01-21-2017, 02:59 AM
I have little question that the economic policies of Donald Trump will do the common man any good, direct (the direct good will go entirely to the Master Class) or indirect (trickle-down does not work so long as people are competing just to survive.
Mike Pence will push cultural values that please only a minority -- evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants, the sorts of people who believe the Bible down to the chronology of Genesis. If anyone wants a culture war, there you have it -- between those who accept rational science as useful and those who will sacrifice it to save souls. The next four years will be perfectly good for life in America -- if one has already Made It. I would rather be an expat in the next four years.
Economic growth? It will come at a price, most likely privatization of the public sector that makes life far more costly. See two-lane blacktop -- and see it as a toll road.
World peace? I see the Putin-Trump relationship as abusive and exploitative. That sort of relationship usually ends badly.
So what can go right? Obviously we will be unable to undo any deaths that result from poverty and denied medical care, or crippling or fatal wounds from any unjustifiable War for Profit -- or any terrorism that the President inspires. But even with that caveat we can get a Regeneracy -- one that rejects the destructive, exploitative, and divisive tendencies of the President and his Congressional stooges.
I read the transcript of his inaugural address... which is about as much as I could stand to do... and I could make a snide parody of John F. Kennedy's "Ask not..."; with Donald Trump it would morph into "Ask what your country can do to you!"
We will have to become good enough as a people to be better than our government. We will need to bypass the government to get any good out of life. We will need to start looking out for each other, especially when the Government becomes little more than enforcer of the will of Big Business. We will need to strike and protest against oppression, exploitation, and corruption that will be endemic in America.
It will be tough. But we have a model to emulate.
The alternative is 'every man for himself', basically the Law of the Jungle. If we endorse that, then we will neveer escape the pernicious influence of Donald Trump, who will become the Founding Father of an Evil Empire as odious at the least as Ronald Reagan the "evil
empire" that extended from Kaliningrad to the Bering Strait.
Mike Pence will push cultural values that please only a minority -- evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants, the sorts of people who believe the Bible down to the chronology of Genesis. If anyone wants a culture war, there you have it -- between those who accept rational science as useful and those who will sacrifice it to save souls. The next four years will be perfectly good for life in America -- if one has already Made It. I would rather be an expat in the next four years.
Economic growth? It will come at a price, most likely privatization of the public sector that makes life far more costly. See two-lane blacktop -- and see it as a toll road.
World peace? I see the Putin-Trump relationship as abusive and exploitative. That sort of relationship usually ends badly.
So what can go right? Obviously we will be unable to undo any deaths that result from poverty and denied medical care, or crippling or fatal wounds from any unjustifiable War for Profit -- or any terrorism that the President inspires. But even with that caveat we can get a Regeneracy -- one that rejects the destructive, exploitative, and divisive tendencies of the President and his Congressional stooges.
I read the transcript of his inaugural address... which is about as much as I could stand to do... and I could make a snide parody of John F. Kennedy's "Ask not..."; with Donald Trump it would morph into "Ask what your country can do to you!"
We will have to become good enough as a people to be better than our government. We will need to bypass the government to get any good out of life. We will need to start looking out for each other, especially when the Government becomes little more than enforcer of the will of Big Business. We will need to strike and protest against oppression, exploitation, and corruption that will be endemic in America.
It will be tough. But we have a model to emulate.
The alternative is 'every man for himself', basically the Law of the Jungle. If we endorse that, then we will neveer escape the pernicious influence of Donald Trump, who will become the Founding Father of an Evil Empire as odious at the least as Ronald Reagan the "evil
empire" that extended from Kaliningrad to the Bering Strait.
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.