GRIZZLY STEPPE: hacking of the American elections of 2016

[pbrower2a]

(08-02-2018, 03:13 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-02-2018, 02:48 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-02-2018, 10:20 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-02-2018, 12:16 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: The chances are likely that you are looking at a Red wave in 2020. We might give the Democrats a couple of years to prove beyond all doubt how worthless/pathetic the Democratic party is today as far as AMERICAN INTERESTS are concerned? I can afford a couple of worthless years watching Democrats doing nothing but being a pain in the ass as issues build and anger and resentment of blues rises. Think about it, you're associated with a party who is damn near split between European socialism and American capitalism, the serving the needs of US citizens and the needs of foreign born citizens ( refugees, illegal and/or illegal immigrants, foreign visitors and foreign entities) and so forth. How many more years til 4T?

I doubt there will be a RED wave in 2018 or 2020 either.  That's not to say that a BLUE wave will subsume the GOP either.  We're all in for an extended muddle, unless the GOP manages to keep control at some minimalist level.  If that happens, and maybe even if it doesn't since we've already set the table with the first two Trump years, a major recession will clobber the poor and middle class.  The top 10% will still do fine … as they always do.  What happens then will be 4T finale.  for now, it's too hard to analyze.

I tend to agree with David.  Trump has managed to flip the see saw.  [understatement] He is viewed very poorly by the blues and center.  [/understatement]. The blues will get another inning in 2018 and 2020.  The question is whether the blues will then govern the whole country, believe their victory is a mandate rather than a rejection of extremism.  If they don't see the center and build on the center, the see saw goes on...

Thomas B. Edsall has a really good analysis of this in the NY Times.  I don't agree entirely, because I believe that economic issues have a much broader appeal than all the culture nonsense (that's unresolvable in case). Read some of the comments, which are more to the point I think.

We have issues that must be addressed that are being made all the worse by Trump & Company -- the climate even more than the economy.  That needs to be halted, but the almost certain addition of another right-winger on the SCOTUS may make that all but impossible.  If 2020 isn't a blow-out, and packing the court isn't feasible, then the near and mid-term future may be toast.  Sadly, that's how I see it.  The culture warriors just can't stand down for anything.

I wrote this for my local paper back in February, and it still holds water.

To Classic X'er -- a trend does not prove a lasting direction. I fully recognize your belief that economic realities are more important to many people than anything else -- so long as such things as civil liberties, human rights, and equal opportunity are protected. As a general rule, tyranny is incompatible with economic equity and progress. I also recognize that you see the world cut neatly into well-defined classes of 'winners' and 'losers' and that we are wisest to let the 'winners' rule because they are better able to take care of themselves and create wealth. Now here are the problems with such an assumption: that the 'winners' may themselves be rogues on matters other than economics. Someone who gets rich off pornography that exploits vulnerable participants has very different motivations than does a medical missionary. Do you more admire Hugh Hefner than Albert Schweitzer? Add to this -- a rogue in his personal life can be very successful in his commercial milieu (let us say Harvey Weinstein) until he is exposed doing horrible things to people for his own gratification with the use of his power.

I am not convinced that the super-rich (many of whom have made few great sacrifices to get rich -- they simply came out of the womb of the consort of some successful businessman or entrepreneur and either found their way into easy money fine-tuning Daddy's business or inheriting a share of Grandpa's huge wealth) are any more competent at business than are small-scale entrepreneurs who start up a small business because they would rather run a restaurant than milk cows or slaughter livestock. (OK, maybe they are butchers operating the business, but they present the meat, set the prices, greet customers, and handle the money... and either own or rent the building -- which makes them businessmen). The talent for operating a business -- and it is well worth seeking, honing, and fostering -- is not so rare as it seems. If Wal*Mart were to collapse, then there would be plenty of people to do much of what Wal*Mart does, but perhaps better. The business owners (unlike Wal*Mart clerks) would be better at guiding customers to get what best fits their needs instead of selling something without such aid because it is cheap enough that if something goes wrong it is not much of a loss. I look at how Wal*Mart does business and its model depends upon cheap production overseas under sweatshop management of sophisticated manufacturing, cheap transportation (container ships), management that depends upon low-skilled workers to do little more than stock the shelves and check the merchandise (the trickiest thing for such people is to card people for alcoholic beverages, cancerweed products, and R-rated movies). Do you know who gives you help in deciding to buy merchandise there? Fellow customers who know more about the stuff than the clerks in the store. But for small electrical items or clothing, Wal*Mart is a fast track from collecting the raw materials through production, warehousing, merchandising, and sale  -- to the landfill.

