11-13-2016, 09:33 AM
Can he be the Grey Champion? Not as a divisive reactinary.
He is going to get his way, as the Republican Party tries to bring back the alleged greatness of the Gilded Age. But we all know the faults of that reactionary model of politicians under the thumb of Big Business or of racist big landowners. But in the Gilded Age there was some freedom due to the political conflict between the different Master Classes of Northern industrialists and Southern agrarians. Southern agrarians made their alliance with northern industrial workers and small farmers while northern industrialists aligned with southern blacks. This time the corporate elites and the big landowners are very much in political lockstep and anyone not already rich will get the shaft -- hard. Both have a great distance between themselves and non0elites that they see as livestock at best and vermin at worst.
We shall see whether the Trump Administration is a time of bounty of people other than economic elites. I expect much social unrest as the Republican Party imposes unequal sacrifices upon Americans. If you think that Black Lives Matters is abrasive and radical now, wait until the police get carte blanche for brutality against political protesters whom the government will define as disloyal.
I see America likely to splinter into tribalism under someone who can fault minorities for failure to support him in the election. They may be right to be scared of a vindictive demagogue. (How is tribalism to be part of any restoration of American greatness?)
I have yet to see how foreign policy will change. Should President Trump become a partner in crime with the expansionism of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, then we can expect many current allies of America in NATO to become hostile. The European part of NATO, which American politicians from Truman to Obama have aided in developing military and economic power, could see the Trump-era America as dangerous as the Soviet Union ever was. The European part of NATO can survive without us. The old German-French, German-Polish, German-Czech, Polish-Ukrainian, Anglo-Turkish, Greco-Turkish, and Hungarian-Romanian enmities are no more. Break NATO into the United States and the rest of NATO, and America suddenly finds itself facing a military and economic superpower potentially more lethal than the Soviet Union. To be sure, NATO has never been an aggressive alliance, but defensive alliances on the attack can be extremely dangerous to an enemy. Should the European part of NATO become hostile to Trump's America, it is easy to see what countries of the America could become partners. A hint: Brazil has a big military-industrial complex.
I can imagine a fascistic America becoming a focus of hatred in a democratic Japan. In view of how Thug Japan went from victory to victory against the USA in World War II before the Battle of Midway, Japan is not a country that a wise American would want to make into an enemy. Against a fascistic America that might make life unpleasant for the Japanese-American minority Japan would be a dangerous and natural enemy. The United States and Japan can smooth over their great cultural differences when both are democratic. But in view of pretensions of cultural superiority of each over each other, but when one is ruled by fascist thugs and the other is democratic, then watch the ICBMs fly. Japan has an excellent scientific community and the potential for getting itself out of a long depression with military rearmament.
The Second American-Japanese War could end with Japan carving out a puppet state on the West Coast, annexing Guam and Alaska, and setting up an independent state (restoring the Hawaiian monarchy?) in Hawaii.
Indonesia is predominately Muslim, so beware of a large country with few rifts. India has the largest Muslim population in the world, and in a time of hostility between the American government and Islam, Hindus in India are going to take the side of Islam against the USA in the name of national unity. Those are all democracies. Democracies might not like war and might not start them, but they have an unsettling habit of winning against the aggressors in the end and winning the peace by behaving themselves as occupiers.
European part of NATO? Brazil? Japan? Indonesia? India? I wouldn't want to tangle with any one of them.
Then there is China. Then there is the Muslim part of North Africa and southwestern Asia. I think we can see all sorts of new menaces that America could face as America abandons democracy.
Presidents from Reagan to Obama have gotten away with or followed much the same foreign policy. Donald Trump will break with that. Such scared me more than anything else. In campaigning for Hillary Clinton I was effectively defending the foreign policy of Ronald Reagan. Kissing up to Putin? Pardon me if I vomit.
Donald Trump and the semi-fascist Republican Party (the closest analogy that I see is to the Falange of Francisco Franco) will make American nostalgic for better times very fast. Sure, there will be plenty of work -- in fact there will be so much work that we will get tired of it, perhaps because employers will demand more work, much of it as unpaid overtime exacted under threat, for enhancing the power and indulgence of the Master Class. That's how fascism solves the problem of unemployment -- outlawing leisure and mandating that people find work if they are not to be carted off to labor camps.
