I see the 2016 election as a contest between one totalitarian ideology (Mussolini-style, amoral fascism) and liberal democracy. Donald Trump has no problems exploiting the gullibility of the Religious Right even if he is a profoundly amoral man. That's how poseurs are: they hide their faults extremely well. Had Ted Cruz won the nomination we would be offered a sort of clerico-fascism, basically a Christian version of Iran.
Liberals well know what the stakes are: a political system in which economic elites are permanently entrenched in power, in which people not tied to the elites find their opportunities as employees severely limited. Government employees? Of course, budget-cutting measures in the name of improving education and law enforcement would be applied, and a cop or teacher who fails to toe the line on politics might be laid off. The civil-service protection against having to be a political hack to get and hold a job would be gone. Own a small business? The economic choices would favor the giant corporations, so one might be able to own a business only if the giant corporations that have paid into the campaign and bought the lobbyist whores find no meaningful competition.
Racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities have been rejecting Trump, so expect their middle class to feel the brunt of political and corporate decisions.
News media would increasingly look like GOP Pravda -- excuse me, FoX News. Where I live I might start relying upon Canadian radio for objective news. If you are in Florida you might DX for your news in the delightful accents of Caribbean English accents of Jamaica and the Bahamas, and not solely for the attractive accents. (Forget Cuba, for obvious reasons). Smart American kids from about San Francisco to New Orleans would have a very good reason to learn Spanish: Mexican radio, which will have far better pop music and more objective news than American swill.
America could easily become like the Marxist stereotype of early-capitalist pathology. In Marx' time such indicated the failure of capitalists to recognize the need for a consumer society to transform a sullen and resentful proletariat into a reliable and complacent market for the bounty of the modern potential of productivity. A return to the patterns of extreme indulgence for elites and deprivation to non-elites (gold commodes for vulgar capitalists like Donald Trump and cholera for the poor) would indicate a deliberate denial of the bounties of modern capitalism to any but the elites. It would also end up quickly in a pre-revolutionary situation. Like Marxists, liberals are secularists, anti-racists, egalitarians, and internationalists; seeing the plutocratic elites (including industrialists, financiers, big landowners, corporate executives, and sell-out intellectuals as the enemies who could never be challenged at the ballot box, liberals might try some fusion of Jefferson and Marx.
We liberals win now or we get no chance as liberals until a fascistic regime starts a War for Profit that results in the victors deciding that California kids might need exposure to origami and bonsai trees, Bach and Beethoven (who are very popular in Japan), as well as the sort of educational rigor that an orderly, intellect-respecting society needs. Just look at what sort of orderliness and respect for intellect would be necessary in a country with the topography of New Zealand and the population of the eastern half of the USA -- and you can imagine what sort of culture the Japanese would impose on a people infamous for a free-wheeling culture whose anti-intellectualism had fostered fascism. Or that they need the delights of Bach and Goethe or Puccini and Petrarch, depending on who the occupiers are in Georgia or Massachusetts. That suggests practically an inversion of the Second World War, with the United States of America having become the Evil Empire.
America under Donald Trump will be an Evil Empire. I can say this without fear because I have objectively decided what life under fascism will be like and will know what exits are available. I know the miserable and lethal consequences, and anyone who fails to recognize that there are fates worse than death may not know who Elie Wiesel and Alexander Solzhenitsyn were. Let us not learn what Elie Wiesel and Alexander Solzhenitsyn could have taught us by what we experience in America in a system that mocks Jefferson, Lincoln, and Martin Luther King.
OK. We need more educational rigor in the schools so that kids can exercise critical thought and have the vocational aptitudes that give them real choices in life. We need to recognize that formal education is the only situation in which many kids have any real chance of learning values other than striving for the ephemeral, costly delights in primary colors. We need to debunk superstition and make kids able to reject totalitarian propaganda even if it comes wrapped in an American flag (like FoX Propaganda Channel). We need civil courage. It is not enough to be able to at fire machine gun at a deputed enemy on fear that if one retreats one will be shot; we must show the courage to reject evil that adopts patriotic garb. But in the meantime we have the easiest possible course of action to thwart tyranny in America. Go out and vote.
Vote your conscience -- vote for what is best for all Americans. I may have given up on under-educated white people in America this time. I know how you are likely to vote if you are non-white, non-Christian, non-Anglo, or non-straight and as part of the middle class you have some stake in the political and economic order. If you are white, Anglo, Christian, straight, and middle class, then vote your culture and your economic interests. Vote like the well-educated black, Asian, Hispanic, Jewish, Muslim, and gay parts of the American middle class with whom you have the same interests in economics and the same respect for education and achievement.
Prepare to repeat such in 2020. The Right will most likely be back with something slicker and less objectionable in personal life than Donald Trump in 2020. Probably 2024 as well. Protecting democracy with your vote is far easier than storming Omaha Beach or Okinawa... or defending Gettysburg against Pickett's Charge... or facing the noose as did Nathan Hale.
