10-10-2016, 03:16 PM
Welcome back, Teacher-in-Exile!
...of course we have perhaps the weakest pair of opposing Presidential nominees. Hillary Clinton would lose most elections in which she were the nominee; Donald Trump is quite possibly the worst nominee by one of the two major Parties since the start of the twentieth century. I'd put Trump in a category with such third-party nominees as Strom Thurmond in 1948 and George Wallace in 1968. He has been caught on tape not only talking about a nasty deed of questionable legality, but also claiming that he can get away with it because he is rich and powerful. That is only the last outrage. This Presidential race was close to being tied most of this year.
One obvious reality: Hillary Clinton is brilliant. She can lure an adversary into a trap and spring it hard. That is her legal training. Donald Trump fell for her logical snares. For good reason, Boris Putin does not want her to be President.
But that has nothing to do with the usual economic and geopolitical hazards of a 4T. Barack Obama may have kept America from spiraling into a replay of the Great Depression, but he got little chance to reform the financial order. The bankers and other plutocrats got their way after the 2010 election. They have learned nothing.
Donald Trump is shallow, reckless, abrasive, and -- worst of all -- ignorant of his intellectual limitations. He has said that he knows more than the generals, something that a draft-dodger who became a militarist could not say except as a fool. We are better off with a President who knows his own limitations and has to be convinced of something. Barack didn't need to know everything about intelligence-gathering and how Special Forces operate to preside over the whacking of Osama bin Laden. He had to know whether he could trust the CIA and the military, and he made an excellent choice.
Can Donald Trump know more than the generals? Barack Obama would have never made such a claim about himself. But he could cultivate trust. He could make wise decisions based upon what they know.
Of course any bull market has its own lifespan, and this one shows no exception. This is not a speculative boom, but we are running out of potential for prosperity through 'enhanced consumption' and the manufacturing behind it.
Donald Trump would of course be a horrible President. He appeals to mass ignorance, to greed, to hurt. He shows contempt for vulnerable people. t feelings, and to intellectual laziness. Communication at a grade-school level is one thing; that is the level of understanding that one needs for Disney cartoons. Thinking at a grade-school level demonstrates why we have high schools and colleges -- in part so that Disney cartoon epics can have some sophistication under the level of the words. Rarely must we think at the level necessary for understanding Kant or Hegel. We do need to be smart enough to not get snookered, and we need someone able to apply such knowledge as is available to the needs of the time. At that Donald Trump would fail.
Donald Trump could be so incompetent a leader that the Grey Champion of this Crisis Era might be the leader of a foreign enemy. You do not want a D'Israeli, Lincoln, Juarez, Churchill, FDR, or even Mannerheim as your enemy in a Crisis Era.
...of course we have perhaps the weakest pair of opposing Presidential nominees. Hillary Clinton would lose most elections in which she were the nominee; Donald Trump is quite possibly the worst nominee by one of the two major Parties since the start of the twentieth century. I'd put Trump in a category with such third-party nominees as Strom Thurmond in 1948 and George Wallace in 1968. He has been caught on tape not only talking about a nasty deed of questionable legality, but also claiming that he can get away with it because he is rich and powerful. That is only the last outrage. This Presidential race was close to being tied most of this year.
One obvious reality: Hillary Clinton is brilliant. She can lure an adversary into a trap and spring it hard. That is her legal training. Donald Trump fell for her logical snares. For good reason, Boris Putin does not want her to be President.
But that has nothing to do with the usual economic and geopolitical hazards of a 4T. Barack Obama may have kept America from spiraling into a replay of the Great Depression, but he got little chance to reform the financial order. The bankers and other plutocrats got their way after the 2010 election. They have learned nothing.
Donald Trump is shallow, reckless, abrasive, and -- worst of all -- ignorant of his intellectual limitations. He has said that he knows more than the generals, something that a draft-dodger who became a militarist could not say except as a fool. We are better off with a President who knows his own limitations and has to be convinced of something. Barack didn't need to know everything about intelligence-gathering and how Special Forces operate to preside over the whacking of Osama bin Laden. He had to know whether he could trust the CIA and the military, and he made an excellent choice.
Can Donald Trump know more than the generals? Barack Obama would have never made such a claim about himself. But he could cultivate trust. He could make wise decisions based upon what they know.
Of course any bull market has its own lifespan, and this one shows no exception. This is not a speculative boom, but we are running out of potential for prosperity through 'enhanced consumption' and the manufacturing behind it.
Donald Trump would of course be a horrible President. He appeals to mass ignorance, to greed, to hurt. He shows contempt for vulnerable people. t feelings, and to intellectual laziness. Communication at a grade-school level is one thing; that is the level of understanding that one needs for Disney cartoons. Thinking at a grade-school level demonstrates why we have high schools and colleges -- in part so that Disney cartoon epics can have some sophistication under the level of the words. Rarely must we think at the level necessary for understanding Kant or Hegel. We do need to be smart enough to not get snookered, and we need someone able to apply such knowledge as is available to the needs of the time. At that Donald Trump would fail.
Donald Trump could be so incompetent a leader that the Grey Champion of this Crisis Era might be the leader of a foreign enemy. You do not want a D'Israeli, Lincoln, Juarez, Churchill, FDR, or even Mannerheim as your enemy in a Crisis Era.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.