01-07-2017, 03:12 AM
Wjat is possible?
Donald Trump and the GOP will destroy American democracy by transforming the political and administrative order into nothing more than the enforcement of the wi9ll of a Master Class devoid of any compassion, fairness, or integrity -- people who have accepted the Gospel of Ayn Rand. The rest of us must be content to be nothing more than our economic roles.
People nothing more than their economic roles? So it was for slaves, serfs, and prisoners of fascist and Commie labor camps. We are going to get much taste of dehumanization in what will no longer be the Land of the Free. Just work, bear children, and consign them to the tradition of working to exhaustion for the dubious reward of an animal-level of survival.
Death to that! Our humanity as persons is more than our ability to churn out stuff for plantation owners and overseers, or sweatshop exploiters.
How long will that last? Probably until America loses some catastrophic war that a fascistic or neo-feudal America loses because it tries to impose this nasty order where it is unwelcome. The people who impose a gangster order upon us ride a tiger that they dare not dismount. After about forty years commies in Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria could step down peacefully because they were not the ones who imposed the monstrous order and risked being hanged, shot, or beheaded (the last was the form of capital punishment in East Germany) for horrific crimes if they were to be overthrown, much like Nazi and fascist war criminals overthrown in defeat within a quarter-century of taking power. The imposition of tyranny is always a collection of monstrous crimes, crimes begging for the imposition of a death penalty.
DO NOT COUNT ON THE CURRENT LEADERS OR THEIR HANGERS-ON ALLOWING THEMSELVES TO LOSE IN 2020 or any time within their lifetimes in free and fair elections. The likes of Rakosi, Gottwald, Ulbricht, Bierut, and Gheorgiu-Dej had to be, along with their fellow partners in crime, completely off the scene -- dead. Thus the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and even the Prague Spring of 1968 were premature without outside assistance. The order that Donald Trump and his fellow-travelers have imposed will last at least as long as Generation X, the youngest generation to have complicity in his rise, is off the scene -- around 2055.
Sure, we will have elections -- like those in the old Soviet Union, where they had meaning only at the village or block level, or as in China, where there is a nominal opposition devoid of ability to challenge anything but exists for a show of some veneer of parliamentary democracy. We might also have iconic images of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, TR, and perhaps even FDR and Kennedy(!) -- of course gutted of their meaning, being used (like Marti in Cuba) to sell Fidel Castro as a nationalist hero.
We need to make undemocratic rule difficult. We need to protest and strike. We need to use our creative and organizational skills to the detriment of tyranny at any level, whether that level is a town council or the President. We need to recognize that the pariah of a tyrant is our brother and not our enemy. We need to assert the assets that we have, all moral and intellectual -- and like Nathan Hale in one time and Medgar Evers in another, that a life of subjection is not really life.
They have power; we have truth. We have a tradition of liberty that we dare not sell out for transitory privilege or safety. That tradition of liberty is worth far more than our material comfort. The longer that the nightmare lasts, the more that any signal of wealth or privilege will be associated with complicity with tyranny.
If we get free elections in 2020 it will be because the Armed Services and the intelligence agencies have determined that there must be free elections.
Donald Trump and the GOP will destroy American democracy by transforming the political and administrative order into nothing more than the enforcement of the wi9ll of a Master Class devoid of any compassion, fairness, or integrity -- people who have accepted the Gospel of Ayn Rand. The rest of us must be content to be nothing more than our economic roles.
People nothing more than their economic roles? So it was for slaves, serfs, and prisoners of fascist and Commie labor camps. We are going to get much taste of dehumanization in what will no longer be the Land of the Free. Just work, bear children, and consign them to the tradition of working to exhaustion for the dubious reward of an animal-level of survival.
Death to that! Our humanity as persons is more than our ability to churn out stuff for plantation owners and overseers, or sweatshop exploiters.
How long will that last? Probably until America loses some catastrophic war that a fascistic or neo-feudal America loses because it tries to impose this nasty order where it is unwelcome. The people who impose a gangster order upon us ride a tiger that they dare not dismount. After about forty years commies in Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria could step down peacefully because they were not the ones who imposed the monstrous order and risked being hanged, shot, or beheaded (the last was the form of capital punishment in East Germany) for horrific crimes if they were to be overthrown, much like Nazi and fascist war criminals overthrown in defeat within a quarter-century of taking power. The imposition of tyranny is always a collection of monstrous crimes, crimes begging for the imposition of a death penalty.
DO NOT COUNT ON THE CURRENT LEADERS OR THEIR HANGERS-ON ALLOWING THEMSELVES TO LOSE IN 2020 or any time within their lifetimes in free and fair elections. The likes of Rakosi, Gottwald, Ulbricht, Bierut, and Gheorgiu-Dej had to be, along with their fellow partners in crime, completely off the scene -- dead. Thus the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and even the Prague Spring of 1968 were premature without outside assistance. The order that Donald Trump and his fellow-travelers have imposed will last at least as long as Generation X, the youngest generation to have complicity in his rise, is off the scene -- around 2055.
Sure, we will have elections -- like those in the old Soviet Union, where they had meaning only at the village or block level, or as in China, where there is a nominal opposition devoid of ability to challenge anything but exists for a show of some veneer of parliamentary democracy. We might also have iconic images of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, TR, and perhaps even FDR and Kennedy(!) -- of course gutted of their meaning, being used (like Marti in Cuba) to sell Fidel Castro as a nationalist hero.
We need to make undemocratic rule difficult. We need to protest and strike. We need to use our creative and organizational skills to the detriment of tyranny at any level, whether that level is a town council or the President. We need to recognize that the pariah of a tyrant is our brother and not our enemy. We need to assert the assets that we have, all moral and intellectual -- and like Nathan Hale in one time and Medgar Evers in another, that a life of subjection is not really life.
They have power; we have truth. We have a tradition of liberty that we dare not sell out for transitory privilege or safety. That tradition of liberty is worth far more than our material comfort. The longer that the nightmare lasts, the more that any signal of wealth or privilege will be associated with complicity with tyranny.
If we get free elections in 2020 it will be because the Armed Services and the intelligence agencies have determined that there must be free elections.
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.