(06-20-2017, 02:41 AM)Galen Wrote:(06-19-2017, 11:56 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Can you at the least accept that even the perception of tampering in the election tears at the social fabric? If we can't trust our elections, what can we believe? Besides, if the Russians can hack our election, then so can someone else. Next time it could be the Chinese who might support someone likely to go along with Chinese foreign policy or economic interests... yes, no constraints on imports from China, acquiescence in Chinese political hegemony in transforming countries like Thailand and the Philippines into client states, aid in suppressing dissent against the PRC within America.
I would prefer to see some real evidence that Russia did in fact do anything at all. The reports we get from the government are just allegations with no supporting evidence. Then there is the small matter of Clinton insiders who say that Podesta and Mook cooked up the blame Russia notion. Which given the timing of when the Russia excuse started seems likely. This also fits in with Hillary's need to blame anyone but herself about who lost the election and gives the Dims a useful lever for obstructing Trump.
The evidence so far is circumstantial -- like meetings and the money trail. What do you expect people to do? Travel to a courthouse, confess, and ask to be arrested? There was some incredibly-strange electoral behavior.
As is well understood, circumstantial evidence has been good in the past -- for a seat in the electric chair, at least for murder.
Quote:When I see so many people trying to create a panic response in the population which is what, the Dims in particular, have been doing then I get suspicious because it almost always means that I am being pushed in direction that serves someone else and not me. Trust was being lost in our elections along with the government long before this nonsense.
I certainly have no trust in a government consisting of economic elitists and their henchmen, run by the economic elitists to the detriment of everyone else, and for the corrupt gain and indulgence of those economic elitists. We live in a dictionary definition of a plutocracy today, one in which life means nothing unless one is well-connected to those economic elitists and when the secret of success is being born into the Right Family, or that such will be so very soon.
So what if we have some wonderful gadgets to entertain us and plenty of choices of mind-numbing, soul-rotting drivel to allow us to feel good while we are ruined? If we exist solely to suffer for people like Donald Trump who make incredible amounts of money off what are basically economic rents that people pay for the dubious privilege of living in their universe, then maybe our universe does not need them.
As I say, we have a legislature run by corporate lobbyists, a method of tyranny that divvies up resources to much the same purposes as the Stato Corporativo of Benito Mussolini. We have a fascist economy with a few relics of free enterprise and a welfare state., and people like Donald Trump, Pat Toomey, and Scott Walker seem intent on destroying those relics. That's before I discuss the rot that is Dixie, where the heritage of the plantation seems to be returning as a cultural justification for economic exploitation as close to slavery as is possible.
Oh, sure, we don't have book-burning yet; pariahs aren't already being compelled to wear badges that incite people to humiliate them; we don't have our kids being goaded to join politicized youth groups yet; we are not expected so far to raise our right arms in simulated erections while shouting "Leader! Leader! Leader!" yet. This is more like Italy in 1923 than like Italy in 1938, except that we Americans don't listen to as much opera.
Fascism has to fit the culture, or in the case of America multiple cultures. Christian Protestant fundamentalism? The plantation? Manifest destiny? Maybe we glorify our role in World War II for all the wrong reasons, which will be far easier because the GIs who could tell us first hand what they were fighting for are no longer abundant. The GIs weren't fighting for the sort of plutocracy that we now have.
Think of this: America now has nearly zero net immigration from Europe. Your ideology, if true, would cause one to believe that the social-democratic nightmare of high taxes and generous services would create millions of refugees from Western Europe. But that just is not happening. Would you rather get education through graduate school (if your grades be good enough) and pay high taxes for the opportunity or would you rather be in hock to a payday lender? Would you rather have something like Medicare at birth or would you rather vegetate in front of an idiot screen watching cheap cable TV?
Donald Trump and his coterie are taking away what used to be special about America -- what made it desirable. What are we getting in return: promises of 'pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die' in the knowledge that the elites have repasts that include lobster, caviar, and expensive wine? The people pushing the promise of 'pie in the sky when you die' seem not accepting miserable lives in This World for glory in the Next.
You may call yourself a libertarian, but I know your type all too well. You believe in 'freedom for me but hardship for thee', and when the question comes up again when the economy becomes more productive you have the same answer.
Quote:Looking at the economic and political situation from Russia's point of view then I would conclude that the US empire is going down and Russia need not do anything to hasten this process. Also looking at this from a Russian point of view I would be preparing for a dying empire to go insane and attack at some point when the various proxy wars the US has instigated fail to achieve the desired result. I just hope the US is not repeating 1914 because it is likely the world will not survive.
America has too many resources to be a dying empire. The elites know enough to hand out a few goodies when times get a little rough, and to keep the facade of democracy intact even if democracy is gutted. The Roman Empire, a rotten entity from its inception, took more than half a millennium to die. Maybe Trump is an aberration instead of a portent. But I no longer trust the economic and political elites of the Union of Christian and Corporate States. Only a fool does now when those elites are as depraved as they are now.
America was a better place when people earned enough money so that they could save for a car repair or for consumer goodies -- and not when they had to turn to payday lenders.
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.