Tsar Donald is a Mirror Image of Russian Tsar Nicholas II

(`) Joe BltzUnlike the present president I don’t watch television much. Rarely have I seen it in the morning and usually in the evening I watch PBS News Hour which is becoming more and more difficult to watch so I jump around a bit to other cable news shows for around an hour at night. I also as you know watch TCM’s old movies and some football, mostly college.

I do however have twitter accounts (actually more than three) which I rarely used other than in connection with TTTT (this blog). Most recently I set up one to follow tweets from Trump. It is under the name Matt O’Boston @mattoboston. Most of my tweets, and there have not been many, have come between three and four in the morning when lately it seems I wake up no matter what time I go to bed.

Unlike the present president when I’m not watching television I do a little scratching out some of the posts I make or reply to comments but mostly I’m reading. Right now I am reading “Black Night, White Snow” by Harrison Salisbury about the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917. I happen to be at the point where he is explaining the conditions in Russia just before 1905. Reading about Tsar Nicholas II, I was struck by the words of the Minister of War Alexei Nikolayvich Kuropatkin  that seemed to me to describe exactly what we are stuck with in the person of Tsar Donald.

“our Emperor has grandiose plans in his head to seize Manchuria for Russia and to go on from there to unite Korea with Russia. He dreams of putting Tibet under his power. He wants to take Persia and occupy not only the Bosporus but also the Dardanelles. When we ministers hold back the Czar from achieving his dreams he feels in his disappointment all the more certain he is right and that he understands better than we the glory and the good of Russia. That is why the Bezobrazovs, singing in unison, seem to the Czar more understanding of his purposes than we ministers”.

After reading that do you get the same feeling that I did that Tsar Donald is cut from the same cloth as Tsar Nicholas II. He has surrounded himself with some cabinet members who can offer him some solid advice but he is also surrounded by sycophants like Stephen Bannon who sing in unison telling him he is right. We know that Tsar Donald did tell us he understands things better than the military generals so their advice will always be subservient to the “yes” people who he surrounds himself with.

As you know Tsar Nicholas II would get into a war with Japan, the Russo-Japanese war. This happened in part because he and the Czarina believed the yellow race must be put in its place. I wonder if Tsar Donald is not of the same mind when it comes to Mexico with his foolish insistence that it will pay for the wall. Then it is suggested that he feels by putting an import tax on Mexican goods of 20%, which will be paid by the American consumer, that is how Mexico will pay for the wall. (He is chasing the average Mexican into the arms of anti-American “go home Yankee” leftist political parties. That will be big trouble if that happens.)

You know the rest of the story how Nicholas went to war and lost at Port Arthur when the Japanese pulled a sneak attack (sound familiar?). Then in May the whole Russian fleet was destroyed by the Japanese. You understand how the Russian people were shocked by the loss to an Asian country. The Navy at home had a mutiny against the tsar. He made concessions and little soviets were set up. You understand how things under the tsar kept falling apart, the WWI debacle, and the 1917 Revolution bringing the Bolsheviks to power.

Nothing good comes from having a leader unable to face the truth and lies. Nothing good comes from a man with screwball ideas and the more he is told he is wrong the more certain he is that he is right. If history is a teacher nothing good is in store for America.

29 Comments

  1. Well, if Trump is Czar Nicolas, all we need now is a Vladimir I Lenin. Who? Bernie?

  2. John King McDonald

    Same difference. 🙂

  3. John King McDonald

    … ” I am coming not only to save all living beings, but also to save other higher Spirits such as Genies, Saints, Immortals, Buddhas who had to reincarnate in this world to complete their missions” SAKYAMUNI BUDDHA

