I don’t mean the sort of speech Hillary gave when losing in 2016 to Trump, who is a wanna-be fascist that probably couldn’t even define fascism in any dictionary sense, but losing to someone who is a true Hitler 2.0 or the like.
Under such circumstances, giving the sort of boilerplate concession speech when losing to someone like Obama or Bush would seem inappropriate. It would be more befitting to deliver a speech that consists of 20% graceful sounding stuff but 80% stern warning to the nation to prepare for the woes to come.
I’d concede gracefully and point to the things that everyone should expect and what steps they should take to prevent it.
There’s not really anything more you can do. It’s like if you know someone who’s a gambling addict and they’ve made up their mind to go hit up Vegas. The future is very predictable and you can tell them exactly what the course of events is going to be. When they’ve ruined themselves, you can point out how obvious it always was and start to work on getting them to take the right steps.
After that, I’d leave the country and wait for an appropriate moment to return.
“Alright, Facist. Enough of the people who bother to vote in this country thought you were the way to go. Or you lost the popular vote but got lucky and still won the electoral college, but either way, looks like it’s you. Don’t fuck this up.”
ETA: (Resisted adding "Darling Facist Bullyboy.)
Yeah, but presumably you’ve had a whole election campaign where you have been banging that drum for all it’s worth and your electorate didn’t buy it.
Showing ill grace at this point is like screaming at the plate ump for calling you out on an outside edge having previously swung and missed two fat ones over the plate.
History might prove you right, but sour grapes won’t help you now and won’t hurt them.
This of course runs contrary to the political dictum of the NSW ALP Right faction: “In defeat, malice. In victory, revenge.”
In that case, you just warn them that theft is a crime and that you’ll be watching your bank account online, and have the police department phone number right next to you.
My point was that your analogy was pretty cavalier about sending off someone who makes bad decisions to suffer those bad decisions on their own. However, in this case, the consequences of those bad decisions will not fall only on the shoulders of the one making those bad decisions, and in fact, will tend to fall more heavily upon those who advised against it. Which is why I extended your analogy to more reflect the actual situation being discussed here. While your analogy probably was not applicable to the thread topic, my modification brought it back on track and made it more so, which was kinda the entire point.
And it’s not theft when your spouse drains your bank account. Call the police to tell them that your spouse has withdrawn all your money to gamble at Vegas, and they are going to tell you that you’ve made some bad decisions, but they certainly aren’t going to do anything about it.
I still say Obama should have started his inaugural address with “Scuse me while I whip this out” but that has nothing to do with fascism.
One issue is that it’s hard to be sure who’s a fascist at the time of their election. Hitler certainly was a fascist but he made some effort to act like a regular politician in 1932. He didn’t say “Vote for me and I promise to murder twelve million people and lead Germany into the biggest war in history.” He made more general promises of providing strong leadership, keeping order, and solving problems.
So as I handed over the reins to my successor, who I believe might have plans to become a dictator, my speech would be along the lines of “The people have chosen you to lead them. Always work on living up to their belief in you and do what is best for them. And uphold the ideals of our country.”
If my successor instead began working on consolidating his power and transforming himself from an elected official into a dictator, I wouldn’t sacrifice myself by making pointless protests. I’d stay quiet and hope that he forgets about me so I can die a natural death at the age of 91.
Right but my point was that in your analogy, the person was only harming themselves. In the situation of the OP, that person is hurting everyone. To extract yourself from the situation is to move to another country, and even that may not be enough, as some countries, like the US, can have far reaching harms.
But anyway, back to the OP…
If the election is free and fair, and the fascist won decidedly, my speech would be condolences to everyone who opposed the fascist, apologies to the rest of the world as to what they may end up facing, and a warning to the new regime that the large benefit of a Democracy’s peaceful transition of power is to the leaders, in that they can peacefully be removed from office by fair elections, non-democratic systems tend to have more violent and deadly transitions of power.
If it was not free and fair, then depending on exactly how unfree and unfair it was, my speech may include some veiled or not so veiled calls to action to those who believe in a free country.
Probably, first acknowledgement of facts on the ground, second appeal to your supporters to do whatever it is you think its best for them to do (protest peacefully, take up arms, vote in the next election, head for the bomb shelters etc. this is very situation dependent), and then provide hope for the future (e.g. the country has survived tribulation before and while dark days lie ahead I’m sure that eventually America will persevere.)
You do realize I was referring to Gorbachev’s recent death, right?
As for Trump, this pettiness is one of the reasons he’s only a fascist dictator wannabee instead of a real grownup fascist dictator like his idols. People who succeed at becoming fascist dictators focus on the big picture and are constantly working at it; they might have their early enemies put to death but they’re not going to waste a lot of time on it. Somebody like Trump would get bored with working and decide to take a day off doing something fun like going on a helicopter ride, or having a parade, or yelling at Rosie O’Donnell.
