02-09-2018, 05:00 AM
(02-09-2018, 03:45 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: In the original sense of the thread, I'm back in Plymouth, coming from my sister's place in Weymouth. I am still recovering, but hopefully capable of living with a sense of autonomy. Not an entire sense. I have paid a resident's Massachusetts share and enjoyed being part of a joint economy.
I can see a major values change as Pbower has noted elsewhere. In terms of not tolerating abusers of women and many other issues we do see a time of many changing values. Yet, many economic values have not yet convincingly been put on the table. Climate change and division of wealth have yet to be addressed in a traditional sense. Trump is not yet a anti hero, a counter example of values on the scale of Buchanan or Hover.
This was not the crisis I would have anticipated, but there is a major collective values change potentially.
The fecal matter must hit the proverbial fan before we recognize how bad things are.
I hardly expect our economic elites to abandon the idea that the rest of Humanity has an obligation to put their gain, indulgence, and power above even the survival of the children of the rest of Humanity. Such elites historically do not back down until they see themselves in danger or find their world collapsing. Such people expect the people whom they exploit to see those elites as their benefactors. A lapdog like Paul Ryan can make much of a working person getting $60 more a year through a tax cut so that the Koch family can get an astronomical reward for buying our political system.
The fault with Buchanan was not his values; it was that he was not up to a political reality spiraling out of control. Hoover simply bungled an economic meltdown even if he was overall a decent person. Many already believe that Donald Trump is either grossly incompetent or outright evil, if not both. Evil and incompetent leadership never get good results.
Government by lobbyist is not democracy. That must go.
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.