11-09-2016, 07:19 AM
(11-09-2016, 06:04 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:(11-09-2016, 05:01 AM)Galen Wrote:(11-09-2016, 04:09 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:(11-09-2016, 03:18 AM)Galen Wrote: So much for Astrology as good predictor of anything.
I dunno; I wonder who had the better record: astrologers or pundits/polls. I suspect the former. I was wrong on this one, and it's a big one.
If you had bothered to read the Podesta e-mails released by Wikileaks then you would have known that the polls were deliberately over-sampled in demographics that favored Clinton. Come to think of it, you also would have been aware of the collusion between the mainstream media and the Clinton campaign. It was so heavy handed that even the average person figured it out with easily predictable consequences.
What I figured out is that this country has gone crazy and no longer has a grip on reality, because it believes stuff like that. You are one of those who believe in Trump and all this stuff.
I know the newspapers and midnight comedians were all in for Hillary, but that was because they chose to be, not because of collusion. But such is the level of your divorce from reality.
You are not the majority of this country, although the vote was razor thin and you guys have the advantage because of the states rights approach to our democracy. That's the law and it has to be accepted.
(And by the way Hillary Clinton is going to win the popular vote)
Maybe I want to be in California when it secedes. California will be the "Slovenia" of our now-rotten, Yugoslav-style federation.
Quote:We don't know whether brower's predictions will come true, and we have elected a dictator. We don't know how much of a loose cannon he will be. These are more defects of his character, rather than defects in ideology, as is the case with you. Trump is actually flexible in what he believes, and some of his policies may be beneficial. But most of them, if he carries them out (or is able to), will be very harmful-- to you and all of us.
I hope that they don't come true. But I know enough about world history that demagogues become tyrants when they start faulting people for the failure of the People to achieve the demagogue's contradictory promises. Sociopathy is incompatible with the moral decencies that underpin democracy. Kleptocrats typically have people to rub out when they start exposing the graft and corruption.
Donald Trump looks like the trifecta of the causes of the death of democracy.
Donald Trump has two gods -- himself and Mammon.
Quote:First of all, the nonsense about his concern about "corruption" is a lie. But you (Galen) can't believe anything our president-elect says. We can be sure that big money in politics is here for the foreseeable future. We can expect that pollution will increase dramatically. We can expect much more gun violence and riots. Our national debt will rise dramatically, unless the Republicans actually care about what they say they care about, in which case Trump won't be able to do what he promises.
I expect to hate everything substantive that Donald Trump does. He can do damage that long outlasts him, corrupting institutions and entrenching corruption within them so that the corruption is beyond scrutiny or reform.
Quote:The media really had little to do with the public's ignorance. Americans have deliberately chosen to be ignorant. Since the Trump half chose not to pursue an education, that is no wonder. You (Galen) don't have to read or watch the media to understand all the lies emanating from your side-- the side you voted for. No collusion is needed; the truth is obvious to anyone with a working brain. So it doesn't fucking matter if the media colluded with Clinton or not. Smart people can see if the sky is blue or not. They don't need to be told.
Media now give their customers exactly what they prove that they want by their use of a remote control to select a channel. If they want celebrity swill, then that is exactly what they get. If they want Ultimate Fighting, then that is exactly what they get. If they want reruns of Three's Company, then that is what they get. If they want scientific documentaries or travelogues, then that is what they get.
If they want to believe the universe that FoX News offers, then they will turn there.
I expect to hate practically everything that the President and Congress does over the next four years because I expect to hate about everything that the formal government does. I am not proud to be an American, especially a white American, whose demographic has sole culpability in the election of a thoroughly evil man as President. I feel sorry for the minorities who will surely experience the brunt of the cruelty of Donald Trump and the Republican Party. But white people who voted for him? They did it to themselves.
When this nightmare is over we will need to reform the educational system by expanding the K-12 system to K-14, the '13' and '14' including by necessity economics, philosophy (including formal logic), and psychology (so that we can less easily be snowed by clever liars). After the disaster that is Donald Trump, a Congress mostly of stooges, and their successors we will be compelled to change our ways.
The white working class will get the shaft, and nothing else except some praise of mass ignorance, from the Trump Administration.
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.