Parallels

It is common for people to draw parallels and comparisons between whatever or whoever is happening now and whatever and whoever happened before. The greater the event or the man, the more people will go looking for historical parallels. Even loose parallels are still embraced as a way to contextualize and explain whatever is happening now. We see this all the time with events and men alike. "Not since X" or "best since Y" or "worst since Z" are all very normal things to see.

When something becomes a cultural touchstone, it will inevitably become a common point for drawing historical parallels. COVID was compared to the 1918 Spanish Flu (or less often, the 1968 flu outbreak). 9/11 is the touchstone for terror attacks here and abroad. The October 7 attacks were described in many countries as "Israel's 9/11" because 9/11 is the touchstone. Depending on your political preferences, Biden was the worst president since Carter or the greatest president Roosevelt (or various others). The comparison made most often and most loudly for the past decade, however, is also the stupidest.

That comparison is, of course, between Trump and Hitler. This is a histrionic and profoundly stupid comparison. The two are nothing alike. If they were anything alike, those making this common and loud comparison would have been liquidated close to a decade ago, followed by total political persecution and slaughter of their fellow travelers while amping up state control of industry, social programs and wars of conquest. These, of course, did not happen. They couldn't. Trump is not at all like history's greatest boogeyman. But Trump, whether one likes him or not, is a great man, and great men invite comparison. This particular comparison, despite being very common, is quite stupid - but that doesn't mean comparison as such is stupid.

There are others. A lot on the right like to compare Trump to Reagan. Those on the left pretending to be edgy will sometimes say that Trump isn't really like Hitler, because he's really much more like Mussolini. One of our esteemed Morons (h/t whig), however, drew a historical comparison that I found compelling. It is a man who was profoundly different and Trump's opposite in virtually all of the particulars, but who shares very a common theme: Mikhail Gorbachev.

Like Trump, Gorbachev was a loyal patriot of a system that was approaching end-stage corruption and incompetence. Like Trump, Gorbachev took control in an attempt to salvage the system to which he was loyal by instituting reforms and making sweeping changes in an effort to arrest the decline. Like Trump, Gorbachev was the target of endless intra-Party attacks and coup attempts. The men are nothing alike in the specific. Gorbachev was a communist and Trump is not, as an obvious example.

But in a broader sense, the two are in similar situations, and trying to do essentially the same thing: fix the problems are arrest the decline. Both the USSR of the 1980s and the USA of the 2020s are empires in decline. Both are being consumed by corrupt and incompetent petty kinglets. Both countries have (or had) a decrepit, criminal ruling elite and a growing underclass increasingly mired in malaise and that is actively hated by its rulers. The USSR was further along then than the USA is now (and started from a much lower point), but the parallels are there and, I think, it is not hyberbolic to say that the situations rhyme. Things are not as bad here as they were in the USSR at its end, but we're on a similar glide path, with many commonalities.

The situation in both countries demanded - and got, at least in part - new leadership. Those leaders are not so dissimilar to each other. Gorbachev was not a revolutionary. At his core, Gorbachev was a loyal Communist Party member and Soviet. He did not want revolution and he did not want to tear down the Soviet Union. He wanted to reform the Soviet Union, to clear out the worst of the corruption and incompetence, clear out the deadest of the dead wood and in so doing, try to guarantee the Soviet Union's survival. He knew and was not alone in his knowledge that the USSR was teetering on the edge of collapse. His entire agenda was geared toward saving the system to which he was loyal, however damaged it had become.

Sound familiar? I think so. I think it sounds a lot like Donald Trump. Like Gorbachev, Trump is a reformer and not a revolutionary. He is thoroughly patriotic, loves the United States and is loyal to her and her people. He is trying to clear out the worst of the corruption and incompetence and clear out the deadest of the dead wood so as to ensure the recovery and re-ascendance of the United States. Unlike the USSR, the USA is (probably) not on the razor's edge of collapse but nonetheless, Trump - like Gorbachev - is having to beat back coup attempts and a continuous full-scale Party counter-assault by and on behalf of the politically-powerful established interests feeding on the body.

There are, of course, meaningful and important differences between the two that go far beyond one being a communist and the other being a human. Gorbachev was often fairly timid and Trump is brash. Gorbachev tried to be a "team player" and Trump does not. Gorbachev gently implemented many halfway measures, and Trump tends to go - or at least try to go - whole-hog. At the micro level, the two are radically different men with radically different approaches and diametrically opposed philosophies.

At the core of it, though, the two are quite alike. All of the particulars are different, but the themes are not. Both of these men tried (or are trying) desperately to fix and salvage their countries. To invert the normal form, they came not to bury Caesar, but to praise him. Gorbachev failed and ended up burying him anyway, though Trump so far has not. That's another fairly important difference.

posted by Joe Mannix at 01:30 PM

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