  4. Namo cao-dai,
    Tieng Ong,
    dai bo tat,
    ma ha tat

  5. John King McDonald

    Lot of accounts of Rasputin’s demise
    . I was on a Rasputin kick a number of years ago . He was a Khylst as I recollect ; a mystical sect of charismatics and religious hypnogogues in his childhood Siberia. Count Yousapuff killed him in a basement supper room, in a river mansion, first by attempting to massively poison the tough bastard and then shooting him to death on a courtyard snowbank onto which he had staggered as he fled the basement death vault. This was at about 3 a.m . His body wound up in the river from which it was pulled fully frozen a day or two after. The Count wrote an … account … of his nefarious deed. There were a couple of unnamed extra gentleman at that dinner . Rasputin was actually not a ” Giant” as has popular myth. He was just pushing six feet. but was long limbed, emaciated as a saint, and projected a luminous personal intensity in a frame housing his two intensely mesmeric eyes. He had what the modern hypnotherapists call the … hypnotic gaze! He was the Tsarina’s High Holy Priest of her Soul!

    A very interesting Guy! 🙂

  6. Here’s the choice in Syria; the USA can either give-up, and, cede control of Syria to Iran, or, continue to foment a state of chaos in Syria, keeping no power from having control. Which way forward would you fellas choose?

    • Glorious Leader seems to have inspired a lawyers’ jubilee with his Muslim ban.

      How can C&I guys determine who’s a Muslim? By name? Inconclusive. Forcing new arrivals at Immigration to eat tiny pieces of spam? Won’t work. In the direst of circumstances, Muslim folks are allowed to eat pork. Maybe, making people kiss a crucifix would do? Nope, Muslim folks, when, threatened by events, can adopt the mask of taqqiyya (dissemblance) to pass as Christians.
      And what’s GL gonna do about all the choi hanh turn-coats who so faithfully betrayed their own people to serve us? Where’s the gratitude?

      President jackass should think before he speaks and/or rules.

  7. 55%!?!That’s a Breitbart alt-fact, NC. The Quinnipiac has him at thirty-six percent approval. I suppose, its’ like shopping for a fatwa. You quote the one you like.

  8. Rasmussen has Trump at 55% favorable. Not as unpopular as you present. Is anyone on this site a lawyer and under 70? There are five openings on the Mass. SJC. A quality job opportunity exists. Good pay. No heavy lifting. VP Pence is going to inform Gov. Baker that the Trump Administration is going to select four of the five or else no Federal highway funds for the Commonwealth. They are going to use the Sonny McDonough trick. 2. Wouldn’t Trump be more like Peter the Great if one is looking for a Romanov comparison? Simon Seebag Montifiore’s book The Romanovs is a quality read. He points out Rasputin, who warned the Tsar that ww1 would destroy Russia and the Royal family and was urging a withdrawal from the conflict was probably murdered by British agents who wanted continued participation. They needed an Eastern front. 2. What is your take on Tulsi Gabbard the Congresswoman who is trying to stop the U S and her allies from supplying ISIS and Al Qaeda in Syria with weapons? About a year ago Rand Paul was asked what we should do in Syria? He said first off stop arming our enemies the terrorists. NATO, the CIA and the Oil Sheiks have been arming and funding the terrorists for five years. Gabbard is on to something. Who are the war criminals in Syria? Assad, Iran and Russia or NATO, America and the Saudis?

  9. In Parallel Lives Plutarch took a Greek and a Roman luminary and compared their virtues, vices, likenesses and differences in pairs of biographical essays. It is a long tradition.

    The pairing of Nicholas II with Trump in a similar endeavor falls flat. Their circumstances are too disparate. Nicholas was an autocrat and Trump reigns in a republic. Most importantly, however, different stars are followed.

    Nicholas emerged from a warrior tradition that gloried in an expanding Empire while Trump pursues an inward goal of domestic tranquility and prosperity. Trump’s ideal of a great America is a regime that glories in the well being of its citizens not in the laurels of a conquering general. Nicholas would have promoted Disraeli with his promise of the Imperial Crown of India; Trump, Gladstone, with his Little England foreign policy.

    Plutarch would have penned portraits that noted that one was outward while the other was inward. One was expansionist: the other, puts America First. One would have effected a diverse nation; the other, seeks homogeneity. There is more than a tinge of irony in that Nicholas was an introvert; Trump, an extrovert.

