Tuesday, July 19, 2016

The Donald and the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Facebook comment, slightly edited)


Image from, with caption: States of Mitteleuropa (blue) and the larger cultural sphere (outlined) that in the late 19th century comprised the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, Switzerland, as well as Congress Poland and the Baltic governorates of the Russian Empire

7/19/2016

John Brown As we all know, The Donald, whose current partner is Melania, a wonderfully preserved and, in public, politely reserved 46-year-old fashion model from Slovenia, where her father was a listed member of the League of Communists (how many Americans, Republicans included, can find Slovenia on a map? -- It's "S" on the above, as if it didn't deserve its full name). 

Slovenia (even when it when a "socialist republic" of the former, relatively short-lived, "Yugoslavia") was in some ways an independent-minded entity while culturally and historically remaining bound to the now defunct centuries-lasting Austro-Hungarian Empire, of which it was once formally a part. 

The Donald seems fascinated, at least judging (perhaps wrongly, by his choice of spouses) by this now-gone vast political/cutural expression in the Old World -- the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

Trump's previous spouse Ivana was from the former "Czechoslovakia," for a while "communist," a much redesigned area, historically, in Central Europe. but still very much palpitating, culturally, within the heart of Mitteleuropa, where the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which included Prague and stretched from Vienna to Lemberg (today's Lviv). 

So maybe The Donald is emulating the last Austro-Hungarian Emperor, Franz Jozeph, by using his mustache as inspiration or his coiffure ...

John Brown's photo.

P.S. So - Get ready for a Waltz on inauguration day -- with Arnold, at his Austrian best, as master of ceremonies!


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Of course, some total cynics would say -- racists of the world, unite! -- that the Donald, of German extraction, is courting attractive women born on the periphery of the former Hitlerian German Reich to underscore the supremacy of Teutonic male blood and iron to make the world safe all over -- not only in Amerika, but in in every heimat of the planet ...  

OK. It's not fair and counterproductive to reduce The Donald to such insinuations/vituperations, no matter how much he appalls, and appeals, with his fascist chin, ... Ok, an "inferior" Italian-looking Mussolini chin :) ...  



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