02-24-2020, 08:18 AM
(02-24-2020, 04:50 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: It is almost embarrassing to quote MSNBC on something these days. They have a perspective, an agenda, almost a strong as and in opposition to Fox. If you can win market share by telling the people what they want to hear, they are looking for market share.[font]
[/font]That is how capitalism operates in the media.
Quote:Still, Rachel Maddow has been sounding the alarm of late. Since the acquittal, Trump is openly selling pardons to those who can afford it and seeking revenge against those who spoke truth. The Republican Establishment put their credit behind the administration, and by credit I mean electability. Trump is now spending it freely. He is in power, figures the Senate will block any accountability, and going to use that power for his personal gain. If the Republicans had any pretense of ruling for the benefit of the people, that is pretty well shot now.
The GOP is becoming an authoritarian, elitist movement. All that is missing is a paramilitary and a politicized youth group -- and the permanent marginalization of opposition. Anyone who still believes that the Republican Party is a normal political party in a democratic order is a fool. A Party that once had room for Charles Percy and Ed Brooke is no longer so. One obeys the Great and Infallible Leader or one's political career is at risk from someone who believes even more resolutely in power over principle.
Quote:I have to believe this will come into play come the general election. There are almost two sets of issues. One is the obvious corruption and abuse of power that is Trump. The other is the more traditional red against blue. On the Republican side it is small government, racism, elitism, strong defense, a belief in voodoo economics and a few other issues. On the Democratic, the environment comes to mind.
The big question is whether we Americans are better than this. It is not a question of whether we have more trust in Big Business than we have in a welfare state; it is a question of whether we believe in freedom or fascism. I hate seeing things in such a dichotomy, but the reality creates that dichotomy. Irresponsible leadership like that of Trump is the bane of democracy.
Quote:It is easy to believe that Trump on corruption has blown the Republicans out of the water. They have zip credibility. The middle of the road people will flip the see saw. 2020 looks good for the Democrats.
But they have what decided the Tea Party elections of 2010, 2014, and 2016: money that can buy political influence, that can buy mindless propaganda. I would like to see a separation of economic and political power, but note well that for much of American history there was no such separation. Know well: the Right has found ways in which to use Big Government -- as an enforcer and as a means of grafting. Profits from graft are no less attractive than traditional profits that come from gross exploitation as in the Agrarian Age and the early-industrial age.
Quote:But it is not clear that the basic red against blue divide has been resolved. They red leaners will still look for a king alligator to drain the swamp, the people who profited from shipping the jobs abroad to ship them back, the accident that was the intact American infrastructure after World War II to repeat somehow, Voodoo Economics to continue to work after the second term…
The most that the "king alligator" will do is to eat the smaller alligators.
We have a trend that makes a return to the norms of the industrial era impossible: the end of material scarcity. This is not to say that the elites cannot impose poverty; if anything, the end of material scarcity revives what was the Great Industrial Scrap-Heap of the late nineteenth century. People can no longer get rich by meeting shortages, but elites can certainly control access to economic opportunity. If one isn't born into the Right Family these days one has little chance. Small business? Nobody can easily out-compete Wal*Mart and McDonald's. Even independent pharmacies have been dying off in favor of Walgreen's, CVS, and Rite Aid.
A harsh reality is that the mentality of elite Boomers has been that they are masters of the universe, people entitled to everything because they have never experienced the alleged corruption of hardship. Those elite Boomers act as if those who have endured hardship deserve nothing more than more of the same. Donald Trump is the extreme expression of such a world-view.
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.