    A Parallel Lives of Nicholas and Donald seen from the air could start in St. Louis with the Czar heading towards New York and the President driving to Los Angeles. It would work better as a comparison of how very little they are alike. The differences are profound. Their likenesses do not extend beyond the number of hands, eyes, feet and ears each had.

    • I think Matt sees Trump as analogous to Nicolas II, in that, Glorious Leader is on the cusp of an apocalyptic political event, much, like, the one the Tsar experienced in 1917. I could be wrong, Matt will have to clarify.

  10. DAPL coming to a head, again. Private security thugs hired by the pipeline owners and empowered by the hateful rhetoric of President jackass are planning to roll over the protester camps. There could be a second Little Bighorn in the offing. There’s a lot swinging dicks in AIM and living on the Rez. Those Lakota lads are tough as Afghans. They’re born knowing how to handle weapons and ride. Lakota warriors aren’t scared of blood, and, they have nothing to lose. I expect some pipeline rent-a-thugs are gonna lose their hair.

  11. The lumpen vagabonds and street people are just the sort of dispossessed, wretched, castoffs of the Beast Das Kapital that one would think the Revolution would address the hierarchy of needs for, Khalid, that you cited recently.

    Is this an Uber Chic Revolution we are envisioning. One where these cadres of techno-savvy young scions of the 1%’ers don the philosophical rags of Marxist solidarity with the lumpenproletariat and then hold their OWS Vigil within the locked gates of Harvard Yard while Harvard hired extra Security to keep out that unwashed 99% ? That is what happened up here in Cambridge. Oh yes, It is a regular old revolutionary lark for these University garlanded anti -Capitalist frat bro’s and sorority sisters as they break the windows of a Starbucks or jump on the hood of a police car to shit on the System that enabled their Freudian revolt against Dear Old Dad, but heavens forfend that they should really get blood and mud on their bespoke threads. Revolution is bloody . It is messy . It is not a game for the bored offspring of the rich!

    • John: That’s just how things things start. We’ll see how anti-Trumo resistance hardens over the next few weeks. Glorious Leader is down to 36% approval and that number is going nowhere, but, down. How long do you think he’ll sit in the White House when 70% of the populace want him out? Glorious Leader is deflating like a leaky balloon.

      • Sticky keys. Wa-llahi! I gotta stop spilling coffee into this thing, or, give-up cream and sugar.

        • I knew what you wrote. Cowboy coffee – no cream, no sugar . That’s the discipline and the return to the Great God Caffeine, Kamerado … Don’t sweat the small stuff. 🙂

        • Khalid, keep spilling if you must, but DO give up the cream and sugar!

      • Marx considered the lumpen proletariat (occasional workers/tramps) to be a social problem that could be corrected by full employment in the dictatorship of the proletariat that would precede the abolition of the state.

        • John King McDonald

          Karl Marx : A-typical elitist 🙂

          • Hardly, unless, you mean “elitist” in an intellectual sense. Marx died poor as a church mouse. Any power he wielded was derived from ideas rather than wealth. The only thing to envy about Marx, was the power of his mind.

        • John King McDonald

          It is a rather sticky tautology : the premise of full employment forswears the existence of occasional workers who apparently are lumped in with the hoi polloi. However ” Full Employment ” will not take place until the Proletariat rule. Marx was an intellectual. They inhale corruption and exhale fragrant theory.

          • John King McDonald

            An ” A-typical ” elitist was more a swipe at his hierarchical sensibilities : Proletariat/ Lumpen Proletariat, rather than a comment on his austerity of mind or habit 🙂

  12. Trump doesn’t have the power of a Tsar. They weren’t called supreme autocrats for nothing. The Tsar, and, the members of his court, controlled all the ready capital and land in Russia. The Tsar was also the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. He/she outranked the Metropolitan. The autocracy controlled every facet of Russian life. Wittfogeld termed them oriental despots. Even Putin can’t approximate that kind of hold on the Russian soul.
    Glorious Leader would love to have that kind of power, but, luckily, he is proving to be incompetent. For example: The developing contretemps with Mexico is contrary to US interests. If the DEA gets bounced from Mexico, it’ll green-light a massive increase in the heroin shipped up here. The Narcos will fill every vehicle they can find, and, throw them at the US border in a huge wave. At present, a lot of drugs get interdicted before they hit the border. The DEA works with Mexican Feds, and, State police, to stop loads before they get started on the journey to our cities. Screwing things up with Mexico will mean a lot more cheap chiba, for sale on US streets.