The market does some things well, but there is no inherent decency or humanity in profit-and-loss judgments. The temptation for a plutocrat or executive is just the same as for a feudal lord, a slave-owning planter, a gangster, or a highwayman -- gain, and getting away with it. To keep an economy compatible with democratic norms and the ethical teachings of any great prophet or moral philosopher (whether Gautama Buddha or Bertrand Russell) we need some social constraints upon the market so that the system can offer opportunity, foster personal growth, protect vulnerable people, keep the environment from getting ruined, and keep the system honest. I call for a 'social market' system, and not the Gilded-style paradise for elites but Hell for workers that is China or is what Donald Trump dreams of.

Predicting the continuing direction of a trend is itself risky. Just think of the graph of a function in which one has tiny denominators. Counter-intuitive as it may seem, small numbers can be big trouble for mathematicians, scientists, and engineers; ask an astrophysicist what happens when volume gets shrunk to a very tiny amount on a massive object. A Sun-sized object shrunk to the diameter of the Twin Cities would become a black hole. Yes, small numbers can be gigantic problems. Time is running out for the Republicans to undo the harm that Donald Trump has done to many of the assumptions that most Americans have of what is normal and decent in the American political tradition. Republican politicians face the necessity of dodging the consequences of Trump rhetoric and policies. In this case, time is running out. What you think of Donald Trump is not what a majority of Americans believe. Sure, his supporters will do anything for him -- but that is how things go with undemocratic mass movements. There are people who would commit crimes in his name. Contrast Barack Obama or Gerald Ford -- nobody would do anything horrible in their names. Is that poor leadership? No -- it is simply human decency that recognizes the need for human dignity as an objective of a good world.

Time is becoming the small denominator. Eventually it will be zero, at which point the future becomes the irrevocable past.

To Bob Butler and David Horn -- there are abnormal times in American history, and not only because we are in a Crisis Era. We know that the Founding Fathers of America were mostly good people, or at least that they were able to bring out the best and suppress the worst (except slavery)... and they operated rationally in coming to what proved collective decisions. There was nothing fanatical or sadistic about them. If Sam Adams was a radical, he at least didn't call for massacres of Tories; George Washington treated the participants of the Whiskey Rebellion with unforeseen kindness. Abraham Lincoln used rhetoric mathematical in its precision and proved the Confederate hypothesis a grave mistake.  Franklin Roosevelt offered Americans exactly what they wanted in dealing with the gangster enemies of the USA in World War II -- get it over, and go back to normal... and arrange to bring the German, Italian, and Japanese peoples back to the community of respectable nations. Respectable people do not impose the Bataan Death March, loot and enslave conquered peoples, or send people to the  gas chambers or shooting pits due to their religion or race.

Pick any high-profile figure of the American Revolution -- Franklin? Hancock? Jefferson? -- and however the difference of style might be, and you will find people who have a clear idea of what is best and the conditions necessary for achieving it. Lincoln? The epitome of reason. FDR? He couldn't do everything, but he could certainly find the best people for the job. Obama seemed to be part of that tradition, and he at the least calmed the Crisis. Trump does not compare to them except as antithesis. For him, government service is a means of getting rich or of foisting an ideology upon people who may loathe that ideology. Such tends to create a Crisis. Donald Trump is the George III of this Crisis Era.

'Flipping the see-saw'? Donald Trump has ignored the lessons of history. To him, it is all about himself (which is normal for an extreme narcissist or a sociopath).  He effectively mocks and discredits free-market solutions, replacing markets with institutional power. He is a Big-Government right-winger, and there is the problem. I am satisfied that the older Christian Protestant fundamentalists who have been the mass support of right-wing ideology since Reagan out of identity will give way to younger Christian Protestant fundamentalists who actually read their Bibles and slow down to read the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is not to be confused with an economic prophesy that came from Ayn Rand. Identity often must give way to core belief -- and it is just as well.

Democrats taking over one House of Congress make a fool of this President and weaken him greatly. Democrats taking over both Houses of Government create gridlock much like that that preceded the American Civil War. Trump's bungled tariffs are likely to get us some economic retribution that will itself precipitate demands for huge change. If the pattern of other Crisis Eras in American history holds, the leader or leadership of the time will be logical and highly focused. Maybe there are more potential leaders analogous to Lincoln or FDR than we think possible. Donald Trump is the antithesis of such a leader.