(05-18-2016, 05:08 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:(05-17-2016, 08:42 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: If it changes the nature of one of the major Parties by knocking out its "Establishment" figures permanently, then it reshapes American political life for a couple of decades. It could be that Donald Trump reflects the bankruptcy of the "Establishment" Republicans who offered the lure of social reaction in return for severe inequality.
Except for one problem you have with "reflection" argument. Donald Trump is not an Establishment Republican, and furthermore those Establishment types hate him. They are only just now genuflecting in the hopes that they can maintain power in the GOP and stave off the realignment of the party for a few more years. They will fail in this because Nationalism, Protectionism, and Isolationism resonate with the Base, a base he's expanding.
Quote:We need remember that Donald Trump as President is a huge change in direction for America, one that will shake much of our common knowledge about American politics, perhaps permanently. That is one way a 4T works. A huge part of the political life of America can be rendered irrelevant for a very long time -- or can be limited to a few 'safe' zones with the new paradigm established everywhere else, like some machine-boss cities and the Deep South for most of the sixty years between Reconstruction and the rise of FDR. No prior President can serve as a model for Trump. It is also possible that he would be an absolute disaster as President. Stories in the media already have Donald Trump connected to a mobster who operated a pump-and-dump stock fraud.
I've read that "story" it was low on evidence and high on speculation. Considering that he's involved in construction in NYC and NJ I'd be more surprised if he didn't know "made men". That being said, I do agree his presidency will be radically different than anything else that came before. So much so that it will result in a Fourth Republic
Quote:Good people steer clear of criminals. Criminals to them are like devils -- entities that can do only harm.
Depends on what one means by criminal. An ax murderer may indeed be a devil, your random pot smoking teenager is not. With so many different laws in place just about everyone is a criminal of some sort these days.
Quote:On the other side, should Hillary Clinton be a one-term President and "Establishment" Republicans return to power in 2020, then nothing has truly changed since 2008, ad we are back in the 3T until the economy collapses or we have a military or diplomatic debacle. Imagine an Establishment Republican being in place when a 4T is resolved, and America has a new covenant in which Big Business has rights but few responsibilities and workers have responsibilities but few rights in the name of progress. Profit is the sole measure of progress, is it not, in such an order?
Establishment Republicans won't be coming back. Primaries do matter you know.
Quote:This 4T is far from resolved. Whoever is in charge at the end of the Crisis is likely to be seen as extremely pivotal in American history -- like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or Franklin Roosevelt. Know well -- if we really mess up the pivotal figure could be some senior military officer, not an American, dictating terms in the White House.
Sound like an argument to not elect someone who is a known warmonger to me.
1. On "Establishment" Republicans:
They created the opening for a Frankenstein monster in Donald Trump. They made promises that in return for some hard sacrifices by white working people that those white working people would get a "Christian and Corporate" America, one of economic hardships but the imposition of fundamentalist Protestant values upon secular and liberal types. They got the "Corporate" part of eviscerated unions (unions are the only institutions that working-class adults can find as allies in labor-management relations and tax cuts for the super-rich that eventually must be paid for by higher taxes on everyone else.
They have created the potential for a populist backlash. The states most amenable to populist appeals have typically been in the South -- at the right times. The 1890s (William Jennings Bryan), the 1930s (New Deal), and 1970s (the new-post-segregation South).
2. on the Russian mobster:
A pump-and-dump scheme is one of the most destructive of white-collar crimes because it turns capital into $#!+. That is how large-scale embezzlement, the other classic white-collar crime, works. Do you really think that scammers and schemers invest in job-creating activities? hardly. They fritter away their ill-gotten loot on luxurious waste. The normal businessman has good cause to invest in a non-failing business to keep it growing and modernizing, adapting to changing reality. The scammer or schemer tries to live large. After all, it is only a matter of time before the FBI, IRS, SEC, Postal Inspection Service, or some other federal agency catches up to him. Then comes an end to the monogrammed shirts, the high-stakes gambling, the stays at expensive resorts, the single-malt scotch, and whores.
Note that Donald Trump has been making loud appeals to anti-immigrant sentiments, especially toward Latino immigrants. Someone who takes a job in a sweat-shop meat-processing plant or does gardening work cheaply doesn't quite seem the threat that some foreign mobster does. Practically nobody on the liberal side of the spectrum defends criminal aliens.
Any involvement of any politician with gangsters of any kind is itself discreditable.
3. There are two ways to get war. One is to be the aggressor; one is to be an appeaser. Aggressors ultimately discredit an appeaser, and after Chamberlain one might end up with Churchill. Churchill? For him the war was already in place, and there was no way out except for victory.
Few politicians can promise peace and get away with the promise. Someone might do something stupid and bring war. Anyone who promises that he can get a deal with North Korea is a fool. If there is any such deal, then it is with China and Russia, countries at risk from overflights of North Korean missiles that could reach the United States except for Hawaii. I am not going to speculate on what the Obama Administration has done in secret diplomacy.
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.