of America’s ultra-right, Neo-Fascist Proud Boys is a Canadian? Indeed, and CBC Gem has a wonderful exposé on Gavin McInnes. As the film’s title says: “It’s Not Funny Any More.”
And as if there aren’t enough real parasites around, here are some fictional ones that will curdle your blood.
10. Navigating today’s world. Louis Vuitton opens a dog-lovers boutique. Never tell an old person they look youthful. Is “doe” still a deer, a female deer? Plus, life isn’t a problem for you to solve. Plus finding your long-lost twin.
11. What I’m liking. The documentary Music by John Williams on Disney +. What a big and deeply embedded part of our lives he’s been, from Star Wars and ET, to Raiders of the Lost Art, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and of course, Jaws – all of whose melodies you can still hum. John Williams is now 92. He’s won 26 Grammy Awards, been nominated for 54 Academy Awards and, by all accounts remains a kind, gentle, funny man.
12. What I’m missing. On November 19th at Koerner Hall, Emmy-Award-winning Canadian filmmaker Larry Weinstein will premiere Beethoven’s Nine: Ode to Humanity. “The film follows nine unique individuals, including Ukrainian musicians, a deaf composer, a Polish rock star, a best-selling author, a legendary cartoonist, and Weinstein himself, as they try to better understand the legacy of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, the composer’s own struggles, the inspiration music can provide, and how humanity continues to look for hope even in the darkest times.”
But the evening’s more than just a film. It’s followed by Q&A with Weinstein and Toronto Symphony Orchestra conductor Gustavo Gimeno, moderated by TVO’s Steve Paikin, and coda-ed by a performance by graduates of the Royal Conservatory, some of whom now play for the TSO.
Readers of the OG blog get a 25% discount. Tickets here. Discount code: 9ODE.