It’s a line spoken by Loki, Norse trickster god, in the 2012 Marvel movie, The Avengers. I thought of this scene today while listening to today’s presentation of American Autocracy on MSNBC.
In the movie, Loki has a crowd of museum gala attendees kneel before a larger-than-life hologram of himself. He ends a brief monologue with the statement that humans are meant to be ruled. An elderly holocaust survivor stands up and defiantly replies, “Not by men like you.” Loki responds with this line, “There are no men like me,” and the elderly fellow answers, “There are always men like you.”
In today’s installment of American Autocracy, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of the book Strongmen, observed that various pundits, news sources, and Trump followers say, in awe and reverence, that “there has never been anyone like Trump.” In fact, as the Holocaust survivor said, there have always been men like Trump – a line of Roman emperors, Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Kim, Putin, Orban, Erdogan, MBS, and other megalomaniacal pendejo-jerkoffs who believe that they are meant to rule. And despite the obvious evidence, those in Trump’s thrall still believe that there has never been anyone like Trump.
Alas, perhaps they really are meant to be ruled, just as Loki asserted.