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(Quotation below from preceding blog:)
I told her [Walmart Employee who had shown great kindness to me] she had taught me a very important lesson tonight. Often we think of kindness bearing fruit with reciprocal kindness. The lesson I learned tonight, I told her, is that kindness can elicit from the goodwill spawned in the heart a practical and operative measure of honesty and integrity. (What if my initial employee encounter had been characterized by insensitivity satiated with manipulation and cruelty; would I have turned around like honest Abe to ensure an honest charge… or would I have l left the building feeling fully justified in my fortuitous heist [that being an item employee had failed to scan on my checkout]--regretting only that the watchband was not made of solid gold?)
Quite rightly Donald Trump understands that he must ALWAYS be perceived by his supporters as the master of arbitrary power--never even once in his lifetime having the need to ask for forgiveness. In my preceding blog I pictured what it could look like if I left Walmart feeling greatly aggrieved. This was a situation in which I could take immediate direct personal action to satisfy my sense of hurt and injustice.
I can, however, have a truckload of grievances of a social/economic nature in which my direct action is impossible. I then can look for a strong man to effectuate revenge (in my view justice) for me. I decidedly do not want a fair, carefully measured, and morally fussy man for this job. I want someone fully capable of playing dirty—the more so the better to angrily reflect just how I subjectively feel.
(We should be aware that envy and jealousy are a form of hurt. Government workers can be envied by vulnerable private sector workers for the government employees' enjoying (in many cases) greater job stability, steady income flow during market fluctuations, rules and regs resulting in greater protection from arbitrary bosses, and more generous benefits. Thus, a temporary government shutdown can be taken as a let-them-see-what-I-face infliction of retributive justice. An emphasis on societal division is necessary to communicate all the better to the strongman's supporters shared targeted enemies.)
The domineering autocratic strong man to his followers is perceived to be a messiah figure of justice—but perversely sadistic in nature implementing a scorched-earth policy that could undermine the persistence of government itself. This contrasts with democratic servant leaders who seek to inspire a common empathy and unified feeling of brotherhood and sisterhood in which both burdens and benefits are broadly accepted and shared.
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