People are going to get nostalgic for Barack Obama very quickly.
He is going to get his way, as the Republican Party tries to bring back the alleged greatness of the Gilded Age. But we all know the faults of that reactionary model of politicians under the thumb of Big Business or of racist big landowners. But in the Gilded Age there was some freedom due to the political conflict between the different Master Classes of Northern industrialists and Southern agrarians. Southern agrarians made their alliance with northern industrial workers and small farmers while northern industrialists aligned with southern blacks. This time the corporate elites and the big landowners are very much in political lockstep and anyone not already rich will get the shaft -- hard. Both have a great distance between themselves and non0elites that they see as livestock at best and vermin at worst.
We shall see whether the Trump Administration is a time of bounty of people other than economic elites. I expect much social unrest as the Republican Party imposes unequal sacrifices upon Americans. If you think that Black Lives Matters is abrasive and radical now, wait until the police get carte blanche for brutality against political protesters whom the government will define as disloyal.
I see America likely to splinter into tribalism under someone who can fault minorities for failure to support him in the election. They may be right to be scared of a vindictive demagogue. (How is tribalism to be part of any restoration of American greatness?)
I have yet to see how foreign policy will change. Should President Trump become a partner in crime with the expansionism of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, then we can expect many current allies of America in NATO to become hostile. The European part of NATO, which American politicians from Truman to Obama have aided in developing military and economic power, could see the Trump-era America as dangerous as the Soviet Union ever was. The European part of NATO can survive without us. The old German-French, German-Polish, German-Czech, Polish-Ukrainian, Anglo-Turkish, Greco-Turkish, and Hungarian-Romanian enmities are no more. Break NATO into the United States and the rest of NATO, and America suddenly finds itself facing a military and economic superpower potentially more lethal than the Soviet Union. To be sure, NATO has never been an aggressive alliance, but defensive alliances on the attack can be extremely dangerous to an enemy. Should the European part of NATO become hostile to Trump's America, it is easy to see what countries of the America could become partners. A hint: Brazil has a big military-industrial complex.
I can imagine a fascistic America becoming a focus of hatred in a democratic Japan. In view of how Thug Japan went from victory to victory against the USA in World War II before the Battle of Midway, Japan is not a country that a wise American would want to make into an enemy. Against a fascistic America that might make life unpleasant for the Japanese-American minority Japan would be a dangerous and natural enemy. The United States and Japan can smooth over their great cultural differences when both are democratic. But in view of pretensions of cultural superiority of each over each other, but when one is ruled by fascist thugs and the other is democratic, then watch the ICBMs fly. Japan has an excellent scientific community and the potential for getting itself out of a long depression with military rearmament.
The Second American-Japanese War could end with Japan carving out a puppet state on the West Coast, annexing Guam and Alaska, and setting up an independent state (restoring the Hawaiian monarchy?) in Hawaii.
Indonesia is predominately Muslim, so beware of a large country with few rifts. India has the largest Muslim population in the world, and in a time of hostility between the American government and Islam, Hindus in India are going to take the side of Islam against the USA in the name of national unity. Those are all democracies. Democracies might not like war and might not start them, but they have an unsettling habit of winning against the aggressors in the end and winning the peace by behaving themselves as occupiers.
European part of NATO? Brazil? Japan? Indonesia? India? I wouldn't want to tangle with any one of them.
Then there is China. Then there is the Muslim part of North Africa and southwestern Asia. I think we can see all sorts of new menaces that America could face as America abandons democracy.
Presidents from Reagan to Obama have gotten away with or followed much the same foreign policy. Donald Trump will break with that. Such scared me more than anything else. In campaigning for Hillary Clinton I was effectively defending the foreign policy of Ronald Reagan. Kissing up to Putin? Pardon me if I vomit.
Donald Trump and the semi-fascist Republican Party (the closest analogy that I see is to the Falange of Francisco Franco) will make American nostalgic for better times very fast. Sure, there will be plenty of work -- in fact there will be so much work that we will get tired of it, perhaps because employers will demand more work, much of it as unpaid overtime exacted under threat, for enhancing the power and indulgence of the Master Class. That's how fascism solves the problem of unemployment -- outlawing leisure and mandating that people find work if they are not to be carted off to labor camps.
People are going to get nostalgic for Barack Obama very quickly.
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.