History repeats itself: first as tragedy, then as farce.
Marine Corps general Smedley D. Butler (author of War Is A Racket) reported the following about Mussolini (whom Trump seems to be channeling nowadays):
...........................
In a speech on "how to prevent war" delivered to the Philadelphia Contemporary Club in January 1931, Butler related an anecdote about Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini while making the point that "mad-dog nations" could not be trusted to honor disarmament agreements. Butler recounted a story told him by an unnamed friend who had been taken by Mussolini for a high-speed automobile ride through the Italian countryside, in the course of which the dictator ran down a child and did not bother even to slow down: "My friend screamed as the child's body was crushed under the wheels of the machine. Mussolini put a hand on my friend's knee. 'It was only one life,' he told my friend. 'What is one life in the affairs of a State.'"
. . .
In Washington, according to the New York Times, the Butler case occupied "first rank in public interest." Theater crowds applauded heartily when his picture came on in newsreels, and showed "signs of disapprobation" at Mussolini and Stimson . . . Ten days after the original speech Mussolini, now attempting to play the issue down, wired his ambassador in Washington to communicate "that I consider closed the incident, which, for my part, I have already forgotten." The episode, according to the historian of American reaction to Mussolini, "cast a shadow over the dictator's heretofore almost immaculate image."
Butler's informant turned out to be socialite journalist and world traveler Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. A lecture bureau chief declared that the story, based on what Vanderbilt had said to a meeting of the Affiliated Bureaus of America in New York, "was just as Vanderbilt told it to the last detail." Another bureau head agreed, as did members of the Reno Rotary Club and classes in journalism at the University of Nevada, who had heard essentially the same story during a recent Vanderbilt visit. The Italian Foreign Office, having denied Mussolini ever met Vanderbilt, searched its records and conceded that Mussolini received him in 1926 but "emphatically" reiterated that there had been no car ride. Vanderbilt himself refused comment and then evasively accused Butler of having "garbled" the story.
Years later Vanderbilt substantially confirmed Smedley's version in Farewell to F~/I/I Avenue (1935) and Man of the World: My Lfe on Five Continents (1959). In the latter he related a four-day boisterous rip with Mussolini through northern Italy: "A small child standing on the right tried to beat the Fiat across the road. The car shuddered, and I felt the car wheels go up, then come down. I turned quickly to look. I can still see the little crumpled-up body lying in the road. Then I felt a hand on my right knee and I heard a voice saying, 'Never look back, Mr. Vanderbilt, never look back in life."' In effect, Butler's version was essentially correct, although based upon a somewhat shifty source. All this, however, was irrelevant to the court-martial, which focused on Smedley's deportment as an officer and gentleman, not on Mussolini's driving habits.
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/butler02-by_schmidt.html
.........................................
So, yes, a child-raping or child-murdering-via-motorcar sociopath can indeed become leader of a great nation . . . if enough people look the other way . . . .
Please also remember what Trump . . . sorry, I mean Mussolini; did once he gained power:
..............................
In 1938, Mussolini finally got his chance to bring fascism to fruition. He dissolved Parliament and replaced it with the "Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni" - the Chamber of the Fascist Corporations. Members of the Chamber were not selected to represent particular regional constituencies, but instead to represent various aspects of Italian industry and trade. They were the corporate leaders of Italy.
Imagine if the House of Representatives was dissolved and replaced by a Council of America’s most powerful CEOs – the Kochs, the Waltons, the Blankfeins, the Dimons, the Mackeys, you get the picture.
Actually, that’s not too difficult to imagine, huh? But, that’d be similar to what Mussolini defined as fascism.
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/14007-no-actually-this-is-what-a-fascist-looks-like
.................................
= new reply since forum marked as read
