(11-14-2016, 08:42 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: We live in a society in which people, including the president-elect, get their news from the internet, which is clogged with right-wing baloney and some left-wing baloney, conspiracy theory and fake news. Half the people believe that our government is chosen by the Bilderburg Group, that 9-11 was an inside job, that climate change is a hoax, and that Hillary is a criminal. It's enough to drive ME dizzy. I don't know how the USA survives if the people are no longer informed or rational.
I have found that the most reliable news has always been the AP wires. That is news in the raw, news compiled so quickly that nobody can analyze, let alone spin it.
Analysis sounds noble enough as a word -- but everyone analyzes news with a personal bias. If you can stand to watch deadly-serious FoX News, you will find that the news that it reports without spin or analysis, as on apolitical items, is objective enough. But most of its time is on analysis that offers people an interpretation consistent with the values of the top management.
We need cool down some. Most events are not the results of some ancient conspiracy as with the Bilderburg Group or the Bavarian Illuminati. There was obviously no connection between 9/11 and any part of the American Establishment except that even the most secretive parts of the American Establishment (like the Skull and Bones Fraternity and the Bohemian Grove club was as offended as anyone else. Even if one wishes to discuss "Radical Islam".... the Nation of Islam is definitely radical, but it could have no solidarity with al-Qaeda. It is not radicalism that its itself evil; it is malice that is evil. Sometimes the radicals are right.
We must assume the best in people even if we disagree with them on core values. People who oppose abortion and same-sex marriage generally do so because they think those unspeakably horrible. OK. I can concur that if a woman can bear a viable baby to term without undue danger to her life and health (including reproductive health) then maybe we can all encourage her to carry the baby to term and arrange for some loving couple to adopt the child. Same-sex marriage? So gays and lesbians who are unable to love except within their own gender want to participate in one of the oldest and most honored traditions, and do what other conservative traditionalists assume without thinking, like raising a child who might otherwise have been aborted? We straight people should be flattered! You can trust that a pair of gays or lesbians raising a child can be as militant in protecting that child as straight people.
(I am for gay rights even on the conservative issue of law and order; having been gay-bashed, I recognize the need for dignified treatment of gays and lesbians. Just keep your sexual attention away from children... not that I could ever accept dirty old men messing around with underage girls, either). Respect for human dignity strengthens law and order, making crime much less likely.
We all need to promote rational thought. We need promote respect for others, including those whose core values diverge from ours.
The 2016 election is the victory of single-issue politics -- on such topics as guns, abortion, and homosexuality. So what can we liberals have to say of guns? We need to align with sport hunters on the environment. Birders and sport hunters have a shared concern with protecting the environment from being ravaged for quick-buck profits. Abortion? We need remind those that oppose abortion most absolutely that abortion is always an extreme choice that many people reject out of conscience. Same-sex marriage? Did anyone ever make a conscious choice to be 'straight'?
I look at the choices of the President-elect for the people around him; they suggest a radical agenda, little of which I will ever like. We liberals will have plenty on which to oppose Donald Trump in political demonstrations and protests. If he should stand for ravaging the environment for quick-buck gain that will do more harm than generate profit, then we can stand with nature -- and likely sport hunters. If he should stand for brutalization of law enforcement that will make it more dangerous than crime itself, then we need show solidarity with minorities likely to be the victims. If he is to seek the outlawry of trade unions, then we have obvious allies. Should he start a pointless war for profit -- we got away with protests of the Vietnam War, didn't we?
The President-elect has been reckless with his rhetoric before the election and will surely be so afterward. People do not suddenly grow up at 70. I have never seen it happen. I have seen people act 40 at age 15 (I am one of them) and people act like teenagers even into old age (if their alcoholic livers or cocaine-ruined hearts don't kill them first). Some people are emotionally mature at age 13, and some people don't fully grow up until 30 or so. If they don't grow up at 30 or so, then they likely never will. Alcoholics and addicts are obvious enough. Entertainers, media celebrities, pro athletes, and many creative people might get away with being child-like all their lives; think of Michael Jackson. Donald Trump isn't that different.
Nothing so exposes the personal flaws of a person as does the Presidency. It is the most demanding job in the world, and not only for cognitive skills. (I am guessing that Donald Trump is a mediocrity in intellect). Anybody can imagine himself as President and play the "if I were King" game. Just think of what a President commands: the Armed Forces, which have their own means of choosing who can lead as a senior officer; the diplomatic corps; and arguably the biggest economic enterprise on Earth, an enterprise with not only great assets but also huge responsibilities to people that one can never understand so clearly as profit and loss. Even one of the giant vertically-integrated oil companies has simpler objectives. I predict that the incoming President will use his hotel chains as model for how to lead a nation and let the economic special interests run the rest. That model will fail.
I see his personality not only unfit for the Presidency, but also his temperament. He will believe that he can issue an order to some clerk at Social Security and expect it to be obeyed. He will be very wrong. He will be disappointed when non-Right media turn against him. As the alt.right that so loves him adulates his decisions, those for whom the alt.right has nothing to offer but degradation will come to despise him.
I predict a political failure at least as bad as those of Carter and Hoover, but even worse because Carter and Hoover at the least had some moral compasses. The question is whether the groups associated with the Hard Right sector of American politics will not turn to brutal means to keep getting their way -- by destroying democracy. Every society except those that have just driven out or exterminated that group after a Socialist insurrection has a class of elitists who believe that so long as that group gets indulgence constrained only by limits of productivity that it can demand all possible human suffering in achieving that indulgence. Such people will murder millions in the preservation of their sick dream, let alone destroy democracy. We have never had such people endanger the democracy of America to the extent that American democracy now seems in gross and pointless danger.
Remember, folks -- this is a Crisis Era, and so far we have had it relatively tame. The Tea Parties and Black Lives matter are tame in contrast to what private, politicized militias or some new secret police can do on behalf of an unpopular government. President trump will be very unpopular very fast as he decides which promises to break first. He will hurt the working class first because it has no organization in politics.
The most positive end of this Crisis will be that Americans come to some shared conclusion that we need an America that works for us all. The People Power revolution that toppled Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. part democratic revolution and part military coup, might be how things work out. That is a liberal solution. The worst possible end for this Crisis, short of nuclear war that decimates the world population or even causes its extinction, is that America goes on a missionary enterprise to expand a racist, exploitative ideology into places in which it is unwelcome, and America is defeated as America defeated Germany and Japan in World War II. In that case, the best scenario is that the victors establish MacArthur-style regencies over their zones of occupation in America and decide to foster liberalism because it will do less harm and develop credibility quickly. Even the Chinese might concur with that. Just imagine that you are a released political prisoner and the Chinese offer a deal that in return for allowing a liberal democracy in your bailiwick you give the Chinese a free hand in arresting and prosecuting people who have committed crimes against Chinese POWs and Chinese-Americans. I would not have to do much thinking were I in such a situation.
We are in a Crisis Era, and we have had it very soft for now. The $#!+ has just started hitting the fan. But that $#!+ is infected with the political equivalent of HIV.
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.