09-14-2016, 12:50 PM
Even if Donald Trump isn't a bigot, he can't see anything wrong with his voters being bigots.
It is time for Republicans to recognize that Barack Obama is a well-meaning American... sure, he could be wrong, but he has not sold out. They need to recognize that Islam is not the enemy, but that psychopathic leadership in Daesh and the Syrian government are. We might as well condemn the Korean people (including South Koreans) for the North Korean government as blame ISIS upon Islam.
Donald Trump will be a horrible leader because he lacks the guts to tell people the inconvenient, unpleasant truth. Does anyone think that Abraham Lincoln told Americans that the Civil War would be easy? Does anyone think that Sir Winston Churchill won the Battle of Britain by sugar-coating the reality of the Nazi menace? Lincoln and Churchill were honest. The war is not over until the shooting stops. I contrast Benito Mussolini who claimed that his personality would itself insure victory and of course Adolf Hitler who said that the 'racial' superiority of the German people would bring victory.
We are in a Crisis Era. Even if we evade a major war we will have a need for huge changes in the way that we do things as a nation. We will need major reforms of our political order just to sew shut the seams in our Constitutional system of government, seams that ruthless people have seen fit to exploit.
We can end up with our democracy gutted, with the effective government by lobbyists that we now have made even more rigorous and intractable. I question whether our democratic tradition will survive Donald Trump. Sure, there will be elections and a two-Party system... but one side will have every advantage where it counts.
Do we get our new Birth of Freedom, as Lincoln promised in his Gettysburg Address, or do we get an economic order in which the secret to success is to be born into or marry into the right family, and a political system that represnets wealth and economic power instead of the People?
It's our choice this year. That is one possible explanation of the word "Crisis".
It is time for Republicans to recognize that Barack Obama is a well-meaning American... sure, he could be wrong, but he has not sold out. They need to recognize that Islam is not the enemy, but that psychopathic leadership in Daesh and the Syrian government are. We might as well condemn the Korean people (including South Koreans) for the North Korean government as blame ISIS upon Islam.
Donald Trump will be a horrible leader because he lacks the guts to tell people the inconvenient, unpleasant truth. Does anyone think that Abraham Lincoln told Americans that the Civil War would be easy? Does anyone think that Sir Winston Churchill won the Battle of Britain by sugar-coating the reality of the Nazi menace? Lincoln and Churchill were honest. The war is not over until the shooting stops. I contrast Benito Mussolini who claimed that his personality would itself insure victory and of course Adolf Hitler who said that the 'racial' superiority of the German people would bring victory.
We are in a Crisis Era. Even if we evade a major war we will have a need for huge changes in the way that we do things as a nation. We will need major reforms of our political order just to sew shut the seams in our Constitutional system of government, seams that ruthless people have seen fit to exploit.
We can end up with our democracy gutted, with the effective government by lobbyists that we now have made even more rigorous and intractable. I question whether our democratic tradition will survive Donald Trump. Sure, there will be elections and a two-Party system... but one side will have every advantage where it counts.
Do we get our new Birth of Freedom, as Lincoln promised in his Gettysburg Address, or do we get an economic order in which the secret to success is to be born into or marry into the right family, and a political system that represnets wealth and economic power instead of the People?
It's our choice this year. That is one possible explanation of the word "Crisis".
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.