Sam Smith – I had
my money on Eric Schneiderman as the last play in bringing Trump down and
saving what’s left of America’s democracy – after perhaps the firing of
Mueller and the legal dehydration of the New York US Attorney. Schneiderman,
after all, had handled the Trump University case well and was reportedly being
kept up to date by Mueller.
But, as is easy these days in matters political, I was wrong
– my optimism shattered by the revelations of Schneiderman’s treatment of women
and his subsequent resignation. And what could be more ironic than if Donald
Trump succeeded in his dictatorial desires thanks to the cruel stupidity of a
top official replicating his inability to treat others decently.
As I brooded over this, I realized that what David Hackett
Fisher has described as a historical southern idea of “hegemonic liberty” – i.e.
the more power you have the more liberty comes with it – is now rampant among
the powerful of America, regardless of where they grew up.
The classic example of hegemonic liberty was the plantation
owner. And as I pondered Trump’s treatment of the White House and America as
his plantation, I stumbled across this in the NY
Post:
State Attorney General Eric
Schneiderman called his Sri Lankan girlfriend his “brown slave” and wanted her
to refer to him as “Master,” the woman says.
Harvard-educated activist writer
Tanya Selvaratnam told the New Yorker magazine that her yearlong affair with
Schneiderman “was a fairytale that became a nightmare” — and quickly escalated
into violence in the bedroom, even as he begged for threesomes.
“Sometimes, he’d tell me to call
him Master, and he’d slap me until I did,” Selvaratnam said.
[His] ex-girlfriend says
Schneiderman beat, choked her after night of drinking “He started calling me
his ‘brown slave’ and demanding that I repeat that I was ‘his property.’”
The message here is that such behavior – whether by a
Schneiderman, a movie star or a president – is about something far more than
sexual abuse, bad as that is. It is also about a manic and cruel drive for
total power over others. The rotten remains in the heart and soul of a would-be dictator.
1 comment:
"hegemonic liberty" is nothing more than everyday psychopathy.
Psychopaths seek power because, once they have enough of it, they have virtual, de-facto immunity from the law and can enjoy (to the extent they can enjoy anything, which ain't much) acting out their most depraved power-over fantasies.
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