02-10-2018, 12:46 AM
(02-09-2018, 11:10 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:(02-08-2018, 10:12 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: > "As demonstrated in the next war, World War I gave at best
> temporary and superficial solutions to the failings of the pre-war
> world. It weakened the best of men and empowered the worst. Donald
> Trump, who seems to have little studied history of any kind,
> attaches himself as much as possible to military pomp and
> regimentation -- just like the Emperors of Germany,
> Austria-Hungary, and Russia, all of whose political systems
> disintegrated at or near the ends of the war. A militaristic
> culture is spoiling for a fight, and those spoiling for a fight
> usually get one. It is the same with kings in palaces as it is
> with angry drunks in seedy saloons."
As far as I know, Obama, Bush and Clinton were also ignorant about
history. Obama was particularly contemptuous of most history because
he was contemptuous of anything that came from Boomers, just as you're
contemptuous of anything that comes from Trump.
Acute, intense study of history is not enough. One can get history terribly wrong, as did Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler alike. Marx tried to use history to support his economic theories; Hitler was simply evil, perverting history to his racist agenda. Obama may have more admired GIs than Boomers; in view of the Boomer Presidents Dubya and Trump, that is understandable now.
I have good cause to distrust extreme narcissists, as they have burned me when I have ever had the questionable privilege of having to depend upon them. Donald Trump is so pathologically narcissistic that he is hard to tell from a sociopath.
Yes, I have contempt for Donald Trump. I also have contempt for the stuff that comes out of my anus, too, but I can always flush that into the septic tank. The most that I can do about Trump is to change the channel.
Quote:Trump started out with chief advisor Steve Bannon, who is an expert on
history and Generational Dynamics. Unfortunately, he's gone now. I
don't know how knowledgeable Trump's other advisors are about history.
My guess is that James Mattis and Rex Tillerson are a lot more
knowledgeable about history than a scientist like Ash Carter or a
total idiot like John Kerry.
I see a President who has a staff turnover resembling that of a fast-food restaurant. But at least with a fast-food restaurant one has a model for getting unskilled workers able to meet the demands of the job quickly or one can cast off bad workers quickly. American history has few good models for making the best of Donald Trump except to evade him or thwart him. Above a certain military rank, knowledge of history is a necessity.
I have seen plenty of evidence that John Kerry was not up to the job of Secretary of State.
Quote:Quite honestly, I don't understand how you can interminably keep up
the pretense that anything the comes out of Trump's mouth,
irrespective of what it is or what it's about, is automatically
apocalyptic, racist, white supremacist, war-mongering, misogynistic,
homophobic, and generally in Hillary's Basket of Deplorables.
I have no reason to trust him. I see him more as classist than racist, although he did a good job of exploiting lower-class contempt of ill-educated white people against the educated middle class. Anyone who could say that after the racists who inflamed tensions in Charlottesville that there are good people on both sides is a fool. On some issues there is no place for good people. There is no good side of bank robbery, pedophilia, or racism of the type associated with Nazis.
Besides, good people do not have the reckless, exploitative sex lives of Bill Clinton or Donald Trump. Grabbing women by their crotches without consent is at the least sexual assault
With Donald Trump I see someone weak at self-reflection. I see him more likely to bumble his way into war (like Nicholas II) than to do a sneak attack after diplomatic bullying fails (like Hitler). The consequences, except perhaps for genocide by design (which differentiates Nicholas II from Hitler), are much the same.
It is inappropriate to expect a lower standard of moral conduct from those in the upper echelons of commercial, military, academic, or political leadership than among the masses. Greater authority implies greater responsibility for moral choices lest the system lose its credibility.
Quote:By the way, living in your bubble, are you even the tiniest bit aware
about how there are daily revelations exploding and building a case
against Hillary, and now stretching to Obama? Obama's administration
was the most corrupt in my lifetime -- IRS targeting of conservatives,
extortion from the financial crisis, lying daily about Obamacare,
sabotaging the election against Trump, and so forth. Obama thought he
could get away with it forever, but now it's all pouring out. Instead
of listening to MSNBC 24 hours a day, you really should allocate one
hour a day to Fox news, so you can see what's going on in the world
besides idiots wanting to impeach Trump.