    Glorious Leader would like to have dictatorial powers, but, Congress and the Courts stand in his way. Even FDR, a hugely popular four-term President, was stymied by the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution. Trump might want to be Putin, but, he’ll be greatly frustrated by the judicial, and, legislative branches of government. He and his cabal think they can consolidate a dictatorship, but, it’s a bootless venture. Establishing an autocracy in nation with no tradition of despotism will be impossible. We’re neither Germany, nor, Russia.

    The question now is whether the thwarted 1905 revolution in Russian is analogous to the Occupy Wall Street uprising. 1905 was the dress rehearsal for 1917. What will the next OWS rebellion bring? The committed youngsters who ran that show are all seasoned cadres, now. They’ve experienced the rising swell of popular distaste for capitalism that accompanied OWS. The kids learned how to ride that wave, and, how to get off, before it crashes. Those young cadres were long gone by the time the lumpen vagabonds, and, street people, infested those demos. They had experienced what they needed to know to ride, and, guide, the next wave of popular revulsion rising against Wall St., and, its’ running dog lackeys.

    All praise to the cadres. All power to the Dialectic!

  13. Matt: Historians portray Tsar Nicholas II as an ineffectual leader, shy, quiet, out-of-touch, non-assertive, a man who did not listen to his generals and advisers. Doesn’t sound like Trump. Moreover, Trump has already said he would defer to Mattis and Pompeo on the issue of torture.
    Nicholas II pushed for intervention in Korea against advice, triggering the Russian-Japanese War; Trump, we hope, will be less interventionistic than Obama/Hillary.
    Time will tell!
    The Russian Navy split during the Revolution; half remained loyal to the Tsar; half sided with the Bolsheviks. (Remember October 2017 is the 100th anniversary.)
    I saw TCM’s “Russian House” last night. Great shots of Moscow and St. Petersburg. A character says from St. Petersburg square: “Here, the Navy fired the signal that started the Revolution.”
    The Russian cruiser Aurora did fire a blank at 10:00 P.M. and at Midnight the Winter Palace was stormed: thus began the Revolution. Aurora was one of few Russian ships that survived sinking or capture in the Russo-Japanese War. See: http://rbth.com/arts/2014/11/07/aurora_the_cruiser_that_sparked_a_revolution_or_did_it_41229.html
    History has much to teach us: As Santayana said those who don’t know the past are doomed to repeat it: Here’s hoping Americans learn from the vitriol spewed against the Tsar and his family, the cruel fate that befell them, and the excesses of the Russian Revolution that spawned the likes of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin.

    • We have heard that Trump is not a reader of books. Let’s hope, then, that a close advisor has mentioned to him (multiple times) the Santayana quotation.

      I’m still very much in “wait-and-see” mode in regard to all things Trump.

  14. John King McDonald

    In the Tsarist Court constellation, Steve Bannon would be more accurately considered a politically charismatic Rasputin type in terms of personal force ; not a sycophant.

    The Kaiser, Tsar Nicky and King George were cousins. King George’s refusal to offer sanctuary in exile to the Tsar and his family was morally reprehensible.

  15. John King McDonald

    Well, don’t feel too badly. I am often reading. pacing, doing 20 ‘ Tabata workouts, meditating, and juggling in the early morning hours. I like that part of the day. It is very quiet . Reading HARLOT’S GHOST earlier this past evening, Norman Mailer’s WAR AND PEACE opus of a novel about the CIA. A monk makes his own hours, Now and Zen 🙂 There is much more to the battle against the darkness than the conjurations of the Press ; the constant dinning up of controversies ; the obsession with what is ultimately trivial in the face of our mortality .