When I was working on a cruise ship, a noticeboard poster said it all: “Please remember that Americans consider it acceptable to brag about their kids. Australians do not.”
To start with, I linked BT because that’s where I found this, but the reporting was done originally on SMH (with which BT shares all its content) by a Melbournian author.
Bjelke-Petersen isn’t really the same thing. The dude was a dictator, for sure, but he stayed in power through dictatorial means like using the police against opponents and taking advantage of gerrymandering. Which is what most of your quotes demonstrate.
He didn’t do it through the standout self-aggrandising that defines Trump.
Be careful to merely associate self-aggrandising with Trumpism - there is a lot more to it. I’d argue that in his first term, he largely checked his boundaries and tried to see what he could get away with. But he wants to be a dictator, an autocrat, and now that he has the majority of SCOTUS on his side, and more and more of the red states slipping into outright Republican autocracy, he has a lot more wind in his back. A second Trump term will be disastrous, and that’s not because of his self-aggrandising.
To start with, I linked BT because that’s where I found this, but the reporting was done originally on SMH (with which BT shares all its content) by a Melbournian author.
Bjelke-Petersen isn’t really the same thing. The dude was a dictator, for sure, but he stayed in power through dictatorial means like using the police against opponents and taking advantage of gerrymandering. Which is what most of your quotes demonstrate.
He didn’t do it through the standout self-aggrandising that defines Trump.
Be careful to merely associate self-aggrandising with Trumpism - there is a lot more to it. I’d argue that in his first term, he largely checked his boundaries and tried to see what he could get away with. But he wants to be a dictator, an autocrat, and now that he has the majority of SCOTUS on his side, and more and more of the red states slipping into outright Republican autocracy, he has a lot more wind in his back. A second Trump term will be disastrous, and that’s not because of his self-aggrandising.