tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post6234145224439616219..comments2024-03-19T11:28:58.168-04:00Comments on History Unfolding: Trump, the Republicans, and HistoryDavid Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05020082243968071584noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-24438625031965228882017-06-23T07:23:05.584-04:002017-06-23T07:23:05.584-04:00I'm also looking at this presidency and Congre...I'm also looking at this presidency and Congress with concern. What worries me the most right now, however, is that I don't see how we get back to democratic principles or moderatism. Powerful industry heavily influences the debate, and the outcome. By gerrymandering (and increasingly because the fundamental flaw in the electoral college), the Republicans have made it very hard for the Democrats to have a turn to govern in the future; we have a President who was elected by the minority; and a party in control that has fewer voters. The Republicans are becoming emboldened, and more dictatorial; they are changing the rules in ad hoc fashion: they did not allow the President to nominate a SC justice; then they did away with the filibuster to get their nominee through; they are trying to prevent the media from asking questions; they are hiding sweeping bills from the people; they are blocking legislation that the overwhelming majority of Americans support (e.g. moderate gun reform).<br /><br />Backing them is a right wing media apparatus that has become a Lie Factory.<br /><br />And underneath it all, and the part that does not get enough consideration, is a large group of consumers who believe the lies, which emerge from both parties.<br /><br />-- BookscroungerBookscrounger.comhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14430366280572222489noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-82887685700124539592017-06-10T08:41:40.973-04:002017-06-10T08:41:40.973-04:00I agree with most of your excellent post. But I&#...I agree with most of your excellent post. But I'm not sure I can agree with this assertion:"Trump and the Republican Party with which he is working are simply not totalitarians. They want less government authority, not more." In today's politics, it's overly simplistic to compare "less" and "more." A businessman on Wall Street would agree that Trump wants less government authority. But a young woman would view his policies on social issues, such as abortion and birth control, as asserting far more government control. Shelterdoghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09973906960864702661noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-27432333680296422232017-06-10T04:26:55.533-04:002017-06-10T04:26:55.533-04:00Like Manchester capitalism and current chinese pol...Like Manchester capitalism and current chinese policy which allows 72 hour work week for 400 dollar a month and unlimited pollution with no unions, unemployment benefits, etc. the republicans are coming in line with reality. We cannot compete with chinese manufacturing except by rolling back all social, environmental progress made since Dickens. Lowest Common Denominator.What if all imports of manufactured goods had to be made under unionized conditions with low CO2 output? China would be a pariah. Instead they make it the gold standard. Wal Mart and China destroyed American middle class. Reagan destroyed union power. He was last old president with throwback ultra conservative nostalgic ideas. The good ole days of his childhood in 1920 or so. Now Trump envisions 1950s as something he experienced and can enact. North Korea for example is in his subconscious from childhood. Like with Bush jr. and Saddam Hussein. Papa should have won that war. He wants to replay 50s like an old video. Trump, like Reagan is no intellectual, rather a gut reaction personality. Climate change is a coastal, left wing boomer idea that he thinks is wrong as he is old enough to know these people. Lots of right wingers nowadays are making that mistake.Gore is a hypocrite and all other greens who are cultural marxists so climate change must be nonsense too. Unfortunately it is true. Hitler was a vegetarian so all leftwingers should be meat eaters out of spite as vegetarianism is nazism. That is nonsensical groupthink like the russophobic witch hunt of MSM. Your blog entry attempts to make sense of Trump by comparisons to totalitarian systems of the past which were ideological, rational but you admit that the current Caesar is a prisoner of the corrupt Neo Gilded Age Oligarchy. American isolationism in 19th century was supposedly broken through in 20th by participating abroad, policing the chaotic globe but actually the American mentality remains insulated against the world. We are arrogant or paranoid, ugly American or overly friendly. Physical isolation works to create strange culture like christian fundies(similar to salafists) and climate change denialism along with all sorts of left wing extreme gender ideas and similar, also spreading in Europe. Unfortunately one can't see one's problems without being outside of them, going native overseas. Few do this as time goes on so one gets very strange mass psychosis in crisis times as is now appearing in most countries. Why one can admire Putin is because the KGB picked psychologically stable people, he lived abroad, survived a severe national crisis in formative years, takes nothing for granted. American presidentts, diplomats, politicians are not highly trained multilingual multinatiolists with traumatic national survival trauma background(iraqi war vets perhaps like tulosi). Peace corps was an attempt to break through isolation without troops. Globalist trading is similar. Others have to be accepted as equals, culturally, economically, militarily and not dominated over. This is a sign of psychological inferiority complex of an adolescent culture.Energyflowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14476915209268786507noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-45849825940193847722017-06-09T17:18:09.912-04:002017-06-09T17:18:09.912-04:00Professor: another excellent post. Gloomy, but exc... Professor: another excellent post. Gloomy, but excellent. I would have only one caveat: I disagree that the current GOP wants "less government". What they want is a world in which working people, women--and of course non-whites--are put back in their places, and a more-or-less open kleptocracy and plutocracy established in the US. They will use "limited government" rhetoric if this will help them achieve some of their goals; and will use the power of the Federal government ruthlessly, if it helps them achieve others. Voting restrictions in black areas, for instance, are obviously achieved thru "big government". All this talk about the "size of government" is duckspeak. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12222400526348991523noreply@blogger.com