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Charlie Chan vs. Trump [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-04-13  

Most people with brains have been appalled while helplessly witnessing how an idiot backed by wealth has exposed terrible (and perhaps fatal) weaknesses in our legal system, our checks and balances, the Republican party, and democracy itself.

Yet we might have seen him coming. Great voices have been warning about his kind of danger for centuries.

On the lighter side, I’ve discovered several references in my old films (I’m a sucker for films of the 1930s and 40s) to characters just like today’s model. Especially impressive are some of the comments coming out of the Charlie Chan films from 20th Century Fox.

Charlie loved his ‘adages’, but film makers insisted for some reason that he speak in broken English. Yet clever writers found ways to iron out his speech such as in this instance from Charlie Chan At Treasure Island (1939) where he is up against an egocentric opponent with a following. In this case, they simply have him reading out of a book on psychiatry:

“Pathological liars and swindlers suffer from exaggerated fantasy, unleashed vanity, and great ambition, which robs them of the caution known to saner men.”

Yes, Charlie, you’re on to him.

There are other references in other Chan films, but the one which inspired me to write this is actually an important warning. We all want to see him fall, but we also have to be wary. In the same film mentioned above, Chan’s son tries to hurry him, but as usual, Charlie insists on patience.

“To destroy a charlatan, you must first unmask him in front of his followers.”

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