08-22-2018, 06:19 AM
(08-22-2018, 04:40 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I do see everybody ready to rule as if they have a mandate when they do not have one. Trump got a minority of the votes. Obama did not do much better. Yet both went right to the extreme parts of their parties agenda and tried to rule from it. The result is to flip the see saw. They take the Supreme Court, give away Congress, and the other party often gets the White House sooner or later.
Most Presidents believe that they create their own mandates even if they barely got elected. So it was even with the two recent Presidents to be elected with less than a plurality of the vote. John F. Kennedy was extremely successful with that. Reagan certainly was. Obama was successful at that until his opposition had a well-organized, well-funded, shrill program to first gut his political power and eventually 'give' us a President who concurs with the principle that no human suffering, degradation of the public sector, corruption, or environmental destruction can be in excess so long as it creates, indulges, or enforces a profit.
Quote:Both parties try to rule their part of the country and hope that gets them support, but instead they get eaten up. Neither party has tried ruling the whole country.
We have a clear liberal party and a clear corporatist-reactionary party. There is no compromise between them. it's "my way or the highway" in practice or reality. Obama may have thought that he could govern on the merits of his proposed legislation. His opposition believed that he who has the money makes the rules, which is exactly what Donald Trump and the GOP believe.
Make America Great Again? Sure -- only for about 5% of the people -- 2% in the exploiter classes, and 3% who would succeed under any political system.
Jim Crow? Child labor in manufacturing and mining? 70-hour workweeks and 40-year life expectancies for industrial workers? Unbridled pollution? No thanks.
Quote:Now, this thread is about who is going to fact (defeat) Trump in 2020, but if you believe CNN and the coastal blue media, Trump will be long gone by then. The Democrats are going to be facing maybe Pence and the more Establishment figures of Congress. Now, the Republican Establishment did not do so well against Trump. The middle of the country proved it was able to elect a President that talked a Tea Party anti establishment line. If Trump is gone, which is a real possibility, it might be Sarah Palin or some other Trump like politician who will tell the base what they want to hear. The question is weather someone competent is willing to sell their soul and say the right things, and whether Trump's base will actually believe him.
Pence can hardly evade complicity in Trump offenses in getting elected and as President. Add to this, his social values are the sorts to turn back the calendar on same-sex marriage, abortion, and contraception. He seems to want to restore the glorious time of management-labor relations of the 1920s -- that Big Business has the right to determine whether it wants to deal with unions or not. His ideal is an America focused solely on rewards in the Afterlife if proles, and unbridled indulgence (homosexuality and contraception excluded) for the elites. Trump picked Pence as 'impeachment insurance' and 'assassination insurance'. If you think Trump is bad -- Pence is even more reactionary.
Quote:I see (political media) telling mostly truth, but spinning like crazy. Will they carefully select stories to tell and how much emphasis to give each one? Absolutely. Do they lie outright? Less so. It may be the politicians that lie.
The media have different constituencies. People are in their own echo chambers, and they are not even looking at the Other Side to look for issues that they can adopt without hurting themselves. Voters may be more effective than the politicians in forcing change. So if Trump's tariffs hurt farmers and ranchers, it could be that Democrats win some unlikely Congressional seats.
What politicians may be doing is not so much lying as expressing rigid and wrong views of the world. The person who believes in young-Earth creationism may be utterly wrong, but he may believe it so firmly that he gives an honest opinion of his beliefs when asserting that the universe is 6000 or so years old (It's in the Bible, so it must be true!) and that there was a worldwide flood and that Methuselah lived to age 969. If dinosaurs were real, then maybe Jesus rode one. So what about radiometric dating, a fossil record, and genetic data that all prove the relatedness of all living things? Either God created the world and the universe to seem older than it is
as a test of faith, or the Devil forged evidence to trick rationalists and other grave sinners to follow him to eternal damnation. Pie in the sky is far better than an eternity with Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot, is it not?
(My theological position: God is benign, or he is not worthy of worship. I do not admire tyrants, gangsters, and serial killers and would never worship a god who is like those in his morals).
Quote:One can admire the Republicans for rejecting their establishment, but their outsider is as establishment and as crooked as they come. Will any Democrat at heart lean far enough to the center to pick up the red dissatisfied? So far I haven't seen it.
Through their ineptitude and lack of principle they created their own Frankenstein monster who hijacked their Party.
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.