Trump reminds me of a stupid Kaiser Wilhelm. Esp. this part of a quote from the Wikipedia article:

Trump reminds me of a stupid Kaiser Wilhelm. Esp. this part of a quote from the Wikipedia article:

... but at the same time superficial, hasty, restless, unable to relax, without any deeper level of seriousness, without any desire for hard work or drive to see things through to the end, without any sense of sobriety, for balance and boundaries, or even for reality and real problems, uncontrollable and scarcely capable of learning from experience, desperate for applause and success,—as Bismarck said early on in his life, he wanted every day to be his birthday—romantic, sentimental and theatrical, unsure and arrogant, with an immeasurably exaggerated self-confidence and desire to show off, a juvenile cadet, who never took the tone of the officers' mess out of his voice, and brashly wanted to play the part of the supreme warlord, full of panicky fear of a monotonous life without any diversions, and yet aimless, pathological in his hatred against his English mother.

I'd guess there's something we can sub in rather than the Kaiser's hate towards his mother (Queen Victoria's eldest daughter). Notwithstanding, it really sounds similar to Trumpianism.

And then there's this one:

He believed in force, and the 'survival of the fittest' in domestic as well as foreign politics... William was not lacking in intelligence, but he did lack stability, disguising his deep insecurities by swagger and tough talk. He frequently fell into depressions and hysterics... William's personal instability was reflected in vacillations of policy. His actions, at home as well as abroad, lacked guidance, and therefore often bewildered or infuriated public opinion. He was not so much concerned with gaining specific objectives, as had been the case with Bismarck, as with asserting his will. This trait in the ruler of the leading Continental power was one of the main causes of the uneasiness prevailing in Europe at the turn-of-the-century.

This is a terrible, terrible timeline.

Comments

  1. "Every day is Trump's birthday" is an amazing lens through which to read the news.

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