02-08-2021, 05:27 AM
Quote:The problems facing the Democrats in Washington DC are similar to the
problems facing the army in Burma.
The Burmese army has to deal with millions of Aung Sang Suu Kyi
supporters conducting street protests. They've arrested Suu Kyi so
that she can't communicate with her supporters, and they've shut down
internet social media so that her supporters can't communicate with
one another.
Comparing Joe Biden to the Burmese Army is about like comparing Karl Mannerheim (effective leader of a democratic Finland in WWII) to the Nazi SS. The Burmese Army has a well-earned reputation as genocidal tool of dictatorial regimes... and is effectively a State within a State. Comparing Aung Sang Suu Kyi to people who violated the sanctity of the Capitol is almost like comparing Alexander Kerensky to the Bolsheviks who stormed the Winter Palace in Petrograd in 1917.
The impression that I have of Burma is that the Burmese Army throughout its existence has run the country so that it can grab every resource possible and ensure that the only way in which to prosper in Burma is to be in the upper echelon of the Army, to have connections to the Army for personal gain, or to do something both extremely sleazy and profitable -- but easy to skim. At one time Burma was a center of the world trade in illicit opiates after the Chinese Communists started executing drug traffickers while Burma remained a safe haven for drug traffickers so long as they gave the Army a share in the take. (Normal businesses typically have much lower profit margins and aren't so easy to bleed. Impose punitive taxes upon businesses and the cost of living soars. The Burmese people obviously can't afford drug habits, so nobody cares except for people that just about everyone loathes).
Even if Burmese democrats succeed in remaining in power they will need to dismantle the command economy that the Burmese Armed Forces has in place.
Quote:The Democrats have to deal with 74 million Trump supporters who,
according to polls I've seen, overwhelmingly support Trump. The
wealthy, powerful "Big Tech" companies have colluded with the
Democrats to shut down thousands of social media accounts to prevent
Trump from communicating with his supporters, and to prevent his
supporters from communicating with each other. This kind of mass
censorship is previously unheard of in America, and suggests that
America is becoming a Stalinist dictatorship.
Biden got over 51% of the popular vote, which is over 81 million votes to about 46% of the popular vote and 74 million votes by Donald Trump. The Electoral College established that Donald Trump got the votes that mattered more under our system in 2016. In 2020 Joe Biden got slightly more of the total share of the vote than did Ronald Reagan in 1980. That was enough to win the Electoral College 306-232, which is much less than Reagan got in 1980. I don't really want to compare what would have happened had Carter won all the popular votes that John Anderson won that year because... well, Biden isn't Reagan. Trump is Reagan without the wise advisors (like the recently-deceased George Shultz), the wit, the caution, the coachability, the occasional kind words, the willingness to get his way piecemeal instead of all at once, and the selflessness. If Reagan was a fine actor (if not at the level of such contemporaries as Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, and Laurence Olivier), he did not go into directing or become a studio boss as his talent as an actor faded. Trump has been the studio boss for some very bad television.
The difference between Trump winning in 2016 and losing in 2020 boils down to demographic change. Voters over 55 in 2016 were about 5% more D than R in 2016. They were also over 59 -- if they survived. About 1.6% of the electorate dies off or goes senile each year and thus quits voting, and those people are predominately over 55. The people replacing them are largely under 40, and for now those people vote about 20% more D than R. Trump did little to win younger voters from the D fold... so over four years about 6.4% of the vote shifts from 5% more R to D to 20% more D than R. Trump was much the same person in 2020 as in 2016, and people who thought that he was wonderful in 2016 generally still voted for him in 2020. People who despised him in 2016 still voted against him in 2020. That model suggested an even shift of about 1.6% from R to D, which would have flipped Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to Biden (which would have been enough), and Florida, which would have flipped in an even shift. That model would have predicted that Biden would win 307-321. Trump did hold Florida, but he lost Arizona, Georgia, and the Second Congressional District of Nebraska instead, so Biden won 306-232. One electoral vote off from that model is amazing. I'm not going to discuss why the states went as they did. On the whole, those who voted in 2016 seemed to vote much the same way in 2020 -- if they voted. The people who joined or departed the electorate probably made the difference.
.................................................