Donald Trump has the hollowness and poor personnel choices of Warren Gamaliel Harding and the demand for self-destructive blind obedience of Richard Nixon -- and both worse. Far worse. Donald Trump is so bad that if we could have the ghost of Warren G. Harding back as President, we would have an improvement. Even without the "All for the Few, and survival is a privilege for the rest" economic ideology, Donald Trump is a horrible person. He is singularly unsuited for the Presidency as shown in a curriculum vitae in which he is little more than being a rent-collector and a reality-show figure. Sure, he is qualified to be President by the Constitutional standards -- but so is some native-born skid-row drunk with severe schizophrenia and a criminal record.
We are all in bubbles. Media basically tell most of us what we want to hear, which explains why some people refer to "Faux Noise" and "MSLSD" or call their stars "Sean Hammiity" or "Rachel Mad-Cow". Americans are largely lining up in mutually-exclusive camps based upon values. Some people want America to resemble a contemporary Scandinavian country in its practices, and some want to return to America's Gilded Age (if with modern technology).
But back to my opinion piece:
Quote:Let us remember that November 11, 2018 will be the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, the second-most destructive war ever and the war that made possible the horrors of Bolshevism, Nazism, and sundry other novel forms of brutal tyranny that made the most destructive war in history and genocidal slaughters a near inevitability.
World War I was the worst possible war at the time, and a calamity whose horror nobody predicted at its start. It is hard to imagine a war that so universally scarred the surviving soldiers Nobody fully understands why it came to be, but the militarization of so many cultures surely contributed to the horror of the war. Monarchs and presidents were proud of their well-drilled infantry units and of their battleships, and of the rapid development of armament industries nd related big business (including steel and chemicals).
As demonstrated in the next war, World War I gave at best temporary and superficial solutions to the failings of the pre-war world. It weakened the best of men and empowered the worst. Donald Trump, who seems to have little studied history of any kind, attaches himself as much as possible to military pomp and regimentation -- just like the Emperors of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia, all of whose political systems disintegrated at or near the ends of the war. A militaristic culture is spoiling for a fight, and those spoiling for a fight usually get one. It is the same with kings in palaces as it is with angry drunks in seedy saloons.
The least appropriate treatment for the 100th anniversary of the end of what had been called the Great War and the War to End All Wars ("to end all" meaning a superlative in the day) is a display of military prowess. More apt would be contemplation of the stupidity of a militarized culture that easily drifts into pointless war over some affront. Prayer and fasting would be far more apt.
If you do not see the dangers inherent in a militarized culture, then you have a blindness to a basic reality in human nature. One can push people in power only so far before they snap, and generally we wisely keep our leaders from acting on impulse. If someone snaps in a bar and has nothing more than his bare fits, then the worst that might happen is that one drunk throws his fist into the jaw of another drunk, and the two fighters end up in the hospital, one with a broken hand and one with a broken jaw, both coming out of anesthesia and having no idea of what motivated them to do something so stupid as to get into a fight. With armed gangs like the Bloods and Crips, leaders with hair-trigger tempers might do gun-play that kills someone. If we are lucky the people killed are disposable losers to all but gulled loved ones. If we are not so lucky, then innocent bystanders get killed or maimed. With superpowers with capricious leaders who might start a war over territory of each other, the consequences are war, and the bigger are the war machines, "Close" counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and since 1945, nuclear weapons.
It may be my taste, but the appropriate expression of the centennial of the end of the First World War is a reflection upon the danger of war from leaders with hair-trigger tempers such as William II and Nicholas II. Let us never have another such war, for this time the weapons are far more dangerous and there are no safe havens. Even more -- wars can rend the fabric of human decency, and to the extent that the war does more to degrade the civil society that makes democratic institutions possible. It is fit and proper to honor the soldiers, but it is grossly unfit to use the centennial of the second-worst war ever as an excuse for a military display for a President who acts more like a despotic king than like any prior President.
Militarized cultures made World War I all the more likely, and more dangerous for more people. I see only one really-close analogue in my adult life, to wit the war between Iran and Iraq in which two pathological regimes armed to the teeth as expressions of national pride went after each other.
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.
