10-12-2019, 08:13 PM
(10-12-2019, 05:40 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(10-12-2019, 10:34 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: In recent years, the United States has endured a strong trend toward pure plutocracy in which most people are obliged to suffer for a tiny elite of rich and powerful people seemingly unaccountable to anyone. Seemingly. There was Jeffrey Epstein, and there is Donald Trump. We are in a Crisis Era, and this one seems so far to elevate the narcissist as much as the last one tore the narcissistic tendency down. If the Depression did not shake people of narcissism, then the Second World War did. We need to go to some basics -- do good for people, and you will do well... but do bad things to people and be ruined.
I agree. Now, how much of that plutocracy is liberal as you say and more enthused with funding their own pet projects abroad and more enthused with funding their political choice and more enthused with feeding their own precious ego's and more enthused drinking expensive wine and eating expensive food and seeking to again more attention to/for themselves or flying around the world at the taxpayers expense promoting their ideology and themselves to the children of those who are similar to them or promoting family members or close friends while being treated and served like kings and queens of old. PB, do you think I would cry, get upset or feel bad if an event similar to the French revolution took place in San Fransisco or California and Nancy Pelosi was placed on public trial and voted guilty and beheaded. Nope, I wouldn't be upset because that is what they do, what they teach by doing it and seem to be OK with it.
Plutocracy is illiberal and reactionary. It is democracy only for the asset owners -- which was so of feudal orders. The masses got no say in government.
If you are talking about Congressional Representatives and US Senators taking taxpayer-paid visits to examine military, economic, and diplomatic realities... that seems necessary for the smooth functioning of the government. Jet travel in real terms is much less costly than sea travel in the old days. The tickets for a transcontinental flight are about the same in real costs as a as steamer travel, except that one does not have to spend as much money on food on the flight of much lesser time.
The people most likely to be subjected to the guillotine or whatever its modern equivalent will be upper leaders deemed as criminals against humanity for ordering troops to fire upon peaceful protesters, followed by blatant exploiters who waxed fat off human suffering to support their sybaritic lifestyles or acted callously before the Revolution.
But before you speak of the French Revolution, know well that it occurred during a food shortage that followed a volcanic eruption in Iceland that exuded sulfur oxides that have an anti-greenhouse effect and fluorine compounds that harmed crop growth.
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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.