As for Big Tech dominating American life... Facebook, Twitter, and other social media operate much like open forums. People seem to do with new technology largely (once the technology is easy enough to use that one no longer need be tech-savvy to use it) what they did with older forms of technology. E-mail is much like the telegraph in its function. We are getting methods for imitating conference calls (I have yet to learn how to use those). People use cell phones much like their old landline phones. YouTube videos resemble television and the old cinematic shorts. YouTube is beginning to cut into the cable TV racket. People do much on Facebook and Twitter what they used to do by mail. It can be anything from transmitting news ("Hey, Kim... George Shultz just died!"), photos and short video ("Hey, Gene! I have some photos from my trip to Yosemite!), recipes, and news about family get togethers... the more political stuff is like the old-fashioned letters to the editor in newspapers. (Newspapers have been trying to replace dead-tree editions with electronic editions). With a newspaper, getting a letter into the column the editor had more control over what went in. Typically an editor refused to publish something from a source outside the market area for the newspaper unless there was some compelling reason for doing so. In the town in which I live, one must demonstrate that (1) what you right is genuine, (2) it is germane to the community, (3) that it isn't commercial in nature (don't try selling your boat in the letters to the editor; that is welcome in the want ads), and (4) that you live within the market zone for the paper. The editor could reject anything for incoherence, irrelevance, offense, potential slander or libel, militancy, or quackery. The letter can be truncated and of course corrected for grammatical errors, punctuation, and spelling.
Facebook and Twitter were free-for-alls. People could supply almost anything, and there were even fakes. In 2016 there was much of that, like "Georgia Blacks for Trump" who claim to be from Atlanta, but whose IP address is in Nigeria. If they spoke on video they had Nigerian accents while claiming to have been born in Georgia. What couldn't make it? Commercial messages, porn, and material obviously violating copyright laws.
The free-for-all is over. One must admit that much of what was in Trump tweets was offensive. But he was President! Racism and religious bigotry? Do we need that any more than we need pornography? OK, erotica serves some purpose for lonely people. Calls to violence? Few predicted that there would be a mob doing their American version of the Beer Hall Putsch or the storming of the Winter Palace based on the conversational "traffic" because supposedly such does not happen in America. Now we know.
Quote:The Democrats are taking other steps. Joe Biden announced last
week that hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens will be permitted
to enter the United States freely. The apparent purpose is to send
them mail-in ballots in 2022 and instruct them to vote for Democrats.
They would have to get citizenship fast. The minimum time for achieving US citizenship is typically five years, which won't be in time for the 2022 or 2024 elections. People now illegal aliens would need to apply for citizenship and start the process.
Quote:What about violence? The Burmese army is on the verge of violence as
the only way to handle even peaceful demonstrations by the millions of
supporters of Suu Kiy.
The Burmese Army has typically resorted to brute force to solve the question of power. It knows well that the gravy train of a command economy that serves the Army first and at the expense of all else would come to an end in a democracy. A democratic Burma would by necessity scale back the Armed Forces, establish something closer to a free-market economy like that of Thailand, and put an end to the persecution of the Rohingya. Multi-ethnic democracies may be shakier than those more homogeneous, but for real instability, look to a multi-ethnic society under a dictatorship.
A system like that in Burma exploits practically everyone. When the military is in control, practically everyone is a prisoner or a serf.
Quote:Would the Democrats use violence to control peaceful demonstrations by
the 74 million Trump supporters?
They would be treated much like Black Lives Matter. Violent acts within a peaceful protest are matters for police to deal with. Most people in peaceful protests gladly sacrifice violent participants to the police.
There have been plenty of peaceful protests. I've driven past them.
Quote:Let's make it a little more specific. Look at the first picture at
the beginning of this article with a mob of peaceful demonstrators
carrying placards with pictures Aung Sang Suu Kyi. Now imagine that
as a crowd of Trump supporters carrying placards with pictures of
Trump, with text reading "Trump - The Real President."
The big difference is that Aung Sang Suu Kyi was legitimately elected in parliamentary elections, and Donald Trump was clearly not re-elected. A placard that has a picture of Obama and text reading "Obama - Still My President" or "Hillary Clinton - the real President" would be protected under the First Amendment. Have people been busted for saying "F--- Joe Biden"? I think not. It is offensive.
Quote:Something like that could actually happen. What would the Democrats
do? Would Nancy Pelosi totally freak out? On January 20, the acting
Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli
said that Nancy Pelosi had requested thousands of troops to remain in
DC for months, and she wanted them armed with crew-manned machine
guns. These are the guns used in countries like Burma to kill dozens
of student protesters within seconds. The request was denied, but
this request shows the state of mind of Pelosi and the Democrats.
Source, please!
Quote:We also note that Biden is ordering the army to "stand down" so that
"extremists" can be weeded out. To the Democrats, all 74 million Tea
Partiers and Trump supporters are extremists or cultists that need to
be "deprogrammed."
Millions of them are going to deprogram themselves as they realize that what the words seemed to mean was very different from what they meant.
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.
