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- cross-posted to:
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After weeks of authoritarian threats to crush protests with the military, cancel elections, conquer foreign countries, and send masked agents door-to-door to round up anyone who can’t prove their citizenship, Trump on Wednesday told an already uneasy room full of world leaders that “sometimes you need a dictator.”
The offhanded comment came in the middle of a rambling speech at the reception dinner for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, in which Trump congratulated himself on a different rambling speech he’d given earlier that day at the summit.
“We had a good speech, we got great reviews. I can’t believe it, we got good reviews on that speech,” Trump said of the widely mocked address in which he continued to demand the US take over Greenland (which he repeatedly referred to as “Iceland”) and made new tariff threats against Canada and Europe if they resist the annexation.
Also James K Polk, Republican of the stump – promised to be a 1 term pres and stuck to it.
Can you imagine how great that would feel? To be trusted with such authority in service of your people, and to have kept your promise? I’d be a living legend, for the rest of my life I’d feel confident in having lived my ethos to its fullest. I cannot fathom why it does not appeal to some.
I honestly can’t imagine a better peak experience. Like, I’ve made choices that proved my ethics even at personal cost and felt extra good just not telling anyone for years about them. I still feel pride for some I engaged in as a child. It’s straight up the exact opposite feeling of remembering something cringe you did (of which I have many more examples). I sincerely wish that experience on everyone, though I hope most don’t get the martyrdom urge that led to it.
The world needs more people who feel this. The sense of being a valued and irreplaceable part of a world worth living in.
It’s not even being valued or irreplaceable, it’s just knowing you’ve done the right thing even when nobody would have blamed you for not. It’s the fundamental dignity and pride associated with knowing that you have shown integrity and the understanding that when presented with an opportunity to display it that it’s absolutely worth it.
Being able to live with yourself feels much better than always trying to hide from your own misdeeds.