You are beautiful… you are smart… you are sexy… I love your eyelashes…
Aren’t those words music to anyone’s ears? Of course they are.
“I can live for two months on a good compliment.” Mark Twain
I will make America great again.
How? I am not sure but to me it sounds eerily similar to:
“I intend to set up a thousand–year Reich…
Remember that little fellow with the toothbrush mustache?
This kind of rhetoric usually appeals to disgruntled people who need scapegoats to excuse their own failures and inadequacies.
If they are not rich and successful, it is not their fault. The system is rigged!
And a demagogue will gladly rejigger the system to benefit everybody (except of course the Mexicans, the Muslims, the Gypsies, the gays, the transgenders, the liberals, the pesky press, and a slew of other Untouchables).
Many people in the past have succumbed to the sirens songs of famed demagogues such as Lenin, Hitler, Mao, Joseph McCarthy.
When they realized that they had been duped, they were on a one-way ticket to “internment camps”.
To succeed, a demagogue will make extravagant claims.
French President François Hollande said that he hated the rich and if elected he would soak them to make them pay for all the miseries that are burdening the French people.
He got elected and proved totally, hopelessly incapable of fulfilling any of his promises.
This is usually the lot of demagogues. Silver tongue and lead boots.
Demagogues seldom improve the lot of their constituents. Most often, they blame their inadequacy on the opposition and use brutal force to crush dissent.
I am pretty sure that everybody heard our Demagogue-in-chief declare:
I’d like to punch him in the face!
So before trekking to the urns in November, have a good look at the ballot and think twice before casting your vote for somebody who promised you the moon.
Demagogues are often like rockets. They suddenly crash and burn midway to their destination.
Alain
Le Corbeau et le Renard
Maître Corbeau, sur un arbre perché,
Tenait en son bec un fromage.
Maître Renard, par l’odeur alléché,
Lui tint à peu près ce langage :
“Hé ! bonjour, Monsieur du Corbeau.
Que vous êtes joli ! que vous me semblez beau !
Sans mentir, si votre ramage
Se rapporte à votre plumage,
Vous êtes le Phénix des hôtes de ces bois.”
A ces mots le Corbeau ne se sent pas de joie ;
Et pour montrer sa belle voix,
Il ouvre un large bec, laisse tomber sa proie.
Le Renard s’en saisit, et dit : “Mon bon Monsieur,
Apprenez que tout flatteur
Vit aux dépens de celui qui l’écoute.
Master Crow perched on a tree,
Was holding a cheese in his beak.
Master Fox attracted by the smell
Said something like this:
“Well, Hello Mister Crow!
How beautiful you are! how nice you seem to me!
Really, if your voice
Is like your plumage,
You are the phoenix of all the inhabitants of these woods.”
At these words, the Crow is overjoyed.
And in order to show off his beautiful voice,
He opens his beak wide, lets his prey fall.
The Fox grabs it, and says: “My good man,
Learn that every flatterer
Lives at the expense of the one who listens to him.
Watch out for forked tongue rabble-rousers! They always end up stealing your Camembert.
