Trump Threatens to Challenge Broadcast Licenses Over 'Fake News'

[pbrower2a]

(01-20-2018, 06:18 PM)nebraska Wrote: If tyranny is so wonderful, why do people try to escape North Korea?

Think of escaping a thoroughly-nasty, well-entrenched authoritarian or totalitarian order as if winning a jackpot.

Consider this fact: most people who win the big lottery jackpots have never had much. They suddenly get a huge windfall and have no idea of what to do with it. Someone middle class who recognizes lotteries as rip-offs know the following:

1. A 'dream house' is a waste.
2. It is wiser to let ne'er-do-well relatives to struggle than to throw money at them for which they have no accounting or buy luxuries for them. If you buy luxuries for them they will be back for more, and if you throw money at them they will soon have spend it all.
3. You do not buy status by buying expensive stuff.
4. In fact, the social status that you had as a kid is probably what you are stuck with.
5. Everybody has some idea of a business venture that looks very promising yet will fail because one is unsuited to owning and operating the business.

Getting freedom after enduring tyranny all one's life is something like winning a big lottery payout after being rich for a long time. In 1989 there were many people who, in their fifties, had some idea of what freedom was in such countries as Poland and Czechoslovakia and could deal with it -- and tell kids what it meant. At the same time, the tyrannical order known as the Soviet Union tried to democratize itself to save itself, but few people in the Soviet Union (except perhaps for some people in the Baltic countries)  had some idea of how to deal with democracy. One would have had to have been 70+ to have any knowledge of any order other than the Soviet Union, and what preceded that was an absolute monarchy.

Well, guess how old Commie rule is in North Korea -- it is over seventy years old.

Note also that people who have been imprisoned or institutionalized for a considerable time have a difficult struggle with life on the outside. For a good fictional account of how it is, think of the elderly prisoner Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore) in The Shawshank Redemption (story by Stephen King and an excellent movie) in which he writes a letter after getting a taste of a freedom with which he can't cope:


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Quote:[url=http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0926235/?ref_=tt_ch]Brooks : [in letter]  Dear fellas, I can't believe how fast things move on the outside. I saw an automobile once when I was a kid, but now they're everywhere. The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry. The parole board got me into this halfway house called "The Brewer" and a job bagging groceries at the Foodway. It's hard work and I try to keep up, but my hands hurt most of the time. I don't think the store manager likes me very much. Sometimes after work, I go to the park and feed the birds. I keep thinking Jake might just show up and say hello, but he never does. I hope wherever he is, he's doin' okay and makin' new friends. I have trouble sleepin' at night. I have bad dreams like I'm falling. I wake up scared. Sometimes it takes me a while to remember where I am. Maybe I should get me a gun and rob the Foodway so they'd send me home. I could shoot the manager while I was at it, sort of like a bonus. I guess I'm too old for that sort of nonsense any more. I don't like it here. I'm tired of being afraid all the time. I've decided not to stay. I doubt they'll kick up any fuss. Not for an old crook like me. P.S: Tell Heywood I'm sorry I put a knife to his throat. No hard feelings. Brooks.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111161/char...c_fc_cl_t8

Real freedom means having the perception that one's opinion  is relevant because others believe much the same thing, and if that opinion is contrary to the political norms that one now has, then the next election might change what sort of leaders you have. In a democracy one is not alone politically. In a tyranny one is alone politically because the government makes people unable to share their grievances.  Of course, imprisonment is more control of the body than of the mind, and tyranny allows one special privileges for selling out one's conscience and ability to think outside the box, which  are different things.

The only freedom that Donald Trump believes in is the free enterprise in the sense of enterprise being free to do nasty things to people while indulging the elites who control the economy. History shows how that worked in its most extreme manifestation:



Nobody is going to bring back slavery except for an overt fascist devoid of any moral principles... but many in our economic elite, including Donald Trump,  are borderline sociopaths.