Beyond any question, if our electoral system is hacked, then to the extent that the system is hacked and so distorts the vote, then the system is undemocratic. America eventually becomes a client state, if not an outright colony, of the hackers.
Galen:
Beyond any question, feudalism is no better than the feudal lords. Military regimes are no better than the ruling generals. Despotism is no better than the despots. Fascism is no better than the fascists. Marxism is no better than the Marxists.
...and capitalism can be no better than the capitalists. When Donald Trump is the exemplar of capitalism, then capitalism as it then exists is devoid of ethical value.
Conservatives would have been perfectly happy had their conservative had the ethical values and overall competence of president Obama. Indeed they might have had fewer problems in achieving their profits-first ideology. Donald Trump cannot convince us of his mirror-image Marxism that differs from the stereotypical Marxist critique of capitalism -- that capitalism is a repressive, exploitative, hierarchical order that makes even the barest needs of working people into a choice of plutocrats to permit or deny even if such a denial means death from starvation; what differs in this mirror image of Marxism is that to the ultra-capitalist purist is that the rottenness that anyone else would recognize is a great virtue instead of a monstrous evil.
Galen:
Beyond any question, feudalism is no better than the feudal lords. Military regimes are no better than the ruling generals. Despotism is no better than the despots. Fascism is no better than the fascists. Marxism is no better than the Marxists.
...and capitalism can be no better than the capitalists. When Donald Trump is the exemplar of capitalism, then capitalism as it then exists is devoid of ethical value.
Conservatives would have been perfectly happy had their conservative had the ethical values and overall competence of president Obama. Indeed they might have had fewer problems in achieving their profits-first ideology. Donald Trump cannot convince us of his mirror-image Marxism that differs from the stereotypical Marxist critique of capitalism -- that capitalism is a repressive, exploitative, hierarchical order that makes even the barest needs of working people into a choice of plutocrats to permit or deny even if such a denial means death from starvation; what differs in this mirror image of Marxism is that to the ultra-capitalist purist is that the rottenness that anyone else would recognize is a great virtue instead of a monstrous evil.
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.