Whatever your age, gender, ethnicity, faith, region, class, or sexual preference, you have only one set of votes to offer your country -- perhaps so that true American patriots do not need to be the likes of Nathan Hale or Sophie Scholl in this Crisis Era.
Liberals well know what the stakes are: a political system in which economic elites are permanently entrenched in power, in which people not tied to the elites find their opportunities as employees severely limited. Government employees? Of course, budget-cutting measures in the name of improving education and law enforcement would be applied, and a cop or teacher who fails to toe the line on politics might be laid off. The civil-service protection against having to be a political hack to get and hold a job would be gone. Own a small business? The economic choices would favor the giant corporations, so one might be able to own a business only if the giant corporations that have paid into the campaign and bought the lobbyist whores find no meaningful competition.
Racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities have been rejecting Trump, so expect their middle class to feel the brunt of political and corporate decisions.
News media would increasingly look like GOP Pravda -- excuse me, FoX News. Where I live I might start relying upon Canadian radio for objective news. If you are in Florida you might DX for your news in the delightful accents of Caribbean English accents of Jamaica and the Bahamas, and not solely for the attractive accents. (Forget Cuba, for obvious reasons). Smart American kids from about San Francisco to New Orleans would have a very good reason to learn Spanish: Mexican radio, which will have far better pop music and more objective news than American swill.
America could easily become like the Marxist stereotype of early-capitalist pathology. In Marx' time such indicated the failure of capitalists to recognize the need for a consumer society to transform a sullen and resentful proletariat into a reliable and complacent market for the bounty of the modern potential of productivity. A return to the patterns of extreme indulgence for elites and deprivation to non-elites (gold commodes for vulgar capitalists like Donald Trump and cholera for the poor) would indicate a deliberate denial of the bounties of modern capitalism to any but the elites. It would also end up quickly in a pre-revolutionary situation. Like Marxists, liberals are secularists, anti-racists, egalitarians, and internationalists; seeing the plutocratic elites (including industrialists, financiers, big landowners, corporate executives, and sell-out intellectuals as the enemies who could never be challenged at the ballot box, liberals might try some fusion of Jefferson and Marx.
We liberals win now or we get no chance as liberals until a fascistic regime starts a War for Profit that results in the victors deciding that California kids might need exposure to origami and bonsai trees, Bach and Beethoven (who are very popular in Japan), as well as the sort of educational rigor that an orderly, intellect-respecting society needs. Just look at what sort of orderliness and respect for intellect would be necessary in a country with the topography of New Zealand and the population of the eastern half of the USA -- and you can imagine what sort of culture the Japanese would impose on a people infamous for a free-wheeling culture whose anti-intellectualism had fostered fascism. Or that they need the delights of Bach and Goethe or Puccini and Petrarch, depending on who the occupiers are in Georgia or Massachusetts. That suggests practically an inversion of the Second World War, with the United States of America having become the Evil Empire.
America under Donald Trump will be an Evil Empire. I can say this without fear because I have objectively decided what life under fascism will be like and will know what exits are available. I know the miserable and lethal consequences, and anyone who fails to recognize that there are fates worse than death may not know who Elie Wiesel and Alexander Solzhenitsyn were. Let us not learn what Elie Wiesel and Alexander Solzhenitsyn could have taught us by what we experience in America in a system that mocks Jefferson, Lincoln, and Martin Luther King.
OK. We need more educational rigor in the schools so that kids can exercise critical thought and have the vocational aptitudes that give them real choices in life. We need to recognize that formal education is the only situation in which many kids have any real chance of learning values other than striving for the ephemeral, costly delights in primary colors. We need to debunk superstition and make kids able to reject totalitarian propaganda even if it comes wrapped in an American flag (like FoX Propaganda Channel). We need civil courage. It is not enough to be able to at fire machine gun at a deputed enemy on fear that if one retreats one will be shot; we must show the courage to reject evil that adopts patriotic garb. But in the meantime we have the easiest possible course of action to thwart tyranny in America. Go out and vote.
Vote your conscience -- vote for what is best for all Americans. I may have given up on under-educated white people in America this time. I know how you are likely to vote if you are non-white, non-Christian, non-Anglo, or non-straight and as part of the middle class you have some stake in the political and economic order. If you are white, Anglo, Christian, straight, and middle class, then vote your culture and your economic interests. Vote like the well-educated black, Asian, Hispanic, Jewish, Muslim, and gay parts of the American middle class with whom you have the same interests in economics and the same respect for education and achievement.
Prepare to repeat such in 2020. The Right will most likely be back with something slicker and less objectionable in personal life than Donald Trump in 2020. Probably 2024 as well. Protecting democracy with your vote is far easier than storming Omaha Beach or Okinawa... or defending Gettysburg against Pickett's Charge... or facing the noose as did Nathan Hale.
Whatever your age, gender, ethnicity, faith, region, class, or sexual preference, you have only one set of votes to offer your country -- perhaps so that true American patriots do not need to be the likes of Nathan Hale or Sophie Scholl in this Crisis Era.
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.