09-07-2018, 07:17 AM
(09-07-2018, 12:54 AM)TheNomad Wrote: The lobbyists really rule America
That is like saying guns kill people. Lobbying is only a conduit activity to exert power. Your inability to see or acknowledge things which work in the shadows undermines your scope. The control is not within any system of government, it acts outside of it. Those who control/guide things to their advantage employ the use of Shared Values between Inter-Agency-Governnmental-And-Corporate Entities.
More precisely, they are the real power in the legislative branch of the federal and most state governments because they pull the strings reliably upon the legislators whose election they have bought. Of course the lobbyists need a working majority, which means that if some fanatic shares their agenda but won in a self-financed campaign, then such is fine with them.
The ideal politician for them is an empty suit who makes no extremist statements but simply votes as told. Basically such is the lobbyists; employee who gets his paycheck from the government instead of from a lobbying firm.
Quote:If a circle of people are "guiding" the president on what he sees and does in the name of "patriotism" that is - by definition - a cabal. Working in secret. To achieve some goal based on those shared values.
Evidence now suggests that the President is in a very bad mental condition... think of Ronald Reagan around the time that his second term ended, but with faults that make one troublesome even without mental decay -- pugnacity, an extremist ideology, failure to understand the functions of the Presidency including checks and balances between the branches of government, and a lack of conscience or empathy. In 2016 a near-plurality of Americans distributed as was necessary for allowing him to win the electoral college with a minority of the total popular vote and less than the leader thought him refreshing or desirable.
But things are different. Reagan had handlers toward the end who made sure that he was lucid and presentable and on message, and not wandering off into senility. If you saw Reagan in 1987, you basically got to see what you elected in 1980. Handlers included medical staff. The public got to see what they thought they voted for because they saw him only at his best. Trump has none of the endearing qualities of Reagan. He would still be trouble if he were coldly rational,
Quote:The NYT anon article describes a group of "like-minded individuals" who have great concern for America and are subverting the president's ability to govern because they believe they are acting as patriots. <---------------------- THAT if you apply it to, say, the Obama admin, I think everyone in this forum would be in washington with a pitchfork. But not so much because we agree with the "cabal" so we are down with it.
Considering that Obama was a chilly rationalist, fully understood the basics of the government including the Constitution and the checks and balances, left no question of sanity, has empathy and a moral compass, is humble enough to heed specialized advice outside his expertise, and has some flexibility of mind, he did not create problems. Thus if there is a natural disaster and solutions involve engineering, he would defer to the engineers on details because he is not a trained engineer. If you accept the generational theory, you will recognize that Obama is more characteristic of the sort of leader who follows the Crisis (Eisenhower) or emerges at its end (Truman) as a mature Reactive/Nomad who knows well enough to leave the hornets' nest alone. Even so he does not have a grand vision, which probably fits the reality of American unreadiness for one.
Quote:The precedent of "like-minded individuals acting in concert to subvert the presidency" REALLY IS Treason on paper. It is. I dare anyone to say otherwise. Unless we are having some revolution I am unaware of? Even then, the winner of a revolution decides who was the bad guy and not until it is over.
Subvert the Presidency -- or to keep it from going onto a dangerous and destructive path?
At this point the mental pathologies of this President and the moral pathologies are separate realities. Reagan may have slipped out his contempt for 'losers' in an unguarded moment. Trump seems to have no guarded moments. Let's not forget that unlike Ronald Reagan, unambiguously a reactionary, was in no way revolutionary. He consistently stood, at least nominally, for traditional values against what he saw as dangerous new trends. Trump is bringing forth an ideology new to America, one in which 'winners' like him are to run roughshod over 'losers' who are not as magnificent as he is. At the best he is Mad King Ludwig II of Bavaria from whose worst tendencies can be protected, At worst he is Wilhelm II, deutscher Kaiser. All that is missing is a regal heritage.
What I see is someone wholly unfit to manage anything. Reality is whatever he feels like at the moment, the voice in his head that he is now incompetent to judge. I have seen dementia in action, and although it is different I recognize the difference in personalities between people with dementia as well as different manifestations of the diseases. Someone passive and good-natured with dementia is less troublesome than someone who either always had a nasty personality or someone who had enough inhibitions against doing nasty things that he chose the right path when he had a choice.
I cannot know fully as I am not an insider and I am not a trained psychologist or psychiatrist. But I have seen dementia first hand, and it is not pretty. It will reshape one as a care-giver trying to keep a parent out of the nursing home as long as is possible because such is the desire of both care-giver and care-taker.
Donald Trump is the problem. The Presidency is not the problem except that Trump is President.
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.