WTF?! Trump Channeled Dictators When He Rolled Out An Executive Order (TWEETS)

By
Darrell Lucus
-

In the first three days of Donald Trump’s presidency, we’ve seen a lot of things that would make anyone wince. A number of Canadian women on their way to the Women’s March found themselves turned away at the border. He let it be known that he wants the media to back off “demoralizing” him, and barred federal agencies from communicating with Congress and the press on their own.

But one of the many executive orders Trump issued upon taking office may be one of the most unnerving acts of all. It proclaimed the day of his inauguration to be a “National Day of Patriotic Devotion.” The full text was made available on Monday; read it here. It proclaimed that “a new national pride” had been awakened in “the American soul,” and called for a renewal of “our bonds to each other and our country,” as well as a renewal of “the duties of Government to the people.”

At first blush, this sounds like just another act of self-aggrandizement by a man with an ego so swollen it would stretch all the way from the White House to Trump Tower. After all, as Trump has made abundantly clear, he thinks this country is so broken that he alone can fix it.

Snopes noted that Barack Obama also issued a decree commemorating his first inauguration. But its tone could not have been more different from Trump’s proclamation. Obama declared that he was “humbled by the responsibility placed on my shoulders,” and called for all Americans to join in “remaking this Nation for a new century.”

However, a number of observers told The Guardian, one of the United Kingdom’s major newspapers, that they noticed something more sinister in Trump’s executive order than just using the full power of the presidency to stroke his ego. It seems that order contained a phrase that is frequently heard in North Korea.

Jiro Ishmaru of Asia Press says that “patriotic devotion” has long been a common buzzword in North Korea, a country which is now in its third generation of harsh, Stalinist dictatorship. Under North Korean leader Kim Jong-un–as was the case under his father, Kim Jong-il, and grandfather, Kim Il-sung–North Koreans are frequently exhorted to churn out more rice or find more scrap metal out of love for their country and their leader.

Likewise, Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of North Korea’s Communist Party, makes frequent use of the phrase as well. Last January, it praised the party’s official youth organization for its history of “ardent loyalty and patriotic devotion.” And in December, it used the fifth anniversary of Kim Jong-il’s death to laud his “noble image and patriotic devotion.”  When Kim Jong-il died in 2011, the Korean Central News Agency claimed that North Korea was well on its way to “socialism” thanks to “the patriotic devotion of Kim Jong-il.” Kim Jong-un himself used the phrase in 2015, when he told a crowd gathered for a military parade that the armed forces have “worked with patriotic devotion” to build a “thriving socialist nation.”

The phrase has also popped up on North Korea’s official Twitter account.

It didn’t take long for others to discover its potential connotations, and Twitter has been abuzz about it in the last few days. People on both sides of the aisle are collectively wondering what Trump was thinking.

Bill Kristol, a prominent Never Trumper, thought that the term sounded like something you might hear in Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Likewise, Robert Harris, author of “Fatherland,” an alternate history in which Germany won World War II, also saw echoes of Hitler in Trump’s proclamation.

Gee, you would have thought that maybe, just maybe, Trump and his team might have researched the term to see if there were any potentially unpleasant connotations. After all, a country that has ranked at or near the very bottom of nearly every measure of human rights and press freedom isn’t exactly what you want to be seen as emulating.

I’m reminded of how a number of right-wingers wrung their hands at how Obama was a dictator. In truth, Obama didn’t do dictator very well. He issued only 35 executive orders per year–fewer than any president since Grover Cleveland. And yet, Trump issues an executive order that echoes an actual dictatorship, and few people on the right raise eyebrows. The mind reels.

Darrell Lucus
Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR